Wednesday, July 20, 2022

 Wednesday, July 20, 2022 

   My leg hurt as I lay in bed in the early morning. That was scary. When I walked, I stressed my muscles. When I lay in bed, they still hurt. I had to consider the problem was with my knee. That would not be good. I used the acupuncture pen on those muscles. That relieved the pain. It was a promising result. 

   When I walked Elsa, I put all my weight on the outer edge of my left foot. That helped relieve the stress as I walked. Fortunately, Elsa didn’t need a long walk before she was ready to go home.

   I did Achille heel stretches several times a day, as Katie recommended. I braced my foot against one of the two steps in my house and held the position for 90 seconds. However, I hadn’t been doing the hamstring stretch Katie told me to do. When I did one, it immediately impacted my leg problem. For the rest of the day, I walked around without pain. I didn’t feel I even needed the walking stick.

   It was a weird day. I was perfectly happy to do nothing. I  just napped and stared at the ceiling. That was not good. There are days when I do nothing, but I feel wasted. Not today. I was a happy vegetable.

   Jean, my Hanai sister, called. I missed it. Why doesn’t my phone ring sometimes, even when I haven’t silenced it? It drives me nuts. I called her back. Yesterday was her husband’s eighty-sixth birthday. His daughter came to visit. The interaction between their respective children was a problem when they were young. Jean focused on Damon and John on his two children. It wasn’t the best arrangement. It still caused stress even though all those kids would be over fifty as of September 15. Old, unresolved issues between family members are the best.

            When I got off the phone with Jean, I checked the time. It was after 2 pm. What !!!?? I had an appointment with Adolescent D at 2. I usually set the alarm on my phone for ten minutes before the appointment. That gives me time to get ready. I quickly jumped on Zoom. D was on a few minutes later. 

    D’s mother was feeling still feeling lousy with Covid. Had he done some reading? Yes,  but he didn’t remember what. When D says he did some reading, he is not talking about sitting down to read an article or a book. He’s talking about reading a text message, subtitles, or a label on a box, the reading you would expect any emergent reader to do. D only started doing that about six months ago. He makes no deliberate effort. He does what comes easily. 

    Continuing our discussion from yesterday, I asked him why he objected to finding a book he might be able to read or reading the book while he listened to someone reading the book out loud. He said he didn’t know. I asked him if the thought of it made him feel bad. Maybe. He had no idea and made little effort to explore why. I couldn’t rely on his parents to make sure he would do any reading. I had to rely on him. 

   We continued reading the list of words I had written, using the missed word list his other tutor put together. I identified a syllable pattern in the target word and then wrote every word that contained that pattern. Here’s an example:

c-ow, b-ow, D-ow, f-l-ow/e-r, g-r-ow-l, h-ow, h-ow-l, n-ow, p-ow, r-ow,

s-ow, v-ow, w-ow  d-ow-n: b-r-ow-n, c-l-ow-n, c-r-ow-n, d-r-ow-n, f-r-ow-n, t-ow-n, ow-l

In this exercise, D finally got the idea that there are repeated word patterns. Each word is not a unique expression having nothing in common with the other words. I did get that idea into his head. He agreed that this was important for reading because he was a polite child, but he had his idea of how to learn to read. I doubt he believed what I was teaching would help. I suspect he thought he was learning by his approach. He was undeterred by the evidence that his preferred method hadn’t worked, and he had made progress since I started working with him. Sometimes I think I’ve gotten through to him, and then he proves me wrong. However, today he read the complete list at a pretty good rate. While he didn’t get every rhyming word right, he could correct himself.

   I took another nap. When I checked my phone, I saw I had a text from Jana, the woman I meet with weekly, to counsel her. The first-grade student she was working with was making amazing progress. She saw this little boy in an afterschool program. He caused problems there. There was a change in this behavior as his reading got better.  

   Jana wanted to ask me about her student’s three-year-old brother. He had a speech impediment. The six-year-old had had one when he was younger and was bullied in his preschool. The teacher only caught his responses when attacked and believed he was the cause of all the problems. The mom was hoping to avoid sim ilar issues with her younger son. I advised Jana to recommend using the 5 Stories video. The mom should play the video while the boys sleep at night. I don’t like to recommend the video to preschool children. I think it encourages left-brain development. I’m with the Waldorf philosophy: Don’t push reading until 2nd grade. However, when there is a speech problem, using the tape may help. It has already helped others. I didn’t design it for this purpose. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to anyone else. 

   I wanted to watch something light on tv at night. I tried watching By the Sea last night. It was bad. It starred Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as an unhappy couple for individual and joint reasons. Jolie directed it. She should stay away from that end of the business. I watched Destination Wedding, a B romantic comedy with two good performers in their waning years, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it was a bearable distraction.