Wednesday, May 17, 2023

 Wednesday, May 17, 2023

           I weighed 146 lbs. this morning and lost half an inch off my waist. 

I only had an inch and a half to go before I was back to where I was three months ago. Of course, I had sixteen Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with almonds yesterday. The day before, I had only three. That means my scale and girth will be greater tomorrow, probably right back up to 148.  

     I spent most of the day working on updates and advertising my tutoring and the reading method I developed. I felt like Cassandra. No one will listen to me, either. 

    I met with Adolescent D at 2 pm. No, he had done no additional work. No, he had not handed in the work we had completed. Why hadn’t he handed it in? Because he wasn’t at school today. Did he go to school yesterday? Why didn’t he hand it in then? He forgot. I’m not so much disturbed by his excuse as the possibility he believes them. It would make him dysfunctional in profound ways.  

     Then, I asked him where the completed booklet was. In his bag. That’s good. Was there some way he could make sure to take it out of his bag in school tomorrow? Yes. Clip the booklet to the thing you know you will take out of your bag. That way you can’t forget. He did it. I was teaching him study skills and how to deal with a faulty memory. Lord knows I have to figure out tricks for myself these days.

        There were twelve uncompleted assignments left to go. D said I couldn’t help him with any of them. Again, I don’t know if he was trying to get out of work or if he believed what he was saying. The latter is much scarier than the former. It would make him out of touch with reality. I told him to pick one assignment, eenie, meanie, minie, mo. He picked one. Of course, I could help him. He had to read an article on the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791 and take notes on it. Why would he think I couldn’t help him with that? I told him to read the words he could, and I would read the rest. He read at least 75-80% on his own. This is from a kid reading at a first-grade level two years ago. His biggest problem is keeping the letters and sounds straight when decoding multisyllabic words. When decoding the word consistent, he did alright on the first syllable. He first said sin for the sound on the second, pulling the n from the first syllable. 

     We also came across a word with ar in it. I always tell the kids it makes the same sound as the word are. He couldn’t remember are for love nor money. This poor kid does have problems. On the other hand, he had done nothing to improve his skills until I started working with him.    

     I told him to tell his mind to keep the syllables separate. He said it’s not that easy. No, but it helps. The minds of all young children scramble images. Our minds have to learn to disregard misinformation that is inappropriate for the context. I told him the story of my eyesight change. 

     After my cataract surgery, the double vision I had been living with all my life became a problem. Rather than be able to ditch my glasses, I now needed glasses with prisms to correct the problem. I had to make sure I wore the glasses at all times. It took time for me to learn to adjust to bifocal vision since I had never had it before. 

     My glasses were giving me problems. I found myself taking them off to read better. This was ridiculous. My vision with the glasses wasn’t better than it was without them. It was less tiring to see without them than with them. My left lens is set to near-point vision and my right to far-point. I was going to have to do without bifocal vision anyway. If my brain had gotten used to mono-focal vision in the first place, it could do it again. I would say, “Okay, right eye, you’re on. Left eye, stand back.” Did it make a difference? Probably not. Did it help? Well, it didn’t hurt. I was comfortable that it would take time for my brain to adjust. D could do it, too. I don’t know how much of his problem is due to congenital neurological problems, injuries to his brain after birth, or simple refusal to change in any way. The latter is possible with this boy. The good news was that he stayed overtime to work on the second paragraph. 

     I had Mama K’s crew immediately after Adolescent D. I started with Twin E. In our last session, I discovered that her idea of reading is figuring out the word from just the first letter. I had her practice saying all the letters in words before saying the word. She told me she practiced this skill on her own. I had mentioned it to her mother, asking her to have the girl sit at the kitchen table while she cooked and practice saying the letters before saying the word. Her reading today was much better. I could move her from the primer passages to a low first-grade one. Wow! I may solve her problem by the end of the summer. 

     I had Twin A reread a high-first-grade passage and answer comprehension questions. She did well. She also did the first reading on a second-grade passage, which she did remarkably well on. As we were almost finished with the passage, she started making mistakes. I had her stop. She had worked hard enough. Now, I’ll have to figure out if her visual perception goes haywire after she’s read a while or if she was just tired. 

    Twin A called fourth-grade K to come to the session. No response. I heard his mom yelling at him. He finally arrived. He was in tears. What was the problem? His mom took his game console away from him. Why did she do that? Because I wouldn’t come when called. Why didn’t you come? Because my friend was playing a game on a timer. We couldn’t’ t stop. What would happen if you stopped? Nothing. What happened because you didn’t stop? My mom took my console away from me. I tried to help him think through the relationship between his actions and the consequences. He had a choice.    

     When we started working, he stopped whimpering. We read the passage on Pinzon, a Spanish explorer who commanded one of Christopher Columbus’s boats and went on to explore on his own in South America. K told me he looked up Christopher Columbus; he was Italian, he told me. K remembered that Hawaii was a state in the USA. We went back to geography to learn where Spain was. He was more involved today. His understanding of the passage on Pinzon was clearer.