Wednesday, September 28, 2022

 Wednesday, September 28, 2022  

    I stayed in bed until after seven. I started with the leg exercises, drawing a bent leg closer to my abdomen and executing an eagle pose while lying on my back. I was aware of uncomfortable, restless feelings. I have noticed some strange behavior; I'm too hyper and often talk to myself. These behaviors are signs of stress, growing from inner hysteria. A hug from Mike would release some of it. I have no one in my life like that.

  Everyone looks for different qualities in people. I look for a comfortable energy exchange. That creates problems when others interpret such an exchange as sexual. Mike and I met in group therapy. I remember the first time I hugged him. I felt the exchange and thought, "Damn, he's going to think it's sexual." He did ask me out that night. We never discussed that moment, but it became clear he knew the difference between a sexual energy exchange versus other variations of it. He said a sexual exchange was exciting; the other was relaxing.

  I spent the day continuing with my major cleaning, taking advantage of an anticipated guest. Mind you, this is one of Damon's best friends, someone he met during his freshman year at Vassar. I've known Eddie that long, too. I didn't quite change his diapers, but he was still wet behind the ears. No, I was not concerned about Eddie's opinion. I just used his impending visit as motivation to get the cleaning done. Today, the inner living room area was on the schedule. Scott helped me move all the furniture out of the room and moved it back after I did a thorough vacuuming.

     I had Adolescent D at 2 p.m. We have been running over our half-hour scheduled sessions. Was he ready to extend our sessions to forty-five minutes from half an hour? I got a mixed answer. Yes, he had a good time. No, he didn't want to extend the time. More of this attitude that everything is supposed to entertain him. It isn't his responsibility to figure out how to improve.

    I started asking him if he had work for school we could do together. He said no. Was it all done? No. I insisted. He brought up an assignment for PE which covers health. He had to find the nutritional value of a food he ate frequently. He understood some of the exercise but didn't understand that the information was right on the package. He had looked it up on the Internet. He went and got the package. While he had answered all the questions, most of the answers didn't match the questions because he couldn't read the questions accurately.

      Once we finished his class exercise, I switched to creating an imagined dialogue. The objective was to develop his inner voice.  

He proposed a dialogue between Obama and Batman:

 Batman: Good day!

Obama: Okay, Jose. How are you?

Batman: Pretty well. You know the kid and the wife are doing good. The boy is doing well in school, and Sara is doing martial arts.

Obama: Epic, dude.

 I got to go. I need to get some hand sanitizers.

Batman: Goodbye, Obama.

Obama: Goodbye.

 Oh, dear. I have to work with him on his verbal expression. This dialogue is good for a kindergartener, not a fifteen old boy.

I switched to a dialogue between his mom and him. I provided all the mom dialogue.

Mom and D:

Mom: How's your day, D?

D: I'm doing quite fine.

Mom: Okay. What made it fine?

D: I got to stay at home and do class virtually.

Mom: Sounds like you like it better when you stay home. Is that right?

D: Yeah.

Mom: Why do you like staying home more than going to school?

D:  Because I cannot fully give my attention. I can do other stuff while they are talking and not give my full attention.

Mom: Why does that make it better?

D: When I'm there, I have to give my full attention. I don't have to give my full attention when I'm here. They don't know that I'm not giving my full attention.

Mom: Why don't you want to give them your full attention?

D: Because sometimes they have a tendency to talk too much.

Mom: Do you ever pay full attention to what the teacher says?

D: Yeah, sometimes. When it's an interesting topic, or I'm just engaged.

Mom: Are you able to learn when you're not engaged?

D; Most of the time, no.

Mom: Are you aware this is a problem?

D: Yeah.

Mom: How will you learn if you don't pay attention?

D: I'm not. I can hear it in the back of my mind, but I'm not giving it full attention.

Mom: Is that enough to learn what you need to know to do well in school?

D: I remember everything important they say. Most of the time.

Mom: Tell me something they said today that was important.

D: We were talking about the garden we planted.. How we might go back to it soon and check it out.

Mom:  Who took care of the garden?

D: Some locals. It's their garden, but we helped plant it. We planted some peppers. Today, we talked about how tomorrow we're going to have a game night. We're going to watch a space WIFI movie.

 The last dialogue was much better, more articulate, and more information. However, it is somewhat alarming. He said it was the presenter's job to make the information sufficiently interesting so he was engaged. It is not his responsibility to bring his attention to the information. His learning is 100% the responsibility of the teacher or the stimulus. Oh, dear. What have we wrought? Is this a result of video games?

 I met with Mama K's crew when I finished with D. I worked on familiarizing the Twins with the Starfall program. It's free and will give them supported reading practice. Mama will only grant me fifteen minutes a week per child. That's not sufficient when her girls read at a kindergarten level in third grade. I did these sessions for free. Money was not an issue. The beach was just more important. It's not that she is all wrong. Weight gain is a problem in the family. She gets them involved in physical activities to keep that weight under control.

  I continued working on the WbyW program with fourth-grade K.  I saw a big improvement in his comprehension last week. I asked him if he was doing better in school. Yes. Did he think the work we were doing helped? Yes. Great. Love it! I had been working with him on a low third-grade level. I switched to a low fourth-grade level material. He could use sentence structure to answer the questions but lacked background information. There was a reference to the 1800s. He had no idea what that meant. Since we don't say the twenty-hundreds, explaining the concept was more difficult.

  Then I talked about the year he was born. In response, he said he thought he was born in October. Oh, dear. I covered the difference between the month, the day, and the year. At least he can now recall the month and day of his birthday.

      I got frustrated with ninth-grade K in our session today as we continued working on it. He was unresponsive. He might as well have not read the play at all. He remembered nothing, not the characters or their relationships. The problem wasn't just his. I had mixed objectives. My primary objective with K should be figuring out how to improve his comprehension. My best diagnosis to date has been he doesn't convert words into images or images into words. However, I got caught up in understanding the play. I was overwhelmed by it. I can easily understand why it is one of the best plays ever written. The story is about a single family, but it talks about problems we all have and knowing how to respond to life's challenges. Do we give up? Do we make grandiose plans? Do we make the best of a bad situation? Then, there is the pain of these people trapped by forces beyond their control.

      Hansberry incorporated an unbelievable number of concepts into this play with natural-sounding conversation. Nothing feels stilted or artificial. I saw the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee when I was twenty. I got how blacks were oppressed and suppressed. That I got. I knew that before. I can't believe what she packed into this form. I was emotionally and intellectually overwhelmed. What was this fourteen-year-old boy expected to get out of it? What was his teacher's objective for her class? Also, given the topics discussed, from race in America to abortion, I'm surprised any school gets away with using it at any level these days, no less a bunch of 9th graders.