Saturday, February 8, 2025

 Saturday, February 8, 2025

 Mama  K texted that her girls would be up at 6:30 this morning. They would be out after nine.  I got up at five to be ready to meet with them around 7.  I slept straight through to four-thirty before I even had to get up and pee.  My 10-minute warning alarm went off while I was still out walking. I hadn’t been confident they would get up that early.  Mama K likes to sleep in when she can, and the girls either can’t sign in themselves or haven’t been taught to.  My guess is it’s the latter.  They’ve been considered backward by their parents as well as the school.  However, when I spoke to Mama K the other day, she said she saw a difference in Twin A.  She’s reading labels. Huh?  I have her reading fifth-grade reading material.  There is no way she hasn’t been able to read labels before this. The problem isn’t her reading. The problem is her emotional maturity. They’re the babies of the family.  They don’t feel they should have to do anything themselves.  It may be more than the youngest child syndrome. It may be they were such slow starters that everyone assumes they can’t do anything independently.  They certainly aren’t the type to grab the reins in any situation.

I worked on writing with Twin A today.  She had no idea what to write about. I asked her what she did yesterday and did a co-writing activity with her. In other words, I modeled how to write.  She said the family went to Walmart. “Why did you go there?” To get something to eat at McDonald’s. Fortunately, I knew McDonald’s has franchises at Walmart.

 

 “Last night, Mom, Dad, KT, SH, and Twin E went to Walmart to eat dinner at their McDonald’s.  We all had # 3: a burger, two patties with onions, ketchup, and pickles.  

After we finished our dinner, Mom wanted to look at the phones to see what they had in stock. She just walked around and looked at them a bit. Lena and I went to the toy section while Mom looked at the phones. We just looked around until we found Squishies. We grabbed one each and returned to the phone section, where the rest of the family was. We begged Dad to buy them for us. He said yes. We threw them in the cart.

  After Mom finished looking at the phones, we went to the food section and got milk. Walmart was starting to close, so we had to go to the self-checkout counter. We left Walmart and went home.”

 

It wasn’t hard to get this out of her.  She started dictating complete sentences quickly.  Next time, she will be more involved.  If she doesn’t have a way to express her ideas, I will give her two or three choices.  This exercise cultivates verbal expression skills, both oral and written.  I’ve done hundreds of these stories by now.

I started this process in the early 1980s.  Carl was in second-grade reading at a much lower level.   To get him more engaged, I started this co-writing activity to create reading matter he would find interesting and be familiar with because he ‘wrote’ it. He told me what he wanted to write about.  I pulled out as many details as possible, organized them, and expressed his thoughts in good language.  The first story was simple.  The second was more complicated. By the tenth story, he was writing a book on the Titanic.

After we had completed two or three stories, his mother called me. “Carl’s stories are amazing.!”  I said, “Well, you know I’m really writing them.” She told me his oral-verbal skills had improved.   Other parents called to tell me that the process was helping their children speak and write better.  While I was surprised the first time, I quickly learned how effective this approach was.  It differs from the Reading Recovery approach because it models good verbal expression skills.  I convert their basic ideas into well-structured and well-expressed text. An essential aspect of this is pulling details out of the kids.  They have the ideas.  They see the images in their heads. They don’t know how to convert those images into words.   

It was Sorry game day with Dean and Nina. I won. I accompanied them into the driveway as they were leaving. I asked if they could help me unload my trunk. I had stuffed a Costco-sized package of toilet paper on top of the trash barrel I used to dump the bougainvillea green waste into the trash rather than the official green waste containers. I couldn’t open the trunk.

I got the key to the car, thinking the latch was stuck. No response.  We figured out the car was dead as a doornail. Dean figured the battery was dead. The 12-volt batteries only last for five years. The battery in my car was older than that.  I would take it to Kia for service for the unresolved charging problem for the fourth time.  Dean said he would stop by Sunday morning with a voltage meter to test the battery. I heard activity next door; Mei and Peter probably had a voltage meter. They ran a Turo business, and Peter did his own electrical work. Dean yelled over the fence. Within minutes, Peter and Mei were in my driveway to test the battery.

It took them time to find the battery.  It was hidden under the fuse box. When you removed the lid, the battery terminals were hiding among the fuses. Peter applied the voltage meter: zero charge. Both men said the battery must have shorted. This may be a clue as to what is wrong with the car. There are wires that are not properly connected, creating shorting.

  My friend Jana and I connected after I got back into the house. She wanted to consult me about a student she was having some problems with, a five-year-old boy with a speech defect and problems remembering the names of the letters.

Jana’s description of the boy sounded like he had no idea how to use his mind to recall something when it didn’t come up automatically.   He looked at the ceiling to find the answer.  I see children doing this when they’re imitating what they see others doing when they’re searching for an answer.  

As good learners/thinkers, we search our minds when answers don’t come up immediately. Our eyes flick back and forth, searching our minds, not scanning the ceiling.  I talked her through the protocol for visual recall with BrainManagementSkills. This is what I use when children have memory problems. Some problems are resolved in one session; some require much more time.  I have to remind them of the protocol repeatedly.  Left to their own devices, they lapse and use their old mental patterns.

The second problem Jana mentioned was his speech problems; he had issues articulating the sibilants s, f, sh, and ch. /F/ was a particular problem. He couldn’t get his top teeth to press on his lower lip, which is a necessary for pronouncing /f/ and /v/. I recommended she work on that mouth position independent of producing the /f/ sound. She should work on the mouth position for several weeks before reintroducing the /f/ sound.