Sunday, January 12, 2025

 Sunday, January 12, 2025

    I woke up in a very peaceful state of mind.  It lasted for the rest of the day, through mass and then through the crystal healing at the Unity Church.  It was particularly powerful today.  I don’t think I slept. I just rested in that energy.

   As usual, the people at Unity are more interested in social connection than the folks at the Catholic Church.  At the church, people usually talk about church issues. At Unity people talk about themselves. 

  I had planned to work on writing when I came home.  My calm state of mind worked against that. I had fourth grade MH at 3:30.  We continued with the Phase III of what I call The Phonics Discovery System.  I dictate whole paragraphs, one sentence, or clause or one phrase at a time, whatever the student needs. She cannot recall a clause accurately but her version of the clause often gets the gist. She runs into trouble when she changes the syntax and then doesn’t know how to revise it to express the same meaning.  I tried to teach her to use the rhythm of the language to help her remember. I beat it out for her. She found that confusing. She didn’t understand why I called it music. I explained it was like a drum rhythm. She didn’t consider that music. 

   We ran into another problem. The sentence was “What do  you expect a ‘skink’ to look like?”   She thought she had to answer the question rather that pose it.  Something is off here.  What? And how do I address it?  For starters I think I will push her to repeat the exact wording. That will address the auditory processing problem.  I’ll only give her phrases and clauses rather than sentences to repeat.  Second, I will help her to use the beat of the language to help her recall the exact words.  If you’re wondering why bother with the exact words when she grasps the meaning? That’s a good question. She does get the general meaning, but often she is weirdly off.  Her dad has similar problems.  he doesn’t get with the program.  MH told me he thought the Golden State Bridge was really made of gold. That it was called that because it was painted gold would seem logical, but made of gold?  Either he got it wrong, or MH misunderstood.  MH’s grasp of things is often slightly off.  Once she catches on, she does okay.  She’s getting As and Bs in school now.  I was grappling with a diagnosis. The only thing I can say is she’s slightly off.

   She also had problems with the comparison phrase as _________ as.  She claimed she had never heard it or used it.  I gave her examples.  Is it possible she’s never heard it?  With my foreign language students, I can easily believe they have never heard such a phrase. It’s possible they’d never heard it in their own language. Either there is a different way to express the same idea, no makes comparisions, or no one uses complex syntax.  The latter is a strong possibility.  The language could be limited to ‘look like’ when comparisons are made.   A linguistic once said, there’s no such thing as a primitive language, only a primitive culture.  Many of the Marshall Island have a population of less than 100.  Language needs shrink not only because you know the people and the circumstances of their lives well, but because the physical options are limited.

  I wasn’t much up for writing today, but I got a lot done with tax preparation. The big project was downloading my medical bills from Kaiser.  I did  it with Joseph’s help.  I tried to also download the end-year pharmacy and premium bills, but to no avail. Why they don’t make this easy for clients is beyond me.