Tuesday, January 21, 2025

 Tuesday, January 21, 2025  

    I slept a lot during the day yesterday. I was overwhelmed by the fear generated by my experiences with the Grief Recovery work.  I don't know how much of my problem is caused by the program versus the presenter.  The program was designed to free people from societal dictates on the appropriate responses to loss and grief.  As it is presented by this woman, it is more dictatorial than any of the myths people throw at us in an attempt to give us the courage to face life after loss or to avoid having to deal with our negative feelings, like sorrow.  The myths are based on what 'well-meaning' people might say to us: #1 Don't feel Bad! #2 You can replace the lost one. #3 – grieve alone; no one wants to see a sad face. #4 Grief takes time, or time heals; #5 Be strong for others; #6 Keep busy.  Another condemned comment is, "I know how you feel.  I lost  . . . ."  The presenter has strong negative feelings about these comments. My guess is she drowned in them when her mom died in a car accident when she was eleven. I can believe she felt like she was being buried alive.  They delivered a clear message of 'Do Not Grieve!"  Unfortunately, her rigidity triggers me.  Those comments are not designed to support grief; they encourage us to get on with life. Facing grief requires moving beyond 'getting on with life.

    I am aware that my response is as inappropriate as hers.  So far, my behavior is just statements that disagree with the leader's dictates, including telling her how I feel.  So much for caring about what I or anyone else feels that differs from the dictates.

   The grief recovery program was developed by a man who was utterly brainwashed. He had swallowed the myths hook, line, and sinker when he faced the loss of an infant son.  But that was in 1977, light years ago, by today's standard of societal tolerance for psychological conditions and responses to events.  We send in teams of therapists whenever there is a disaster.

    The old myths are valuable when not designed to shut down the griever. It isn't black or white. In response to the Academy Award for telling everyone," I'm fine,"  one of the participants said, "It depends upon whom I'm speaking to."  Some friends are right there where you need them to be; others would prefer you throw up on them rather than share sorrow.  It depends.  The presenter literally turned her back on the woman. 

      I have a tough time with mental rigidity.  That's on me.  Shelly, my therapist/life coach, advised me to drop out of the sessions.  She had a point. My blood pressure was way up.  I decided to hang in for two reasons. I was hoping I get a grip on this outsized fear, and one of the participants said she was glad I was there and hoped I wouldn't quit.  

   I know at least one other participant sees the program as rigid as I do.  I think several others feel alienated. The leader is saying that everything we did before entering her class was wrong. She presents everything as absolutes.

   I often feel like I'm dragging myself around, heart-heavy, concerned it isn't just grief but 'broken-heart syndrome,"  which can cause physical problems.  I suffered with that for most of today.  Then, as is frequently the case, I had a burst of energy in the late evening.  I cleaned the stovetop and the stainless-steel refrigerator door, sorting and rearranging the pictures and documents held onto it with magnets. I slept like a baby when I went to bed close to 11.  Doing something productive that had been nagging at me probably helped.

    I got up too late to do my morning exercises before my walk.  I felt like I was hauling myself around the block. What a drag!

    As I was about to head out to water my 42 shrubs, Mama K called. She was sorry she hadn't gotten back to me. She had left her phone in a friend's car and had just gotten it back. Yes, the girls were home from school today. It must be an in-service day for the teachers in that area. The day wasn't off for all of Hawaii's public schools. 

    I hate Microsoft.  I am constantly losing documents. One Drive disappears them.  I couldn't find the documents I was working on with either of the girls. Maddening but not insurmountable.  I just opened new documents.  I basically knew where we were.

   Twin E went first. I had been working with her on third-grade material.  Since I had to start fresh, I decided to bump her to the low fourth-grade level, which is basically high third-grade.   She spelled hippopotamuses correctly when I pushed her to spell the word ONE SYLLABLE AT A TIME.  This is hard for the kids, harder than hearing the individual phonemes. They want to say the whole word and hope that will work.  It doesn't. 

     My students' other problem is hearing the phonemes in connected speech, particularly discerning the difference between the /m/ and /n/ sounds and the final sound of a base word when a suffix -s is required. That blurs the sound of the final phoneme in the base word. It worked to get E to identify the base word.  I said we say "two cats, but one cat, etc.  I gave several examples. E got stuck on the word caps. I asked, "If we say two caps, how would we say one?" She said a hat after I had given her the example of two cats versus one cat again.  Then, she finally got it.  Neither of the girls sees patterns easily, a key to what we considerintelligence.  I can't imagine they will ever be regarded as brilliant, but Twin A is already doing much better, seeing patterns independently. 

    Many of the kids I work with have problems seeing patterns and figuring things out on their own.  Somehow, they have learned they're supposed to 'know' everything.  The answer should just be remembered. Oh, boy. What's interesting is seeing the school's response to these kids.  Kids who come from white, well-to-do families or are articulate are considered intelligent with a learning disability.  The kids from local families are considered not quite as bright.  Two of Mama K's kids have already been placed in Honors classes. Her firstborn was the top student at the end of his freshman year.  He was shocked. I'm sure some of his teachers were, too.

  It was a Ulu Wini day.  I didn't drive the car yesterday, but I charged it. When I got in the car, it announced the charge had failed. Instead of 24 miles of available electric charge, it showed it had only charged to the 4-mile mark.  Oh, oh.  It looks like the garage's fix didn't work. Incomplete charging is the problem with this car.  I'd better check to see what the laws are. The car would be functional without the electric motor, but it would not be very powerful.  It will be reduced to a four-cylinder car.

  It was a Ulu Wini day.  Since I introduced slime, they're lining up.  I made it clear to everyone that they have to work to get at the slime. Interestingly, some actually are more interested in the work than the slime. The slime made me a friendly part of their environment as I had never been before.  I'll take it.

  First up was 2nd grade KJ.  I hadn't worked with her since the end of the last school year.  I asked her what she wanted to work on, reading or math?  She said, "Reading math."  I'm unsure what that meant, but I pushed her to choose between reading and math. I had her read the graded samples.  Her word calling was good through 3rd grade. However, her comprehension was very poor. She had no idea what was going on.  I concentrated on the Up the Tree story about a cat who ran up a tree to escape a dog. She read each sentence as if it bore no relation to the preceding ones.  Amazing!  Words that don't relate to her immediate experience in familiar language have no meaning for her.  She doesn't know how to use language to communicate beyond the most basic social communication.  She speaks any language at the level I did at age four.  This is a cultural problem, not one related to intellect.

   Besides pushing her to see the relationship of each sentence to each other sentence, I used the words problem and solution when discussing the plot.  She didn't understand the problem in this context. "What's the problem?"  "Someone isn't getting what they want or getting something they don't want."  Jeff wanted the cat to come down from the tree.  What was the solution?  In this case, Jeff tried three solutions.  The first two didn't work. The third one did.  KJ listened and thought. She looked like she understood something she had never understood before. We'll see.

   Next, I had second-grade MK. I had her once before. She had no automatic recall of sight words. She decoded every word on the sight word list. I showed her how to use automatic processing with the BrainManagement Skills.  She went from decoding each word to zipping through words 1 through 200.  She missed only a few words.

   Then, it was third-grade TC. Last I worked with her, she was struggling with the first fifty sight words on the Fry list. Today, she zoomed through 200.  That doesn't quite put her on grade level, but I didn't have #201-300. I'll have to try it next time.

  Third-grade PL was the only one who wanted to play with the slime today. She has focusing problems big time. Playing with the slime keeps her calm and focused. I'm happy to accommodate her.   She ran into problems with the second word, confusing orwith of. Confusing r and f is a common problem.  I did a height discerning exercise with her, categorizing the letters as uppies ( b, d, f, et.), downies (g, j, etc.) and normal (a,c, e, etc.)  She was confused the first time we went through the alphabet. The second time, she was all in and did a good job. We'll see if that makes a difference.

   I had a few minutes with 2nd grade NV, who is still struggling with remembering the first 25 sight words on the Fry list.  I tried writing some letters on her forehead.  She couldn't discern the difference between m and w.  Maybe this is a lead.

    I had to leave because I had a four-thirty with seventh-grade  RC. As usual, she says she has no idea if she is improving. The only thing she learned today is the spelling of the final stable suffix -tion.  I showed her it made the sound of -shun.  Okay. That's nuts.

  I spoke to RC's mom after the session. I think she's doing fine. Her mom is still concerned she has dyslexia. I haven't seen evidence of it.  I see evidence of insecurity and perfectionism. Then, her mom told me she misspelled common words when she made out a list of desired presents. I asked the mother to make a list of the words with her misspellings.  As I think of it, maybe that was before I started using Phase III in my work with her.