Sunday, April 21, 2024
The offertory song in church today was Make Me Brave. It's a prayer asking for God to be with us. I wish I could feel that protection of God. I don't. It is such an alien concept for me. I don't know if those who believe in the presence of a loving personal God are free from loneliness and fear that comes from not belonging to someone or to a group, a group they are connected to daily. I believe the killer behind loneliness is fear. Can trust in God be a substitute for belonging to a group of humans?
The Buddhist idea is closer to something I could use. It involves accepting change and remaining peaceful in the midst of chaos—not a strong suit of mine either. After many years of meditating, I am better. The goal isn't complete peace in the face of all upsets but just getting better and recovering more quickly. Neither religion embraces denial as a solution.
Over coffee and donuts after the service, Paulette and I compared the results of Friday's skincare treatment. Some of the puffiness had returned to Paulette's eyes, but it was still better than it had been. The wrinkles under my eyes were better. They hadn't been bad to start out with. I could see the difference because the dark circles under my eyes were more visible. Before the treatment, they were hidden in the folds of my wrinkles.
I had a session with third-grade M at 3 pm. She is doing very well with the comprehension. She takes risks and engages in speculation about the direction of the story. I model that, too. We both make predictions. I was completely off today. I thought it was going to be around something that happened to Stuart at the skating rink and wouldn't involve the bird, Margalo. Since the last chapter featured the bird, I didn't think she would also have a major role in this one,. M thought it would involve the bird. She was right, and I was wrong. I love it when that happens. I want the kids to see no one can always be right. We all make mistakes- and survive them. The only way teachers are always right is by using crib sheets.
I asked M how she was doing in school. As I suspected, well. I asked her if she understood what people said. It was a thumbs up to this question, too. Then I asked her if she wanted to continue our sessions. She said yes to that too. I think I am offering her moral support rather than academic lessons. Her father has thanked me for what I'd done for her, telling me how she performs better in other circumstances, even on the basketball court. She is more confident in general.
In my work with Adolescent D, we continued color-coding syllable patterns. I love doing the work. It makes me look at phonics in a new way. Every word can be classified, even the irregular ones. While the is irregular and needs to be recognized as a sight word, if It is read as an open V syllable pronounced with a long /e/ you can figure out the word. Learning to figure things out is something I teach explicitly.
At the start of the session with Adolescent D, I asked him if he could send me a copy of his poem. He was happy to. For our work today, we continued color-coding syllable patterns.
Humpty Dumpty Has Health Problems
By Adolescent D
Humpty Dumpty was considered quite tall.
Humpty Dumpty Sure loved to play ball.
Humpty Dumpty accidentally kicked his ball over his neighbor's wall.
All his friends made him climb the wall to retrieve their ball.
Humpty Dumpty climbs the wall so he may reclaim his missing ball.
At the top of the wall he sits so enthralled. On this wall that is quite tall,
All his friends were all appalled, and scared that he just might fall.
Humpty Dumpty while on this wall, saw his ball, and didn't mean to slip and fall. As he hit the floor with a crack and a splat, he thought his health insurance plan surely couldn't pay for that. In fact, he couldn't afford to see a doctor at all. His plan eggscluded falls, it did not cover eggstremities.
Humpty Dumpty, now cracked and scrambled, was no longer tall, and not able to kick a ball.
I tried the Truffoilore exfoliant. I was looking for a scam where the pilling effect was from something in the lotion and not from my skin. I applied it twice; there was pilling with each application. Was that because I had more dead skin after the first application, or did the pilling come from the lotion? Then, I felt my skin. It was the first time it felt soft and smooth the way it used to when I was younger, in my sixties. The skin on my hands is still smooth without treatment, but not the skin on my face.
I can't remember why, but the subject of shame came up in a conversation with a friend. She cited Brene Brown saying shame was unnecessary. It sounds like Brown is banishing the concept and feeling of shame. You go, girl. Good luck! It's up there with banishing the sugar craving. We're hard-wired for shame. Shame is to a social faux pas as pain is to a physical injury.
While I agree with Brown on the inappropriateness of the excessive shame response in our modern society, I don't think we can fix the problem by banishing it.
Shame is a survival response. It informs us we have violated some social norm or someone's boundary. That response was needed when our brains were being formed. We traveled in small groups. Survival depended on everyone being on the same page. If someone got off script, they had to be dropped from the group. That would be a death sentence.
Nowadays, there is no one script we all follow. Our parents come to the relationship with different scripts, which sometimes never get reconciled; irreconcilable differences are a reason for divorce. When we find ourselves in conflict, we can be generous and recognize differences. The way the toilet paper goes on the roll or the toothpaste tube gets squeezed are not life-and-death matters, but they can really push our buttons. I heard my mother-in-law judge someone's intelligence based on how they placed the toilet paper. Wow!
My friend commented on how her mother would say, "You should be ashamed of yourself," over what? We should undoubtedly stop pushing shame on others. That's up there with sexual molestation. We are triggering an autonomic response to get someone to do something our way. It's bullying. When I was a child. It was a common practice for parents to use shame. No one should use shame to get what they want. What is the alternative?
A parent's job is to get their children to do things their way. The alternative to shame is to ask someone to do it your way to please you and to teach them how. I can't imagine my husband being amenable to being 'taught' how to do something by me, but that is a parent's job with a child. Can we teach without prompting shame?
In my experience, children are quick to feel shame if they can't do what all the other children around them can do. It doesn't require anyone to tell them they should feel shame. It is an autonomic response. We are designed that way. If a child couldn't perform as all the other children in their age group 20,000 years ago, they knew something was wrong. If they didn't pick it up themselves, they picked it up from their parents' fear.
What positive function can shame have in our day and age? It tells us when we've made someone uncomfortable. We can remind our inner selves that function autonomically that our lives are not in immediate danger and respond to the needs of others—and our own—with kindness and compassion. But first, we have to get that terrified part of ourselves under control. We have to acknowledge that our response is out of proportion to the circumstances.
Brene Brown says to get rid of the response. I still say, 'Good luck!' We can't get rid of it. It can serve us well. It can help us be sensitive to others and compassionate—but not until we learn to love that response in ourselves and have compassion for it.
