Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Piano Games, Part 3

BTW, If It's on the Floor, It's Mine

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Treble Clef Lines and Spaces Finger Positions. F, A, C, E are notes on lines. You can see the lines on those fingers. The rest are on spaces.

John’s piano teacher continues to think of innovative teaching techniques.

I like this one:  “Point with your eyes”.

(Gonna use that one elsewhere.)

(On the treble clef staff) “D has no whiskers”   (but C does).

And they were counting measures, approaching it from several perspectives.

So all that is great,

and mostly he is compliant and obedient.

And yet, sometimes John makes poor behavior choices.

Both when our teacher is here and when she isn’t.

Getting those fingers on the correct notes.

Sometimes John is quite cavalier in how he treats his sheet music, his drum sticks (and other stuff).

With a smirk on his face.

So I know it’s not just careless.

He’s intentionally checking the perimeter fence for holes in the rules.

(You can tell we have been watching the Jurassic Park series this summer.

Velociraptors are still on my mine.)

Anyway, back to the stuff on the floor:

If it’s on the floor, it’s mine (overnight).

The stuff ends up high, in eyesight, and I surely hope,

quite tantalizing in its teachable moment.

The formation of a good-habit-solid-neural-pathway is a process of absolute consistency.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

 

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Choices, Consequences & Dendrites

Neural Pathways Need Precise Reinforcement

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John had percussion lessons at school on Thursday mornings, early.

One such morning, I got a report that John had made poor choices during the lesson.

Because the consequence needed to be as immediate as possible,

he immediately “lost something valuable” the rest of that day.

I had swapped a few messages with his teacher to get the full story.

When John got home, we did our best version of “talking about it”.

I told him what I knew, and asked John if he had made poor choices.

He nodded yes.

I asked John if he wanted to choose or let me choose what “the valuable thing” was.

John told me to choose.

We worked on that consequence the rest of the evening.

On his way out of the door, he turned back to me,

unprompted,

and said, “sorry about percussion, Mommy”.

We again talked about how he needs to make good decisions next time.

Reliable Neural Pathway?

Every time.

That is what I want.

Not “sorry”.

He nodded.

So, this flow:

  • Decision,
  • Consequence,

    Neural Pathway to Keep

  • Plan for success next time.

No rescue.

Bet this happens again, and we shall be ready again.

I am sure we will see this “circle of life” a few more times.

Building neural pathways isn’t easy or fast.

But it does have to be steady, consistent and non-negotiable.

Special thanks to Philip Bergman, Family Literacy Network, for these concepts of the neural pathways.  (The drawings are mine.)

Perhaps this might help in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

 

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Value of Music. Choir for the Previously Non-Verbal.

Therapy is Where You Make It.

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We have talked before about piano dexterity and piano games.

We also added percussion over the summer.

Ms. Melanie, our music teacher, devised unique ways to teach John proper form:

where to stand (duct tape on the floor),

where to put the drum stand (more duct tape),

how to hold the drum sticks (tape again, for fingers 1 & 2),

where to position the “piece of pizza” (basket & the little red hearts for Left & Right),

and

counting out the beats with and without a metronome.

She even made the little

stand-up cards of music.

Percussion doesn’t use the grand staff, but does count notes and rests.

All this is in

preparation for trying out for band.

What about singing?

John now shows up twice a week, before school, for Mixed Choir.

An adventure for someone with lagging expressive language.

For many years, John didn’t have out-loud sentences.

Now we do, and yet still lagging (so far, so far) behind, compared to his neuro-typical peers.

So, quite humorous that John is showing up for choir at school now.

I drive through, he jumps out of the car, and is off on his own,

following the flow of peers to the Choir Room, 7:45am.

Autonomous.

Then he gets to (the right) class on time for morning announcements.

This Choir idea started last year when I heard John singing Christmas songs with his buddies at the restaurant table.

So, at the next opportunity, a new intervention for expressive speech:  Choir.

I have paid $15 for a shirt.

$15 for a year?

Do you know how much speech interventions cost?

The bargain of the century!

Moving on to another intervention that is “free”, but will be harder than you think:

Patience.

Always talking about patience, aren’t we?

The patience to just watch, when our kids are having a manipulative hissy-fit?

Randomly frequent.

And with a quick grin on his face.

(He’s just checking my boundaries, and if I still love him enough to hold them.)

So that you don’t think this happens only at your house,

the first response out of John’s mouth to anything is usually “NO!”

(That’s the pervasive developmental delays talking.)

My job at that moment is to have no response.  No increase in blood pressure.  No re-negotiation.

Maybe this gives you some ideas for music for your child.

It’s OK we have tape all over the floor.

It is there for the “moving from Middle C to E” game.

You can see the feet move from tape to tape.

Anything for teachable moments.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Where Are My Teeth?

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John brushes his teeth by moving his body—NOT the brush.brushing teeth

To know where the brush is, it’s a 2-fisted grip.

He moves his whole body to find the brush.  The brush just stands there.

He is very good at chewing the brush.  That is mastered.  It is utterly pulverized.

Ah, but actually using the bristles?  Not yet.

Maybe some day.

How does tooth brushing, with all that oral defensiveness, work at your house?

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Are My Lips Moving?

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2015-09-06 10.14.33I am watching John read, 20-minutes a day, required homework:

I see his lips move, his finger move (tracking the words in the line), and then I see him swallow.  When he swallows, he stops moving his lips and finger temporarily.  Then, back to things moving.

So, it would seem, his moving parts are really part of his reading process.  He’s not reading completely in his head, statue-like.  He’s got body parts involved in his reading.    So, try letting your children move (anything, really) when they read.

Sometimes I hear him talking to himself.   (Not that long ago, John had no words we all could hear.  Now he’s talking to himself.)

Please let this encourage you, to keep stretching and challenging your smaller loved ones.

Try uphone timersing the timer on your phone.   When John cheats on his reading (and he does!), I stop the timer and call him on it.  He hates that.

It turns out turning on and off the phone timer is a big-deal tool for John to self-regulate himself.  It’s free, and he is in charge of running it.

Maybe these ideas will help you.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Breathe In, Breathe Out

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2015-09-16 16.00.30John couldn’t blow out the2015-09-16 16.21.11 birthday candles on 2015-09-16 16.14.22a cake.  For years.

So, for him, breath control to KNOW if he was actually breathing in and out was tricky.

(“If I don’t know where my body is in space, maybe I don’t know where my breathe is, and humming is a way I zone out or try to find something that I don’t know where it is.”)

So, we named it (humming), and then limited it–gave it boundaries.  Can’t hum in the classroom!   So, for school and home, “Instead of humming, I can …..”)

Instead of hummingAll well and good, if you know how to “breathe in and out”.  John didn’t know this.  He accidentally does it all the time, but purposefully knowing—-no.

Here are photos of Rosemary Slade, O.T.R., helping John to figure out how to “breathe in” and then to “breathe out”.

Hope this can give you some ideas to try yourself.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Out of Balance

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Slide1I have recently gotten too focused on intervention improvement at the expense of joy-of-the-moment.

I try to mask my strain, but my kids feel it and reflect it in their actions and lives.

You may skew to the other direction.

See the heart?   It is supposed to be divided equally—half of my everything doing all I can, and half loving as we are right now.

John has two occupational therapists (both are O.T.R.s), and they know a lot.  I have leaned a bit heavily on them for help, and they have generously contributed great peace to me with their ideas.

So, thanks to Alma Liotta and Rosemary Slade.

I share with you my mom vulnerability and regret.  I hope to encourage you to seek “extra” help from good, wise people, even if it isn’t exactly their niche.

If we don’t ask, no one knows.  It is in the showing of our sadness, our seeking, our imperfections, our vulnerabilities, that lets others help us.   To get back to this balance:Heart

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So That’s What Your Everything Feels Like (TED – Chris Milk)

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empathyYou have heard of virtual reality, right?  How about that as a tool to help communicate and thus improve learning differences?

“Inside The Box” (Time, August 17, 2015), in an article about virtual reality (VR), talks about Jeremy Bailenson’s (founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab) vision of VR as an empathy machine, and Chris Milk’s (music-video director, artist) extensive work in the arena.

As Chris Milk says, “There’s something about sitting on the same ground someone else is sitting on that changes the way your brain registers their humanity”.   Here is Chris Milk’s TED Talk: “The Ultimate Empathy Machine”

So, what if VR could be used to help communicate what it feels like to have the wide spectrum of learning differences, sensory overload and cognitive overload?

And what could we all do together to help ease those areas we do not directly know of?

So we reach out to them, thank them, and ask to be part of their research.

Peace to us all,

Gayle

(P.S.  Thanks to PowerPoint for access to this image.)

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Why Would I Want My Child to Fail?

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We love to protect our kids.  So, it is against everything we believe in, to back off and let them find themselves via failure.

I watch my son hang wistfully on the fringes of social play, watching stronger boys play ball.  I try to hide my fear that he will be rejected, left out.   I smile and watch the play as a spectator myself.   John sort of follows the pack, up and down the court.   Some days, he works up the courage to worm himself into the play.  Other days, it is strictly watching from the edges.

What matters is that day when he will be in the play because he wants it enough in all the little ways that have to come together to make something happen.

We wait for the magic of Self-Directed Learning (SDL), which leads to intrinsic motivation and readiness for independence.

Self-Directed Learning can only start when we fade our prompts, and back off.  Our kids have to fail, feeling loss and pain, to become motivated to use their grit.

They can surprise us with their abilities, and we must not underestimate their strengths.  We bleed while we wait and watch.  We want to rescue.

But John doesn’t learn anything when I rescue him.

Not quite in on the play

Not quite in on the play.  Today.

 

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Serenity Now?

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Tonight I cried, as I often do when I think about the sensory nightmare that my kid and each of our kids must be enduring through.    I was lucky to still be in the car, my best place to weep and grieve.

I hate that I have to be such a strict mom.   For I am.  I have been trained to be that.  It haunts me that his impulse-control choices will only have larger and larger consequences.

At the end of a 7-hour school day, my son pines to decompress like this.   I wait until he says he is ready to go.  It’s quiet freedom, bleeding off everything that accumulates.   I watch quietly, sharing in the pain and victory from afar.  He sometimes wants an audience to appreciate his new tricks.

So, honor your children when they try to show what they need at the end of an endurance.   How they find their serenity now.

They are our heroes, braver than we are.  And we think we are pretty brave ourselves.

Serenity Now

Best,

Gayle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why I Love (and get peace from) Platform University

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As a mom of learning differences, I have learned to find an expert, get wise advice, and then implement.   Don’t argue, analyze or rationalize.   Do It.   My young son, currently with special-needs, has greatly benefited from this, and so has my peace of mind.

I heard about Michael Hyatt and found Platform University.   Very quickly, I felt great peace.   I love his simple, step-by-step, always-cheerful, multi-modal instructions.

In addition to a new site/blog/project, I also now have a stand up desk .   I even seriously considered sleeping while standing up.  Hope

Platform University’s team has the bugs already worked out. The forums are full of very wise people who freely share with no evidence of “what’s in it for me?”   I have started increasing my small stale platform, adding new pieces, and going deeper and wider.

For those of us who might feel like we are drowning, not knowing what to do—-now that is over because we get great Platform counsel on what to do.

Then we just do it.

Here is your link:  Platform University

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Living with Learning Differences

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Hello.   Glad you are here.   My name is Gayle Fisher.

Do you learn differently?   Does someone you know and care about learn differently?  If “yes”, then that’s a lot to talk about together.

My answer is “yes”.   It’s my son.   He’s 8 right now, getting older (and bigger) by the day.   So, like you, I really never stop thinking about learning differently.

I will share back and forth with you so that we can help those we love and care for.

So that we can find peace.

Glad you are here.

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