Pamela started exploring calendars in 2002. All on her own, she figured out how to look up calendars in Wikipedia and Google and learned about the fourteen kinds of calendars: seven leap years and seven common years. One of many things she does in her free time is to write different ways to analyze calendars. Not only that, she remembers the exact date of events that have occurred since she developed this skill. In fact, if you tell her your date of birth, she can tell you the day of the week on which you were born. This is a great way to break the ice with acquaintances! She knows what years go with what calendar type. Then, in her mind, she visually looks up the date just like we would look up the same information visually by going to a website.
As part of a writing co-op class, Pamela kept a journal for two years from September 2003 to July 2005. Back in September of 2007, she wrote her auto-biography in a spiral notebook but ended it on December 31, 2006. I wondered if she would ever write up 2007, and she has launched her account of this year in a very unique way: a journal in a box! She found some untouched, little tablets in my desk and started filling them out page by page. Methodically, she ripped off each completed page and placed them neatly in a plastic, food container.
So far, she has recorded daily entries for the first two months of 2007. Some entries look very similar, and it is amazing how accurately she remembers events by date, such as a trip we took to Wilmington, NC around Valentine's Day. She wrote that we saw a movie on Monday, February 26, 2007. (If you double click, the picture you can read that entry.) The movie was Amazing Grace, which was released on February 23, 2007. I remember seeing it on a Monday because Steve was hoping to take the afternoon off and meet us at the movie theater. She even writes down what days we homeschooled and did not homeschool. I wish I were as accurate in remembering dates at the end of the school year when I write up my homeschooling reports! In fact, I think I better just use her journal as a guide come August of next year . . .
When people converse with one another, they engage in a form of dialogue called narrative--a storylike mode of communicating, composed of a sequence of events with people as main characters. In the narrative, which may be real or imaginary, characters' roles and mental states--feelings, intentions, beliefs, opinions, and knowledge--are revealed (page 52).
Charlotte Mason believed that the narrative style came easily to younger children once they had words:
Bobbie will come home with a heroic narrative of a fight he has seen between 'Duke' and a dog in the street. It is wonderful! He has seen everything, and he tells everything with splendid vigour in the true epic vein; but so ingrained is our contempt for children that we see nothing in this but Bobbie's foolish childish way! Whereas here, if we have eyes to see and grace to build, is the ground-plan of his education. Until he is six, let Bobbie narrate only when and what he has a mind to. He must not be called upon to tell anything (page 231).
For narrative to extend the zone of proximal development, it helps to establish a shared understanding with the help of scaffolding. The other day, we had some great interactions that illustrate this. Pamela and I made an elfball. (A quick aside for those of you looking for non-toxic toys for Christmas gifts, the toymaker sells her own book.) Pamela cut the entire thing all by herself, and I cleaned up three corners for her. Before taking the next step, I wanted to establish an understanding about how the flap folds need to be made along the lines. She tends to fold without looking!
Pamela could see the need to fold the flaps but did not see the inner lines that form the ball. I talked about what needed to happen next, and I thought she understood. When Pamela said, "I did it," I realized we had a disconnect. She needed more scaffolding to get to my level of understanding, so I demonstrated the next step and she caught on immediately.
I hoped Pamela might figure out what to do next. We needed to tape the flaps to the ball, so I tried to make the point non-verbally. An interesting thing happened. When I was going to turn my gaze to the drawer with the tape, Pamela spaced out (it started when she tapped her face). The brisk, "get on with it" Tammy would have snapped her fingers impatiently and said, "Get the tape." I am working on my personal goal to slow down. This time, I waited and moved my head in odd angles. I realized she was not paying attention, so I waited about fifteen seconds until she referenced me to tell me I could continue. One crucial element of scaffolding for most autistic children is to SLOW DOWN and give them the chance to process and think.
Another element of scaffolding for an autistic child is to communicate non-verbally.Because I have emphasized language and speech for so long, I have neglected body language. Part of the problem was I had read so much research stating that reading facial expressions was too difficult for people with autism. I did not even bother to try. However, since 70% of all communication is non-verbal, I now think it is important to make the attempt. Pamela and I are both way past the neural plasticity limit (that magical age of six) and, yet, we are both learning new ways to communicate! In this case, Pamela got stuck ripping the tape. In the past, she would persist in pulling up, instead of down along the jagged edge. So, I took the tape and demonstrated what to do. She grabbed the scissors, and I shook my head. She reached up to hold the tape, so I guided it into the position. Then, she had no problems with ripping the tape. This entire twenty-five second interaction is completely non-verbal.
I strung together a few examples of declarative language, the last element of scaffolding I will show today. I needed to cut off excess tape, and the imperative Tammy would have said, "Get me the scissors." The declarative Tammy asked, "What do we do about this?" Later, a piece Pamela cut needed to be cut in half. In the old days, I would have said, "Cut this." Instead, I observed, "I think this is too long." By making comments like that, I get to see how Pamela solves problems.
The main difference between being imperative and declarative is not necessarily words, but intent. If grabbing the scissors is the only "correct" response, then I am being imperative. Waiting to see how this interaction will unfold is more declarative. She might have disagreed and come back with, "It's okay." Or, she might have gotten a knife instead of scissors. On the other hand, she might have given me a blank stare. I learn more about how she thinks when I allow her to be an active participant.
At the end of the clip, the phone rang and I told her, "I'm ignoring the phone. The last time they hung up." Pamela stood up to get it, so I told her, "That's okay. Last time, nobody was on the phone. I'm not going to answer it." I had hoped she would ignore the ringing phone because I knew David would get it. I told her what I was thinking, and she decided to sit down and ignore it, too! However, if she had opted to pick it up and hand it to me, I would have answered it. The old imperative Tammy would have said, "Sit down. I'm ignoring the phone." Period. End of story.
These three elements of scaffolding are what I was missing before I started reading about RDI. I already knew about elements of teaching problem solving like breaking things down into manageable steps, including visual cues, demonstrating what to do, give feedback, only helping when stuck, being warm and encouraging, etc. What is new for me are thinks like slowing down, relying on body language rather than my mouth, and sharing rather than demanding. My focal points when interacting with Pamela are Slow . . . Quiet . . . Sharing.
Some doctors say that people fear dementia and Alzheimer's Disease more than cancer. Since one in seven Americans 71 or older has some form of dementia and in 70% it's due to Alzheimer's, that concern's well-founded. Here are some recent findings that can cut Alzheimer's risk or delay onset. I don't know about you, but I'm paying attention...
Maintain your health Treat conditions that may affect Alzheimer's course. For instance, weight maintenance reduces the risk of developing obesity-associated disorders, such as high blood pressure which heightens the effects of Alzheimer's Disease and high cholesterol, and is an important component of preserving cognitive health.
Three anti-hypertension drugs help Drug screening has identified three anti hypertension drugs capable of preventing Alzheimer's-like degeneration of nerve cells in the brain. The brains of patients with this memory-robbing disorder are mottled with deposits of the substance amyloid-ß, which makes up amyloid plaques. More recently, amyloid plaques have become one of the main focal points in the quest to treat Alzheimer's.
Recently, Gulio Pasinetti of the Mout Sinai School of Medicine, identified three commonly prescribed anti hypertensive drugs that work quite well to block the accumulation of amyloid-ß in the brain and prevent deterioration of cognitive performance. Valsartan is one of these.
Play to Recharge Your Brain Your brain needs 20% of the body's oxygen. Do you get your aerobics up more than 30 minutes a day at least three times a week? To me, play works best such as walking 18 holes during a golf game! Walking briskly gets the blood flowing quickly or climbing stairs at work rather than using the elevator. What do you enjoy?
Earn a higher degree More highly educated people will be older if and when Alzheimer's develops. However, when onset appears, the cognitive declines faster.
Diet counts For folks who follow a Mediterranean diet (including plenty of vegetables, nuts, fruits, grains, potatoes, seeds, olive oil, and beans) the lower the risk. In fact for people who adhere closely to this diet and eat reasonable portions, the risk falls by 40%.
You should know that "adults with diabetes will experience a decline in memory function after a meal, especially if simple carbohydrate foods are consumed," according to New York Academy of Sciences. "While the precise physiological mechanisms underlying these dietary influences are not completely understood, the modulation of brain insulin levels likely contributes."
Specific foods make a difference Three glasses of fruit or vegetable juice a week lower disease incidence. Older women who drink more than three cups of coffee every day are 70% less likely to have memory decline. Curry and curcumin, spices used prevalently in India may help curb cognitive decline. Fish oil elevated the level of a protein that prevents the formation of amyloid, the tell-tale protein found in Alzheimer's. This substance is found in fatty fish like salmon.
Just reviewing these, reminds me to stay on target! You?
"There's a smaller proportion of women in senior positions at investment banks," according to Tara Wilkinson, article author. She says that the smaller numbers have less to do with discrimination and more to do with an unwillingness to ask for big pay raises and promotions...
So how might women and minorities pull off that pay raise or gain a coveted position? Here's a few tactics to consider...
1. Get noticed "Look for ways to get noticed by volunteering for projects. If additional skills are required, make arrangements for the necessary training, then when it's time for a discussion of a raise or promotion, explain how you've helped enhance the firm's bottom line," Lynn Taylor, Vice President and Director of Research at Accountemps suggests.
2. Be prepared with documentation "Providing specific benchmarks by which your successes can be measured offers stronger testimony to the extent of your achievements. Regarding salary itself, carefully research what other professionals with skills and experience similar to your own are currently paid. Timing is also critical. Don't approach a salary discussion during periods of poor company financial results or budget cuts."
3. Find a mentor "It is invaluable to have someone within your organization fighting for your success. It is not as difficult to find a mentor as some people think," according to Don Straits. "It just takes the courage to ask. You might try a simple approach like the following: 'I have always admired and respected what you have done for the company and the success you have achieved. As I grow in this job and in my career, I was wondering if, on occasion, you would be willing to give me some advice and guidance on how I might achieve success as well?' It is rare that anyone would say 'NO' to such a nice comment and question. Give it a try. The rewards will be immense."
4. Stay contemporary "If you are 'out of date,' and 'out of touch' with what is happening in the world," Strait advises, "then your earning power will go "out the door." From technology advances to world news to the latest business, cultural and fashion trends, they are all relevant. By being able to communicate about what is happening all around us, we enhance our value and we become more marketable."
5. Perform beyond expectations Always do more than you were asked to do. Take initiative to achieve superior results and make unexpected contributions. You will be recognized and rewarded for it.
6. Target to win and expect the best A clear target and preset expectation will spill over to leaders who can make that promotion happen for you, Ellen Weber advises. How so? Targets help to create a new neuron pathways toward any goal – or in this case … your sought after position and salary hike.
7. Confront your own objections Once you decide to go ahead do you begin to think of all the reasons why this is not a good idea? You'd be intrigued that when people face risk, Ellen Weber shows some ways the human brain leaps into conflicts that only reflective thinkers can sort out well...
"Your front brain might tell you this position would be sheer misery," Weber points out. "It highlights the facts … such as … the new CEO’s arrogance … or workers’ well known apathy in the new department." See more on confronting such conflicts in Ellen Weber's Why Smart Workers Make Dumb Decisions
Pamela already knows how to put pictures in sequence, but we are having fun with a twist to this idea. I cut up cards in a sequence and put them in order. I present them one at a time in order. Pamela tells me what the characters are doing (practicing present progressive tense) on the card being shown. To add an element of having to read my face for information, she has to guess what will happen next. Then, I use mainly non-verbal communication to help her figure it out. With the climax of the story, I try to do a little bit of anticipation like counting before I show the card, starting and stopping, pausing, acting very dramatic, etc.
So far, she likes the nursery rhymes at Enchanted Learning. I do not tell her the title of the rhyme so part of the fun is guessing it. They are a bit drab, so I use our trusty, old, reliable, lovable 1995 version of MGI Photosuite to add some color.
These stick-figure story sequences look dull, but nearly all of them have a funny twist that Pamela makes Pamela giggle. For example, she expected the one with a fireman carrying a hose to be about a house on fire. Imagine trying to give her non-verbal clues for birthday cake! I ended up humming the birthday song. The thought of someone putting out a cake with a firehose tickled her fancy.
From time to time, Hearing Journey posts wordless books for the weekly preschool activities. Pamela loved this week's story which was about a pig and sheep riding a sled and crashing into a snowman. It reminded her of the beloved story Pa told Laura "The Pig and the Sled." If you think this week's story is cute, be sure to download the pdf file because it turns into a pumpkin on Friday!
Once I run out of entertaining story sequencing cards (none of that dull life skills stuff that bores us to tears), I plan to print out and cut up online comics.
Today's version of Foxtrot is a perfect example of something tailor-made for this activity. It will probablt change by tomorrow, so I will briefly narrate. Foxtrot is busy working at a computer. His mother is asking him about his progress on taking out her wrinkles in the family Christmas picture. He shows her the family on the bridge of the Death Star (Pamela is a fan of Star Wars), riding the back of a T. Rex ala Jurassic Park, waving at a Balrog (we read the books and have the Special Extended Editions of all three movies and even the cheesy cartoon version from the 1970s) and navigating the first level of Super Mario Brothers (the only game she will play on her Game Boy). The beauty of this comic is that I can have her guess each new scene and think of clues to help her think of each scene. I am already having fun just anticipating doing this one with her!
I've learned amazing strategies from fellow bloggers... And as I keep reading blogger's posts I'm constantly finding the old noodle's stretched. And that requires me to keep changing... Do you find that to be true as well?
Bob Hruzek's "What I Learned from" challenge is out... I'm compelled to step up to the plate.
1. It prolongs the death of the service, or worse, provides an indication to a larger company or investor that they are actually worth investing in or buying. 2. It slows down my site by having to add more crap from servers that I have no clue can handle the load or not. 3. It clutters my site. 4. It provides me no useful data regarding my site and its statistics. 5. It doesn’t help promote my site. When there are tens of thousands of other schmucks, there’s no spotlight for you.
Here's the clincher that really struck home: "When I comment on another blog, 9 times out of 10 that blogger will come check out my site. I really believe that Search and Commenting are the two best methods for growing your readership - not these other sites." Are you subtacting or adding to your site?
If you look around my site I've collected quite a few badges and buttons, but Doug's really challenged me to streamline.
How about subtracting negatives in your life? Rick Cockrum says, "Robyn, you’re making me think! Finding something I do that results in negatives isn’t the issue. Narrowing the negatives down, that’s the issue for me." Rick, thanks for your wisdom. I sense more of us struggle with this than we'd first admit.
Consider managing money for abundance...Live-Work Cafe challenges us to think about managing money for abundance rather than scarcity...
Like many others in the early stages of retirement, I'm determined to build my resources. So, my shift has two parts:
1. I have enough. I have always had enough. I will always have enough. All those little and big fear demons can take a hike. I refuse to feel financial fear and will work to increase my financial knowledge and capability to ensure that I have more than enough. 2. I have the ability to create even greater abundance. I love my possessions, and they are more than enough - whether a new piece of jewelry or an old spatula that belonged to my grandmother - to bring me joy when I look at them. I will cherish them and use them as a reference point when considering something new. I plan to look at the price tag and think of how I can add this sum to my emerging portfolio. Fiscal responsibility.
This gives me much cause to consider purchases more....You?
Listen and listen even more: Jackie Cameron reminds me to listen carefully when you're working with others when it's so tempting to give advice:
In my view the most important skill for a coach - and really for anyone - is to be able to listen. Listen , listen and then listen some more - holding on for a few more seconds to ensure that the speaker has really finished. The challenge then is to feedback what you think you have heard to ensure clarity of understanding - and then ask questions to provoke more consideration on what they have said. If the person you are speaking to does really just want to talk something through to reflect and gain clarity of the situation for themselves this can be invaluable.
Test your reality... Lisa Gates calls us out to "test your reality. Test your thoughts. Are you living at the effect of circumstances? Or are you creating your life from thoughts generated from the core of your being? In the past year, how have your thoughts shaped your reality?"
You've likely heard these tidy little quips:
Change your thoughts, change your reality. Thoughts create reality. Thoughts lead to feelings lead to actions. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Free yourself of expectations... From Donna Karlin I'm reminded that when I let go of expectations, I free not only myself, but others, too... I recognize I have expectations and, when I drop them and no longer let them have any power over me in any way, I'm usually pleasantly surprised.
So when it comes to expecting someone to call, to care, to engage, to act the way I might in a specific circumstance, I challenge myself to think differently....to let go of all expectations which takes others' monkeys off my back, gives others the freedom to act from a position of their values and integrity (or not) and for me to live in alignment with mine at the same time, regardless of what others do.
Whew! Freeing!
Bob, I really sit at the feet of other bloggers to keep learning as I think very differently! I'm not the same person I was a year ago. These conversations are amazing.
I have a feeling my blogging will be more sparse because 'tis the season to be singing--fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la! Let me see . . . choir rehearsal Wednesday night (1 hour), youth band Thursday night (2 hours), youth band Saturday night (3 hours), multiple singing venues Sunday (3.5 hours). . . The kids and I are in a cantata on December 9 (Emmanuel: Celebrating Heaven's Child) and a youth/youngish adult musical on December 19 (City on a Hill) in addition to the ordinary choir and youth band stuff. On December 23, I will sing Bethlehem Morning and will spend the month finding my way up to that dreaded A flat! All those hours I spent rehearsing this week (which does NOT include the extra bits I do at home to get prepared for a solo) explain why no stockings are hung by the chimney with care . . . yet.
Pamela is already in the Christmas spirit. She has only one two more cards left in her Best Thoughts folder she has been making all last month. She told me she was going to write a Christmas poem and this is EXACTLY what she wrote. I resisted the urge to make little changes because I wanted to preserve her words as she wrote them. This sort of thing was impossible for her to compose from straight from her head three years ago!
As part of a writing co-op class, Pamela kept a journal for two years from September 2003 to July 2005. Back in September of 2007, she wrote her auto-biography in a spiral notebook but ended it on December 31, 2006. I wondered if she would ever write up 2007, and she has launched her account of this year in a very unique way: a journal in a box! She found some untouched, little tablets in my desk and started filling them out page by page. Methodically, she ripped off each completed page and placed them neatly in a plastic, food container.
So far, she has recorded daily entries for the first two months of 2007. Some entries look very similar, and it is amazing how accurately she remembers events by date, such as a trip we took to Wilmington, NC around Valentine's Day. She wrote that we saw a movie on Monday, February 26, 2007. (If you double click, the picture you can read that entry.) The movie was Amazing Grace, which was released on February 23, 2007. I remember seeing it on a Monday because Steve was hoping to take the afternoon off and meet us at the movie theater. She even writes down what days we homeschooled and did not homeschool. I wish I were as accurate in remembering dates at the end of the school year when I write up my homeschooling reports! In fact, I think I better just use her journal as a guide come August of next year . . .
