Fear

Days 7-10

The house is quiet, now. A little while ago it was loud with tears, frustration, sad words and fea.r

I don't like fear.

Fear reminds me that it exists because hope is lost. Fear exists because of past failure. Fear happens when we have tried something before and it hasn't worked out and we have felt something be quashed in our hearts, and we don't want to feel that way again.

My adult eyes tell me that fear can be healthy and it exists as part of the warning systems in our brains to protect ourselves from danger.

But how do I tell my 12 year old that he shouldn't fea learning to read?

How do I help him understand that reading is a code of sounds and symbols and that all we are doing is working to match the symbol and the sound so he can look at symbols on a page, or a screen, or a sign and he can break the code?

We have been trying to do that for the last few days, and right now, I'm feeling afraid.

I am afraid that I will not be able to help him past his fear and his lack of confidence.

I am afraid that he has committed the message that there is something wrong with him, as a person, in his heart and I won't be able to convince him to change that message.

I am afraid that there is no one else out there who will be able to do that either and I don't know who to ask for help, or where to turn.
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Backing up. We have been working over the last few days on learning sounds with the Lindamood Bell LiPS system. Objectively, I can see that it is a reasonable, researched, understandable approach to helping people focus on the motor part of making sounds (knowing how the tongue, teeth, lips, etc. move and feel when making certain sounds). I was so very hopeful that with all the years of speech therapy that Josh has completed, this approach would tie into the schema he already has in his head and the light bulbs would start going off.

Refer to the top of this post to see how well this experiment has gone.

Breaking the learning down into smaller parts didn't seem to help. Over-exaggerating the lip motions didn't really seem to do anything, bribing with Pokemon cards didn't inspire more willingness to try again and the more we worked, the more frustrated he became. As usual, once the frustration hit, the learning stopped.

That means we had to stop for the day.

Feeling my defeat in the moment, I asked him which way made more sense to his brain----practicing sounds "the card way" (the OG approach) or "the magnet way" (LiPS).

He said "the card way".

So, that's where we will start tomorrow. Back to the beginning, but we will add a new sound. Maybe, just maybe I can find a way to combine these two systems to help the light go off behind his eyes so he can truly see that there is nothing to fear with these symbols and letters. Then, with practice, the code will make sense to him and soon we can find a way to break it, together.