Taking the 'S' out of Viper

Whilst looking at this card in the latest local card collection craze my daughter stated that the name of the character was 'Visper'.  This didn't quite sound right so I asked her to look at the word more carefully and tell me again what the name was.  "Oh," she said, "It's Viper."  I asked her why she said 'Visper' the first time around.  She said she didn't know.  And what about you?  Any hunches?

For many children in early primary school they are taught the sounds of letters through pairing with pictures, and in the case of the /S/ sound it is often paired with a picture of a snake.  In my daughter's case her brain has wired into it that the picture of a snake always implies the presence of an /S/ sound. This pairing has been learned to automaticity, which simply means that whenever she sees a picture of a snake in a pose similar to that used on the picture cards of her early primary school, it means an /S/ sound should be around somewhere - even if it isn't represented in a written word.  In her case neural pathways about the pairing of sounds and pictures have been instilled.  What hasn't been learnt to automaticity is that the eyes need to look for representations of sounds via letters in written words if they are to be read accurately.  In an attempt to make the learning of letters interesting and what some might term multisensory, teachers innocently embellish their teaching practices with things like pictures and stories and movement which often distracts the neurological wiring children really need - which is the pairing of sounds with letter representations.

This situation can also be seen with children who have learnt 'l' or 'r' blends to automaticity .  This is where a consonant is paired with an 'l' or an 'r' for example and children are taught to learn through repetition words that begin with 'fl' and 'br'. What I can then encounter in tutoring sessions and in the classroom are students who, when they come across words beginning with an 'f' or a 'b', automatically add in the 'l' or 'r' blend.  For example, a child may be presented with the word 'bend' but through the repetitive learning of 'bl' blends they then automatically read the word as 'blend' even though no 'l' is present in the word.

There are a sizeable number of literacy programs available to schools and parents. And unlike some other countries, in Australia anyone can create their own program and market it to the general public and our educational facilities.  There is also a long history around what is regarded as the 'best' approach to teaching children how to read.  In the middle of all this we continue to have significant numbers of children failing to learn to read, or worse still, learning to hate reading.

For me, the Sounds Write Phonics Program is impressive.  It pares reading back to the three skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation.  Sounds come first - in every teaching interaction. Superfluous buffering of teaching through the use of pictures, blends, onset & rime, stories, are extracted, allowing the teaching methods to directly create the neural pathways needed for reading.  The alphabetic code (how the alphabet is used to represent sounds in words) is sequentially, cumulatively and explicitly taught.   Dynamic lessons coupled with 'safe' relationship support learning.  For a taste of the Sounds Write program I highly recommend that teachers and parents purchase the Sounds Write Phonics Program App from itunes.  At $2.99 for the Initial Code this is a great way to start.  And for those of you interested in the science behind the practice I highly recommend the blog 12 Jan 2014 post Linguistic phonics: a practical example by John Walker (Founder and Creator of the Sounds Write Phonics Program) to be found in his blog The Literacy Blog.  

Insight Inside Children

I was listening to the 22 November 2013 BlogRadioTalk of Elsie Spittle and Linda Pransky when Linda talked about a young girl she was coaching in the 3 principles.  At one point Elsie commented on the level of wisdom in that young soul and in a flash I could 'see' what she was talking about.  Wisdom or Insight is not something that is given to us. Sure we learn a lot from being in physical form and experiencing life (if we pay attention) but the realisations that come, even from our reflections, are insights from deep within ourselves. They are information that we already know.
I do not have the same insights as another person.  I frame my insights with the use of my attention and focus. What I am curious about provides the temenos for the insights that come to me.  If I ponder and reflect upon the 3 principles then I will have insights about them, if I ponder and reflect upon the complexity of living in today's world then I will have insights about that.  Insights will always come to us, but whether we recognise them is another matter and will depend upon our own consciousness about the fact of wisdom or insight from within.
Young people, if engaged with in such a way that they feel secure and safe, will have their own insights about the three psychological principles operating in all of us and about how they are using those principles to create their lives.  As therapists and parents we are never in control of what they may 'hear' or 'realise' from within, we can only listen to our wisdom about how best to quiet their minds, create feelings of security, provide information and pose questions.  But what is realized from within them is totally out of our control.  But insights and realizations they will have - and they will come from the understanding or connection they have to understanding that already exists within them.
Doesn't that blow your mind away?  If we can help our children to understand the nature of the principles that operate within them, to be mindful of their state of mind and the feelings that come with it, to recognise the quiet and loud voices of wisdom and insight, and to reinforce their relationship with and trust in that wisdom, then their lives will be beyond what we have come to realise in our own and they will be okay always.  They already have everything they need inside them.
Elsie and Linda talk about the need for the adults in children's lives to not look for what is wrong in our children, but rather to look for the fact that they have wisdom. Cultivate that awareness and bring it to your children.  This amazing gift will allow them to reap all the richness that resides in their inner being, that gift will be like allowing our children to open their own treasure chests (and not just the ones flashing across movie screens).  Bring to their attention when you see them in their wisdom and doing things right. Talk to them about what this feels like versus the feelings that come with being in other forms of thought.  In time the feeling of being in wisdom will be something they consciously seek and nurture every day and they will notice sooner rather than later when they are in thought that leads them astray.

When Insight Seems Small ... but is Huge!

During 2013 I did my best to manage part time employment with mothering, maintaining a large and older home, and caring for our family pets.  It was a big ask.  Cleaning the family home became an irregular activity, the pets were provided with the bare essentials and my parenting seemed to swing wildly from taking the time to be present to often rushing from one thing to another.  There were many many periods in which nothing came together in a satisfactory way. And to top it all off my year ended with the feeling that I just didn't earn enough money to keep it all afloat.

But it's interesting how our minds can get carried away by frenetic trains of thought.  In the midst of all that activity I decided that I needed full time work to bring in the money and would just have to pay for a cleaner, after school care, and every other support I needed. This decision didn't make much sense really, my mind was already filled with too much to do, adding more things to manage and keep afloat - all in the name of having more money available - didn't feel right.  Something deep inside me knew this, and I was walking around with one of those inner niggles going on but didn't pay attention to it.  I half heartedly applied for a couple of additional jobs, and then one day I was told of a job going and that the organisation was 'desperate' for someone to fill the position.  The word 'desperate' stuck in my mind (wisdom signalling!).  'Desperate' wasn't my problem or responsibility, it was someone else's - so what was mine?

Finally I stopped blindly moving forward and instead took out my journal, writing what I thought was really my problem and what I could do about it.  The feeling inside me was that rather than extend myself further I needed to slow down more, simplify and nurture my home, including all its inhabitants.  I started sewing, ideas for two blogs came to me and it felt right to stay with my part time work and extend myself through two new blogs rather than seek more paid employment.

I decided to look for sewing ideas in my local library and came across the book 'Down to Earth' by Rhonda Hetzel.  Immediately, I clicked with the information contained inside.  The first chapter begins with questions about defining what is important to each of us and about how we can align our lives more simply with that calling.  My path has now turned, no more continuation with the frenetic thinking about doing more, instead, I am slowing down and simplifying.
And then I listened to the 22 November 2013 BlogTalkRadio with Elsie Spittle and Linda Pransky.  Both these women talked of how much they enjoyed being in service, but had recently experienced the quiet niggle (wisdom) about the need to do less.  They followed the insights that came out of that space and have now realised so much more - for themselves and others.  And just this morning I was talking with my (senior) mother about how overwhelmed she is feeling coping with the complexities that come with technology in her home.  She seems to have more to respond to, sign ups these days seem to come with automatic upgrades (at a cost) unless the company is notified and websites seem to be very difficult to navigate.  In talking with my mother it was clear that much of what she had subscribed to was now no longer necessary - she had enough information in her areas of interest and probably could live without the internet. What I could see clearly whilst she was talking (this is insight) is that we all can get involved with something which, untethered, can lead us into overwhelm and imbalance.
Oh, how grateful I am for the unassuming and often overlooked activity of wisdom in all of us. Neither myself, nor all the women mentioned above needed to keep a conscious and calculated check on their activity, they just needed to heed the quiet murmurings of wisdom, it is always there.  Activity out of intellect will feel one way whilst action out of insight feels another.  One potentially imbalances, whilst the other always balances and harmonises.  Sometimes the murmurings of wisdom out of insight can seem small .... a niggle in the background, but if we stop and listen and follow, its unfolding can be huge!

Insight Always Comes

The beginning of a new year and the beginning of a new direction with this blog.  Children ... are we raising and educating them in a manner that will provide them with the mindsets and self awareness that will sustain them well into middle age and beyond?  I remember my own childhood - and how different the world is now compared to then.  From experience I know that this will be the case for my own child.  But unlike yesteryear, today's children are not so healthily supported by the environments and contexts in which they live.  Children of yesteryear had cleaner air, cleaner food, more nutritious food, cleaner seas and water, more structure and therefore more psychological security in their homes and communal life.  Parenting in that context could be less conscious than what is required today if we are to truly support our children to grow into sustainable human beings.

As a parent today I am surrounded by endless information on how I should raise my child, some of it contradictory.  How do I make good parenting decisions and how do I model for my child how to make good life decisions. The answer lies in knowing myself.  Knowing that within each and every one of us is wisdom, an innate capacity, when our mind is slowed and if we choose to attend, to know from within in which direction to move.  I need to model for my child and use language with my child that points her attention to the fact that within her, if she chooses to listen, is the most powerful source of direction, wisdom, intelligence, she will ever come across.  The fact is that, if one quietens their mind, information will come about the direction in which they turn their attention.

Insight comes all the time - if we quiet our mind, if we let go of the type of thinking we were raised to use, and listen.  Insight is not the same as intellect.  It is almost a still seeing or a still voice, some of you may call it intuition.  Whatever the name you give it, it has a certain quality or timbre and comes with a calm feeling.  For a brilliant discussion about the presence of insight even in moments of anxiety go to the 10 January 2014 BlogTalkRadio Fireside Chats with Elsie Spittle and Linda Pransky.  As a parent you want to develop your own relationship with this 'home' within yourself and develop the art of observing the quality of your mind so that you may consciously drop old patterns of thought and live more from insight.  It is this same observation of one's own state of mind that can then be transferred to observations of and interactions with, your child.

For example, yesterday I had the opportunity to observe my child in an environment outside my home and not my responsibility.  Her behaviours changed considerably.  Instead of seeing my normally present and centred child I was witnessing one that was demanding and unbounded.  I spent most of my time trying to unobtrusively bring her behaviour back into the bounds of some degree of normality (for her) but this felt like trying to contain spilt paint moving quickly in all directions.  Later that evening, when I had a quiet moment to myself I reflected upon her behaviour and what might have been going on for her. What I realised is that she was in a pattern of thought she draws upon when in that situation - but it was not thought from innate wisdom .... insight.  She (her mind) was stuck.

In the past this situation would have been enough for me to drop into my old patterns of thought.  But with a deeper feeling for intellect/insecurity versus insight, I had the wisdom to know I simply had to let things be until she was with me again.  Then I could observe where her mind was at, do what I could to quieten it down and then use language that would start to build a knowledge base (awareness) for her about being in insight versus being in insecurity.  Her understanding would come from her experience of her feelings and the language I use to differentiate and highlight insight.

Insights always comes. In the year ahead I intend to blog regularly about the insights coming to me during my day, both at home and work - about the importance of modelling and teaching about the fact of wisdom and insight within each of us, and about the contexts and information that support the sustainability of our children, or not.  I hope you will join me for this journey, any questions would be most welcome.

Parents Supporting Literacy - Home Tutoring

What does a Feeling have to do with Achievement?

In both my private practice and part time employment I am  involved with children who don't seem to learn at the same rate as their peers. This can sometimes require assessment for a specific learning disability with recommendations on how to support them in the classroom and at home.  I recently purchased the book photographed in this post and consider it one of the best I have read.  I am in awe of the amount of research undertaken by its author and her ability to bring it all together.

When our thinking in is in 'flow' insight often comes to mind.   'Flow' is usually associated with creating a wonderful art piece or whilst playing sport. For me, if I am engaged with what I am reading, 'flow' can also enter.  It was whilst reading this book that my mind turned to how difficult it was for me in the beginning to understand the definition of several of the terms she was using and how I still get a sense of fuzziness every time I come across them.  And then I realised!  I first came across the terms when I didn't know their meaning and had to talk with another professional using them in language.  If I wasn't going to appear ill informed I needed to understand those terms in the moment - which was impossible, so I simply kept the conversation going until I could go away and locate their definition.

But do you know what?  Every time I now come across the specific terms my body goes into anxiety.  From neuroscience we know that neurons that fire together wire together.  Here I have a personal lived example of anxiety neurons firing at the same time as I was required to engage with several key professional terms.  And now, every time I come across those terms, no matter how often I have looked them up, attempted to memorise them, considered various mnemonics I could employ ... my body goes into anxiety and the terms always feel 'fuzzy' like I just don't quite know what they refer to.

Three little words, I have a 'fuzzy' experience every time I encounter these three little words, all because of the powerful wiring that occurred when I first had to use them.  Imagine what it must be like for children in classrooms or at home, first attempting to read, or speak in front of others, or write, or spell .... thinking they should be able to do it, wanting to appear competent ... and anxious.

So much research is revealing the fact that if teachers and adults around children spend time cultivating a relaxed feeling .... cultivating rapport, then children learn with ease and perform better.  All children with learning difficulties and disabilities exhibit the interference of anxiety. At times it is like detective work trying to determine specifically what their anxiety is connected to and how this plays out in other areas of their learning.  Then the task is to rewire, create feelings of peace and ease when interacting with tasks and situations that previously held high anxiety.  Staying in an open space ourselves, observing, experimenting/playing, intuiting what to try next, being curious ..... love.   What is good for the soul is also good for learning.  The effectiveness of evidence based programs can never be separated from the feeling the teacher or adult brings to learning and the feeling state of the child.  Thankfully we live in times in which our understanding of what makes a program effective and how feelings impact on learning is rapidly expanding. 

A Thought About Addiction

During the week I caught myself in one of those sublime moments when I was in 'flow'.  Doing nothing special, nothing in particular on my mind, just moving about, doing what I had to do, singing whilst I did it.  When I noticed, I moved my attention to my body - it felt supple with an absence of aches and pains that come with age.  I then moved my attention to how I was feeling - light, carefree, at one with everything.  And then the thought came to me .... "Ah, this is who I am!"

You might think this a strange thought, but ... it is truth.  All of us, at our core, are a sublime feeling.  We are not our jobs, our intellects, our muscles, our homes, our cars, our 'number of friends', we are .... a feeling.   My heart warmed at the very feeling of 'me being a good feeling'.  That feeling is ME, I actually don't have to do anything to make me better or fix me up, I just have to remember that that feeling is me.  No one can take that feeling, the feeling that is who we are at our core, away from us - except ourselves.  And how do we do that?  With our thinking! 

There is nothing wrong with using our intellects to work and build, buying things we like, or having friends, but when our sense of who we are is dependent on them then we have lost our way.  When created in the right spirit these things are expressions of our use of innate powers within.  If we know and remember who we really are, then having these things in our lives are a source of immense delight and curiosity.  

My thinking moved on to addiction - in my experience, definitely not a state characterised by delight, curiosity or light heartedness.  What is it?  At its core, addiction is the innocent seeking of a good feeling in the wrong places.  The good feeling is actually alive within us all the time, it never goes away, but we take ourselves away from it with our thinking.  It is our thinking that creates our feeling states.   We begin life with an incredible flexibility in our thinking (as reflected in our 'unpruned' neural pathways) and go through some amazing periods of growth and refinement in neural pathways.  Adolescence in particular is a time of massive growth, hence the emotional turbulence as a result of our all different thoughts!  It is only when our thinking becomes more honed or refined (strengthening and pruning of neural pathways) that we 'mature' and our thinking 'muscle' (the brain) is capable of responding well to the environment around us.

If we all had parents who understood the interplay of Thought, Consciousness and Mind at our core (whether using these words or not), they would have taught us differently about life, our emotions, and how to realign ourselves with flow.  But most of us weren't and so we emerged into adult thinking that (a) our emotions are direct indicators of life around us (they aren't), and, (b) we all need to find strategies to ease those emotions so that we get back to a good feeling.  The truth is (a) we ARE a good feeling, (b) it is our personalised thinking that takes us away from that feeling (we are experiencing our personalised thinking rather than our innate good feeling), and (c) if we could see the role of our thinking we wouldn't need anything to make ourselves feel better because the 'seeing' disconnects us from that thinking immediately.

I'm not saying breaking out of addiction is easy.  I was raised in a culture of little understanding of our true nature just the same as everyone else.  I too have travelled down the path at times of thinking that I needed something outside of myself in order to feel better.  I am also lucky enough to have come across a deeper understanding and chosen to direct my free will in the direction of exploring that understanding in my life.  And as time goes on my feelings of equanimity and the quality of my life just gets better and better.

If anyone is in the grip of addiction or on the path of innocently developing one, if you simply allowed yourself the possibility of seeing your 'thinking' as the cause of your ill feelings, then you have opened up a different path ahead.  It is not necessary to define the content of your thinking (although you can if this intrigues you) rather just to see that 'anxious' thinking is creating feelings of anxiety, or 'pumped up' thinking is making you move fast, or 'angry' thinking is making you feeling angry!  We all experience different types of thinking, but isn't it interesting that we are all conditioned to doing something about our 'anxious' thinking whereas our thinking about the latest movie we can just let slip by. Thought is thought, it all creates feelings, and those feelings vary according to the intensity or quality of our thinking.

When we are in negative states of feeling, if we 'see' our thinking' then the thought of seeing our feeling immediately takes us out of the feeling we were in. We have broken the 'bad feeling' train of thought, AND, we have inactivated the neural pathway we were entertaining.  Neural pathways wither and die with disuse, whilst new pathways are constructed and strengthened with new types or qualities of thought.  WANT to have a different relationship to the thinking that innocently creates thinking and you open up a crevice of change.  WANT to have a stronger relationship to the innate good feelings that are you and you open up another crevice of change.  'Bad feeling' thinking does not need to be attacked (creating attack feelings), it is a lack of paying attention to them as truth (when they are not) that allows them to die away.  

SPEND TIME remembering moments when you were in a good feeling and simply glad to be here. We have ALL had them, even if they were years ago, we have had them.  CONSIDER the possibility that those feelings are who you are and that they still reside within you.  ASK yourself if you would like to know them clearer in your life, and if so, then simply LISTEN to what surfaces quietly from within you and FOLLOW it.    Change can happen overnight, and it can happen slowly.  But once you open yourself to the POSSIBILITY it WILL happen!