11/6/09

Metronome therapy

You have probably noticed that I'm not so great at fixing my own issues. But, I AM really good at displacing all that energy onto poor Garret.

Anyway, Garret can barely read, blah blah blah. Ok, so, while taking that last class to finish my degree, I came across an interesting study. It was about kids with ADHD. They had made them keep time to a metronome, and there was some fancy thingy that electronically measured their accuracy, and they did that every day for awhile, and tried to improve their accuracy, and then, volia, they had improved focus and they were better at reading.

I excitedly told Garret about this. He's like- um... but I don't have ADD. Sigh. NOT RELEVANT. Tap hand. Keep time. Improve focus. Read better. Gosh, try to keep up here.

I found links to free metronome sounds online. I tried to get him to tap along.

Oh. My. Goodness.

It was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. If it were not for the tragic aspect of him being my husband, I would have peed myself laughing.

I mean, I knew he was not, like, a good dancer. But, how hard is it to tap your hand/foot/finger to a beat??? For Garret, it is apparently rocket science. He was not even CLOSE. Not only was he off of the beat, he was tapping way more or way less times than it.

Metronome: Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap...

Garret: TapTap.Tap....TaTaTAP..Tap.TapTap...Tap.....Tap..Tap.....Tap

I am not exagerating. He was...spastic. AND, oblivious to the fact that he was not even close. It was very disturbing. I was disturbed.

I don't know what it means exactly. But I think his mental difficulties are definately reflected by his inablity to keep time to a simple beat. I am hoping he will continue to try and improve this. He thinks it is stupid and has nothing to do with reading. I have tried to explain to him before how so much of reading is rhthym.

The cat sat on the bat and wore a hat and he was fat and caught a...

You just KNOW the next word is not going to be "paprika." It will probably be "rat." He doesn't get that. He's all-- it might be paprika. NO! NO IT WILL NOT EVER BE PAPRIKA!!!

Reading is part music and rhythm. Just like you can sometimes guess the next note in a song, you can guess the next word in a sentence. I don't really care if he doesn't get that right now, I just want him to work on tapping to a beat. It certainly can't HURT.

11/4/09

11/04/09.

Still not in a writing mood.
But, hi, and I'm still alive.

I see my last post was about making a goal and accomplishing it-- writing an article. Well, I failed miserably at that. Outlined an article but never finished it. However, I did finally finish my Bachelor's Degree... so, that's pretty good.

I'm very interested in acupressure at the moment. So, been thinking about that a lot, experimenting on myself and Garret.