Re: weirdness!

On 31 Jan, John Cowan wrote:

>Dan Sulani wrote:
>
>> Hey guys, I'm always interested in learning about
>> new speech therapy techniques!  ;-)
>> Somehow, though, I doubt  that they'll let me try it out
>> on the kids I work with!  :-)
>
>I suspect this works because people speak better when their
>inhibitions against speaking poorly are relaxed by the alcohol.
>One of the main barriers to fluent speech is the fear of error.
>Alcohol in small doses helps overcome fear by producing
>a general inhibition of inhibitions.
    I was joking, but your point is well taken. A kid currently in my
treatment
is not making the progress he should mainly because he tries
_too_ hard to do it correctly and as a result, his muscle control
suffers. When I can get him to relax, his speech improves greatly.
    This also reminds me of the teacher I had for German in
high school. He was physically imposing and acted the part.
He had a reputation for being very hard on students. On our first day of
class, upon discovering that he would be our teacher, our hearts all
sank. Then, the first words out of his mouth were something like this:
<extreme force, biting off each word>: "In _my_ class, there will be
NO ALLOWANCE for any little mistakes! Is that understood?"
(We were all on the verge of tears.) And then he continued, "I will not
tolerate any little mistakes in my class. If you want to make mistakes,
you will make the _biggest_  ones possible. Those I will be happy to help
you with."
And so it was.  Fear of mistakes? We didn't dare!
Sort of different from alcohol's melting away
the inhibitions, but it got the same result. Since then, I have
adopted his philosophy (although not his style, I hope :-) ). In my work,
even (especially) the biggest mistakes are welcomed, even
without alcohol (although I will admit to using chocolate-spread
on occasion  :-)  ).

Dan Sulani

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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.