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Re: weirdness!

From:Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
Date:Monday, January 31, 2000, 21:05
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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a. A word is an awesome thing.