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| A page from my carboot-sale copy of Max and Moritz by Wilhelm Busch |
The day turned up a
little
All
that was needed was the abracadabra of conductive upbringing – time + patience +
intelligent love.
Some people
say that these are the magic ingredients and but I say that they are all part
of the hard work and the pedagogy.
There was a
lot of hard work today. There was also intelligent love and patience and they
all, eventually, led us to cracking it this afternoon. We had had a slow,
tentative and testing start to our two weeks of conductive work within the
family home.
There was a magic ingredient
For some
unknown reason I decided that, instead of insisting on learning, learning,
learning, we would spend the afternoon session reading. Laddo was in agreement
and turned up with a huge volume of a book by Wilhelm Busch. Because of its
size the text is just big enough for Laddo to be able to read it. So, with a
combination of Laddo’s elephant-like memory that is filled with snippets
remembered from watching childhood videos a hundred times, and motivation,
because Max and Moritz, as well as being extremely naughty are also very funny,
we were on to a winner.
To top it
all, the entire book is full of lovely pictures. So all-in-all I can honestly
say that we saved the day with Max and Moritz, and with the special ingredients
of conductive upbringing – time, patience and intelligent love.
Comprehension, speech and rhyming
verse
The fact that
the Max and Moritz stories are written in rhyme made it easier for Laddo in
several ways. He could understand his own speech better. If he got one of the
rhyming words then he was more likely to understand the second. Working out the
words was made much easier by the rhymes for this athetoid young man who
usually has great difficulty in understanding his own voice when he reads
aloud.
It made no
difference to him at all that some words were written in slang, had a slightly
different spelling or were shortened to fit in with the meter or the rhyme. This
book is sort of written like Laddo speaks, so it was a perfect choice. We had happened
upon it by accident but it is now out on the desk for a daily session of fun.
The first and
last time that I read Max and Moritz was in 1994, with my friend’s son, who was
nine years old at the time. I could hardly speak a word of German but I could
understand these stories because of the lovely illustrations. Max and Moritz
did the trick in those days too, allowing that child and me to develop a great
relationship that continues today. Now we speak either in English or German or
indeed a mish-mash of both, but we know that we could converse just as well if
the common language were humour and a few illustrations.
Back in sync
Max and
Moritz brought the equilibrium back today to what had proven to be a very hard
start. It had been tough getting stuck into the nitty-gritty of conductive
living but having a laugh and enjoying the fun of words brought us into sync
again.
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| My old battered copy of Max and Moritz |
