By Lana Mitchell, January 31, 2013

I wanted to share  an ongoing win I have had in the last two years, using and applying study tech with my oldest son, who is shortly turning 7.

Prior to starting the first year of school, 2 years ago, Shelby knew his alphabet and his phonics. We started games and drills on the same from the age of 2 and as a result,  despite being almost the youngest in his class of 19 children, he has continually been in the top 3 for literacy and reading skills. His passion for reading has been fueled actively by me reading stories every night, and getting him to read nightly too. In the last school year he read for 5 minutes or more for 300 nights — with his skills improving continually as a result.

Interestingly enough however, there have been many hiccups that have been experienced along the way. Shelby is a strong willed kid, speaks his mind, and we have had many a battle or tantrum. In fact, there have been at least 5 occasions in the last 2 years when Shelby’s behavior changed drastically and he stopped being a charming but cheeky individual – and became a snide, resentful and motivatorish little shit.

What has been a real eye-opener for me was using the datum that every time there was natter, critical comments or back chat, tantrums or simply bad indicators, I would pull the string to find out what word had been misunderstood.

Invariably I would find that the behavior was ALWAYS proceeded by words not understood (generally at school — but sometimes at home or in life). What was also amazing was that they were easy to find (I just ask him when he was last doing well, and what word was not understood and he looks and tells me).

Further — once the word is defined, and understood, the sun comes out, in all its colors, and my wonderful son returns and the awful character that had been in his place vanishes.  And this happens instantly. The amounts of hugs and kisses that I receive from him as a result of this cycle could not be counted.

The Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde change that takes place is not an uncommon one. I have spoken to other parents at the school who have been pulling their hair out as “Johnny just seems to have flipped and I can’t understand where he gets this bad behavior from”. One parent told me she has to drag her kid to school every day, virtually placing her body into the car and forcing her through the school gate as the young girl’s intention is totally counter to going back to school.

A fitting example of the power of this tech was in Shelby’s first year of school. One afternoon the teacher had had a quiet word with me after class about my child’s worsening behavior in the class room (kicking, fighting, being rude, etc.) and how he was spending more and more of his lunch and recess time in detention sitting on the verandah. I took Shelby home that day and with some deft questioning, found the exact point when he had gone past misunderstoods in his word lists. We cleared them up, and then for 2 days drilled and drilled on every single word not understood till he had them all down cold. There were only 3 that had really held him up, but stacked on top of these 3 words were many more he had neglected to sort out. We just kept drilling with flash cards and with a dictionary until he was VGIs. The next week the teacher came to me and said he could not understand it, but Shelby’s behavior was so markedly different and so helpful (instead of being destructive) that he was given a the weekly class award for good and helpful behavior. He asked me how I had caused such an inexplicable change in my son — and I told him we had gone back and sorted out what words he had not understood and cleared them all up. He was astonished.

Study technology is such powerful tech that I wish we could work out a way to get it into use in all schools. This last year I have been taking an effort in the local school and even went so far as to word clear all kids in Shelby’s class on basic MU’s on phonics, one by one, over a course of Friday mornings. His teacher was thrilled and the kids absolutely loved it.

Here is what LRH has to say about it:

“When a person can’t understand something and yet goes on facing up to it, he gets into a “problems situation” with it. There it is over there, yet he can’t make it out.

“Infrequently (fortunately for us) the being halts, time right there. Anything he conceives to be similar presented to his view is the puzzle itself (A = A = A). And he goes stupid. This happens rarely in the life of one being, but it happens to many people. Thus, there aren’t many such messes in one person in one lifetime that have to be cleaned up. But there are a few in many people.

“The cycle of Mis-definition is:

“1.  Didn’t grasp a word, then

“2. Didn’t understand a principle or theory, then

“3. Became different from it, commits and committed overts against it, then

“4. Restrained himself or was restrained from committing those overts, then

“5. Being on a withhold (inflow) pulled in a motivator.

“Not every word somebody didn’t grasp was followed by a principle or theory. An over was not committed every time this happened. Not every overt committed was restrained. So no motivator was pulled in.

“But when it did happen, it raised havoc with the mentality of the begin when trying to think about what seem to be similar subjects.

“You see, you are looking at the basic incident + its locks as in a chain of incidents. The charge that is apparently on the lock in present time is actually only in the basic incident. The locks borrow the charge of the basic incident and are not themselves causing anything. So you have a basic misunderstood word which then charges up the whole subject as a lock; then a subject charging up similar subjects as locks.

“Every nattery or non-progressing student or pc is hung up in the above 1,2,3,4,5 cycle. And every such student or pc has a misdefined word at the bottom of that pile.

HCOB 21 Feb 1966 DEFINITION PROCESSES

Comments   

 

# poet13c 2013-02-15 23:18

Amazing!
Great write-up, Lana

 

 

# Steve 2013-02-15 23:19

Brilliant. I’m going to try this on some of my colleagues too. Thanks Lana.

 

 

# Richard Chasen 2013-02-15 23:20

Nice. Children (being naturally high toned) should respond to tech well.

 

 

# Jim Logan 2013-02-15 23:20

It amazed me at first when I began to Supervise students, that this datum applied would resolve the most godawful messes. At first, both me AND the guy didn’t credit it, so I’d work my way around the upsets, the nrah, nrah and “what are you doing to me!” and all the stuff that comes up, and within moments, the person would cooperate, just on the right indication of “something you didn’t dig, didn’t like, disagreed with” and off we’d go to find when it started and if there was a word or term or symbol or something just before it that wasn’t fully grasped. Kabang!!! There it was. This has to be one of the simplest most powerful bits of skill I’ve gained as a Scientologist, simple Word Clearing with good Two Way Comm and ARC. I’m a true believer.

 

 

# Gail Smith 2013-02-15 23:22

That’s a beautiful story Lana and inspiration for applying the basic and vital data we got early in Scn for many – study tech. How many of us had the realization that study tech alone could change the world. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

 

 

# chrismann9 2013-02-15 23:23

I think my son (8) has this same thing going on. It almost like you are writing it about him. We have had this “in” in the past, but it’s dropped out a bit. I’m going to get this back in. I bet there's some MU’s there. We clear up words as he does his homework and he will even grab his dictionary and clear stuff up himself, but I bet there's something we missed because some of the indicators are there.

 

 

# calvin b. duffield 2013-02-17 07:04

Lana, this is absolutely what "miracles" are all about! The miracle is simply that
a measly little old mis...understood word
could cause such untold havoc...and then
a miracle gets to take place. The miracle being one of the little tools in the LRH
Toolbox, gets taken out of it's safekeeping
and put to use! The tool? WORDCLEARING!!


Can take a veritable little warlord, set on destroying the sanity of anyone unfortunate enough to live around him/her
and turn them into a bookloving, knowledge hungry pest within a relatively short time / saving the patience/sanity of the hapless charged with their care/upbringing.

Your story is a passionate and rewarding example of just what can be accomplished with the correct data on hand, and with their heart in the right place, and let's
not forget, a huge chunk of patience too!

A book written by Ruth Minshull in 1968
and reprinted many times since, but now
no longer,is fortunately, downloadable
for free directly off the 'Net. The name
of the book is "Miracles For Breakfast."

Read, laugh, apply, and get the pure data
on the essentials of really communicating
with your child/ren. (All pure LRH tech!)

You won't go wrong if you remember the vital importance of helping your youngster/s really get communicating down
pat.

You might even be surprised by how sharp they can be, even flunking you, when you
slip up on an ack. or M/U of you own.

Enjoy!

M/L, Calvin.

 

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