Icebergs

It's another day of double posts--here's part of what I posted on my other blog.

Little children seem to have a fascination with the word "why". They want to know the why of everything, sometimes much to the annoyance of the adults they keep asking. But on the opposite extreme, sometimes as adults, we fail to ask the question "Why?" and respond only to the behaviors, actions, and situations that are currently present. We punish the offender or medicate to relieve symptoms rather than digging for the deeper meaning of the offense or pain. Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to punishment or pain meds. But, if that is as far as our interaction goes, we are not getting to the root of the problem. Or as I learned at the autism workshop, we are just addressing the tip of the iceberg.

As I'm sure you know, the part of the iceberg that is visible above the water is usually a very small percentage of the full iceberg. Although what is above the water line is dangerous, it is what is below the water line that is the real iceberg and because we cannot see it, it poses a greater risk. I wish I could just reprint these illustrations for you, but I will do my best to describe them. When looking at the iceberg that is called "Tantrums", we see that the specific behaviors lying above the water line are screams without apparent cause, self-injurious, and destroys toys. If we respond only to those behaviors that we see, noone is going to be happy, and nothing will improve. If we look at and work with the underlying deficits, that part of the tantrums that lies below the water line of our iceberg, we have a chance of changing things for the better. Those underlying deficits are unable to communicate needs, emotional inconsistency, poor understanding of the situation, strong need for closure or sameness and low frustration tolerance. To be honest, if I were a parent dealing just with the specific behaviors described here, I would probably be an abusive parent. But looking at the underlying causes helps me to love this child more and look for ways to help him or her.

Let's move this concept beyond autism. Take for example the social/political situation in the middle east. It's very easy to condemn those horrible people and what they are doing to their neighbors based solely on religious differences, but when you take a look at the last few thousand years of history in that region, or even the last hundred years, the lines between the good guys and the bad guys become blurred. You start to understand why they feel wronged and why they feel entitled to the land and the government of the people.

And what about our health? How many of us go to the doctor because we want him/her to fix what is wrong, meaning make the pain or disease go away? Do we take the time and interest to ask why it may have occurred in the first place? Western medicine is improving in this area, but I think we have a long way to go. I love my fibromyalgia and I bet you won't find many people that will say that. The reason I love it is because my body is constantly reminding me of what it needs. If I treat it with love and compassion, it is much kinder to me. It's very easy to treat the pain with meds, and the fatigue with sugar and caffeine, but it is a short term fix, and in the long run, makes things worse instead of better. When I am in pain, I need to look at why. Is my stress level too high? Have I missed too many workouts? (Endorphins are amazing.) Have I consumed too much sugar and/or caffeine or even carbohydrates in general? Although they help with the fatigue, they make the pain and inflammation much worse. If I'm tired or not sleeping well, I need to look at why? Is it the rebound from the sugar and caffeine? Have I missed my daily deep breathing exercises? Is my bed in dire need of replacement? The answer to that last one is a definite yes.

Finally, I need to be asking the question "Why?" more as I work with my students. It used to create great frustration when my very talented students wouldn't practice, but as I've come to understand some of the their reasons, it bothers me less. Rather than the lecture on how they'll never improve if they don't spend hours practicing, I now try to help them find ways to fit in whatever they can in their lives and we're all happier.

It is also easy to treat a vocal "symptom" without ever addressing the actual cause. Here's my favorite example and one that I'm constantly dealing with with my students. The [i] vowel can be a singer's best friend or their worst enemy. For those of you not familiar with IPA, I'm referring to the ee sound like in the word cheese. In fact, think of that horrible bright smiley word that photographers have you say to make you smile and you'll understand why choir directors hate this vowel. As it is normally spoken, it is very bright, shallow, and horizontal. If sung in the same manner, its sound jumps out of the texture of the music and doesn't blend well at all. Some choir directors will have students change all [i] sounds to [I] as in the word skin. Others use other ways to manipulate the sound of the group vowel. But what happens too often is that when kids come to me, I discover that their perception of the fix has totally destroyed anything even closely related to the [i] vowel. Often the kids are pulling their tongues way back. Yes, it does take the piercing sound out, but now the vowel jumps out of the texture in the other direction. You have beautiful clear sound, and then a really muffled swallowed [i] vowel breaks that line. In the choir teacher's defense, they cannot check how every student is interpretting their instructions. They just hear the overall result of the choir. When the choir [i] is what they want to hear, they assume that the individuals are creating it correctly.

The true and beautiful [i] sound is not achieved by changing the vowel or by pulling it back. It is achieved through making it vertical and releasing the tension in the jaw and tongue. That [i] is wonderfully resonant AND lines up with everything around it.

When a student seems to not even try when given new instructions, it's easy to decide that they don't care, that they are just oppositional by nature, or as one teacher decided about me, that there is just something wrong with the student. To be honest, there was something wrong, several somethings actually, but what was most damaging about her assessment was that it seemed to imply that I was hopelessly flawed and couldn't be fixed. It's easy to assign labels based on behavior. It takes more work, more time and more energy to find the underlying causes beneath those behaviors.