Delia has screening tonight --- maybe

[pegkerr]

Sensei has asked Delia to come for the first pre-black belt screening tonight. However...

We have not seen very much of Delia the Bear In The Morning thus far this winter, but boy, she showed up today, and how. She woke up in an absolutely foul mood, insisting that she couldn't go to school because she was too sick. She had no fever or sore throat, and frankly, we were not impressed, so we ordered her to go. She was furious with us and left without eating breakfast.

We got a call from the school a half hour later. Apparently, she had left in such a snit that she had forgotten her trapper/notebook. So I drove to school to deliver it, along with an English muffin spread with peanut butter for her to eat for breakfast.

I met Delia coming out of her classroom, with a note for the nurse's office. "What, exactly, is your problem, then?" I asked, trying to keep my temper.

"I have a headache and a stomachache and a cough," she said sulkily, and coughed once to demonstrate. To my trained mother's ear, it sounded utterly faked, like a third-rate actress auditioning for the role of Camille. I think, having lost the battle at home, she is trying to enlist the school nurse to back her up.

I forebore from pointing out that the headache and stomachache might have something to do with the fact that she skipped breakfast.

So I don't know. Rob may get a call from the school later to pick her up. I hope that she will start screening tonight, but we'll see.

Comments

[teacherla.livejournal.com]

Could the mood be related to the screening?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is what we are thinking is going on. Sensei thinks she is ready, but Delia has expressed doubts. It has often happened that sensei has said she is ready to test but Delia balks, and when Delia doesn't want to do something, it sometimes comes out in psychosomatic symptoms.

BTW: Rob got a call from the school from the nurse, who has seen her twice, but she agrees with us that Delia isn't sick, and sent her back to class again. The nurse asked whether she was stressed out or worried about something. So that's our hunch as to what is going on.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Someone taught me a destressing technique a while ago. It's supposed to be very good at getting a your amygdala out of the fight or flight state.
It goes something like this:

count slowly 1 to 7 while breathing in
count slowly 1 to 7 while breathing out
keep doing this while holding in your mind an image or memory that is happy
(my personal image is one of my kids happy/laughing -- can be anything)

[naomikritzer]

I did theater as a kid. I would tell people that I didn't get stage fright, and I really believed this. Nonetheless, on the morning of opening night, I would get out of bed feeling utterly horrible and like I had just come down with a serious case of the flu -- muscle aches, stomach aches, the works. Fortunately, I'd always feel fine by show time. I absolutely perceived this as a straight-up illness, and since I was mostly healthy and didn't fake illness, my parents just kept me home from school (and then drove me over to the theater, since I was feeling better by then).

I think my third or fourth go-round with this I made the connection myself. It was a very strange thing, because it didn't feel like nerves. It felt like flu. But it was totally nerves.

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

Good luck to Delia with the black-belt screening!

But what I wanted to say was that when I read "Delia the Bear In The Morning", I started singing it to the tune of "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean." Just in case it amuses someone besides me.

Not all psychosomatic

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Temp at 4:15 is 100.7 F

Rob