Mixed messages?
How to navigate the "brain-body disconnect" in open spelling
This is the 5th post of the Open Communication & Beyond sub-newsletter, part of the Companion for your Spelling Journey series (please read the first two posts of the whole series here and here if you haven’t already). The main audience for this is spelling teams who are in, or entering, the realm of open spelling.
If you’re only interested in Journey to Open Communication posts for now (for newer spelling teams who are working toward open spelling), you can choose to not receive Open Communication & Beyond posts to your email through your account settings.
Introduction & Key Points
A fairly common point of confusion that I’ve seen in newly fluent spellers:
They spell, clearly and resolutely, that they want to do something
Their support team works to make that something possible
The speller refuses to do that something, rejecting it with their spoken words and/or their body language
So… did they make a mistake when spelling? Did they spell something they didn’t actually mean? Are they just being difficult?
Well, all of those things are possible, and definitely worth keeping in mind. But in my experience, this is just another manifestation of that ol’ “brain-body disconnect”: the speller truly wants to do something that they think will be good for them, or enjoyable, or fun. But their apraxia gets in the way of them following through on this intention. This is particularly challenging when the desired activity interferes with an existing loop (habit, compulsion), or when the activity is somehow new or challenging.
Danny and I have certainly experienced this a number of times. And, really, I experience a version of this intention-action gap myself (“I want to go to bed earlier,” “I should stop buying a donut every time I get coffee,” etc.), as many of us probably do!
So here is some guidance for:
Identifying when this might be happening
Working to understand the barriers that your speller is experiencing
Supporting your speller, step-by-step, to achieving what it is they want to do
The rest of this post is for paid subscribers only. To access a 14-day free trial, click here!
