Conductive Language

By starting to write a blog I hope to articulate (can you articulate in the written word?) the many thoughts and discussions that i have about my daily work and to see if any of the rest of the conductive world see things in the same way. Or if not in the same way then how others do see it. So one of the most recent thoughts has become the subject of my first post. I hope you enjoy it.

Upon writing my progress reports this year my thoughts have turned to the language we use in Conductive Education. I think about it in the context of awaiting the start of a new year and a new start and wonder whether we should all be looking a little closer at our language. I do not mean our technical language - although that is a topic for discussion, but i mean the language we use day-in day-out within the task series.

I assume we all use the classic sentence 'i sit/stand tall' a huge number of times every day. And i also assume this sentence - a little weird in English if I'm honest - is a direct translation from the task series that originated at The Peto Institute. But as CE has developed and changed in the UK it would seem (as far as i know) that the language we are using has not. Why do we not say 'i sit straight', for example? which would make sense to many more people (including those outside CE) and is much more transferable within daily life and the English language.

Another thought about language has come up within work in recent months as we have a group at work all of whom have significant developmental delay in addition to their motor disorders. We (my colleague) and i discussed the use of language and rhythm in this group all of whom have very limited language comprehension and who work, at most, at a one-word level of understanding. (the appropriateness of CE with this group is also a topic for discussion but one that i will not cover now). We decided to use a simple rhythm where we repeated the significant word in the sentence. But then wondered if we should examine the sentences we used too. For example, in lying on our backs we usually say 'i stretch my leg out, out, out' - but why out? habit? translation? i don't know. But decided that we should either be repeating the word 'stretch' or the word 'leg' and should simply say 'i stretch my leg'.

The context of this group was specific but made us also consider the wider use of language. Should we be saying 'i stretch my leg' and/or 'i sit straight' or any better, more suitable phrases with every group we teach? But what would the impact of this be? our songs are often based around this language ('let me see who is sitting tall') and everyone who uses it is so familiar with it (in particular the children) that it might only serve to confuse the group unnecessarily and thus impact negatively on the group dynamic.

So, as of yet we have not made a decision about this, and will doubtless discuss it more when attempting to finalise the new task series' in September. It is very easy to slip into habits with our intention as we say it so often that we do so, almost without thinking ( a strange situation considering the aim of it is to bring the child/adults activity into his/her conscious control)

But it makes me wonder - our rhythmical intention is one of the key aspects of Conductive Education that makes us so unique and do we really think about it enough? and are we using it as well as we could be ?