String Around Her Finger

Meredith was dosing off on the couch and snapped up and said, "Mom!  I just saw a ribbon on Merebith's finger and I remembered I have something to tell you.  I know where the missing remote control is."

Of course I had to ask more about this and Meredith explained that Merebith right now has about eight ribbons around her fingers to remind her of various things.  I asked her what colors they were.  (The ribbon about the remote control was tie-dye blue.)  I asked her how she knew what each color meant and she said that she has a chart in the files that tells her.

Whew!  From the outside looking in, that seems like a very convoluted way to remember things.  But on the other hand, I have no method whatsoever.  Maybe I'll give it a try.

"Potentially" the Right Answer

I was just reading an article talking about learning conversation scripts. That reminded me of a funny story.

I took Meredith to the doctor to check out something or the other, whatever it was I can't remember anymore. What I do remember is that the doctor asked Meredith whether something on her body hurt. Meredith answered, "potentially," not in a sarcastic way, but in a matter of fact manner.   The doctor and I laughed heartily and then explained to Meredith that the question the doctor asked was a "yes" or "no" question. Then we really had a belly laugh--Meredith responded by saying, "Whenever I ask my Dad a yes or no question, he answers 'potentially.'"

Taking Mental Pictures and Triggering Mental Slide Shows

Meredith says that she's been taking "pictures" ever since she can remember--that is, she takes a mental picture to remember something.   (To be more accurate, Merebith takes the picture with her camera as you probably guessed!)   It reminds me a lot of the children's book series, "Cam Jansen," where the main character is nicknamed "Cam" because she takes pictures of everything like a camera by blinking her eyes, which helps her in solving small mysteries.   Or on a grown up scale, I'm reminded of the new T.V. series, "Unforgettable," in which a detective uses her ability to remember everything she's seen and to take mental pictures of crime scenes to help solve crimes.  Maybe this ability to take pictures is more common than we realize.

One picture thinker I know defies the male stereotype by noticing any little difference in his house...like a new photo frame, a new pillow, or whether a knick knack moved to a new location.  He explains that all he does is compare the before and after pictures he has in his mind--like those "find the difference" games in magazines.

Apparently, some visual thinkers can combine all of these individual pictures (or "slides") to make up a slide show--sort of like swiping from photo to photo on an iPhone, only much, much faster.  If you saw the movie, "Temple Grandin," it would be very similar to the scene where she hears "shoes" and begins to see pictures of all the different kinds of shoes she's ever seen in a very fast slide show fashion. 

Here's an example of one of Meredith's slide shows.  We recently moved only two houses away from our old house.  A family with a young girl moved into our old house and Meredith often goes to play with her at her house.  Meredith says that everytime she enters the old house, all of her memories from living in that house start playing.  All 11 years of memories from that house!  She described the memories as slides that appear only for a nanosecond each, but all together, they last for about an hour.  She can't control it--it's an automatic response that goes from start to finish.  I asked Meredith if she can turn those pictures off, but she responded, "It's like putting a dollar in a vending machine. Once you put it in, you can't take it out." 

I assume this automatic memory response happens to most people, but on a smaller scale?  Like whenever I smell curry, I think of my trip to India.  But my memories are pretty vague and definitely don't appear as a slide show in my mind.  Or whenever I use my teaspoon set when cooking, I think of the different advice my mother and my best friend's mother gave me about whether to pour the ingredient into the teaspoon over the batter or over the sink.  But triggering 11 years of memories from start to finish every time you walk into a childhood home?  That's amazing.

I asked Meredith what her first memory in this slide show was, and she said it was coming in to the house for the first time...as a baby.  OK, this is where my radar goes up and it really is hard for me to believe that.  She said she remembers me looking at her with bags under my eyes (hmmm, maybe she does remember!) and she remembers her Dad gazing at her with the extreme love of a new father.  Lastly, she describes leaning over her crib and watching her drool drop down to the floor.  Who knows.  I do find it interesting that she wasn't describing memories as if she filled in the blanks after seeing baby pictures of herself.  She was describing things that she saw from her point of view. 

Ironically, as I'm sitting here writing this, Meredith and I were looking at this photograph of her on the bookshelf.  A company had come into her preschool (without the parent's prior knowledge) and dressed the kids up for these slightly over-the-top pictures.  Meredith started telling me how she was really upset that day because people were dressing her in different clothes--besides the cowboy getup, she said they dressed her in fairy wings.  Again, I had no knowledge of this because I never even knew that this was taking place.  She said they made her sit on a ladder in front of really dark background walls, and she just didn't like it.  The thing about this is that she was only 2 1/2 years old when that picture was taken.  I didn't really think it was possible to remember things from that young of an age.  So, maybe there is something to what she says... 

I would love to hear if anyone else can take mental pictures or has memories from a very young age--say under 3 years old.  Please share your stories!   

Clockwise or Clockconfused?

My garage door opener bit the dust.  I saved it for my kids so they could take it apart---they love to explore stuff like that.  When I brought it out to work on, the first step was to take out a screw.  Meredith took on the task and started turning the screwdriver to the right to unscrew it.  My husband and I chimed in right away like all parents do in that sing-songy voice: "Lefty Loosey, Righty Tighty."  Meredith still has some difficulty with left vs. right.  To be oh, so helpful, we chimed in again, "Right is clockwise and left is counterclockwise."

Meredith told us that she never understood that, because clockwise goes right at the top of the clock, but then turns left at the bottom of the clock.  It took a second for me to understand what she meant, but then I could see her problem.  She had a very good point!  I guess everyone makes the assumption that when you say that clockwise is to the right you mean that at the top (12), you go right.

This was yet another example of how it is so easy to take things for granted and make incorrect assumptions.  It is also a great example of the strengths of a visual or dyslexic mind.  Meredith saw the clock work in a way that I never even thought of.  It is time for all kinds of minds to be valued for their unique strengths.  I know that more and more is being done to address educating all kinds of minds, but I think there is a very long way to go. 

This is why I am so thankful for those who acted boldly and started the Odyssey School in Austin, Texas, because they are the embodiment of this view.  The tagline for the School is that they serve "Bright Children Who Learn Differently."  Last week, Odyssey School posted something on their Facebook page that impressed me beyond description.  They understand the basics that some children learn differently and benefit from a different teaching environment than public schools.  But, they are so far beyond that.  They understand that they are not only addressing deficits...they are nuturing unique strengths in students that may have otherwise not be realized:

     "Working 'for the kids' sounds good, feels good, looks good. But we are also working for ourselves - these kids can make our world better."

Can You Turn Your Brain Off?

I wish I had the ability to "turn off" my brain like my daughter.  Here is the story on how I discovered how she turns her brain off.

I picked Meredith up from swim practice and she was very excited to tell me that she was able to hold her breath for a whole length of the pool for the first time.  Her Dad, being a former swimmer, taught her some techniques to help her accomplish this goal.  On the way home, she said, "It's really easy if you just put your mind to it...Actually, you just turn your mind off." 

Of course I then had to ask her if Merebith went to sleep when she turned her mind off.  Meredith said that actually, Merebith is given a tranquilizer to make her faint.  For Dogot, she presses his reset button because he'll be out of it for awhile.  I asked Meredith who was the one to give Merebith the tranquilizer shot.  She she that it was one of the "hands" with the Mickey Mouse gloves on it.  Meredith explained that basically she controls these mechanical hands when she needs to do something to Merebith or Dogot.  Ah, now I remember.  She talked about a hand coming out to tickle Merebith to give her the feeling of guilt.  This is one of the many mechanical hands that she uses in her mind.

Back to tranquilizing Merebith...  Meredith said that she laughs at Merebith when she is sleeping after being shot with the tranquilizer because she mumbles things like, "Dogot...Dogot, don't touch...the computer," and "What...should..I wear?"

Dogot, on the other hand, mumbles other words while he is sleeping: "Bark...bark...bark."  I don't mean bark like "ruff, ruff," I mean he actually says the word, "bark," because as you know, he is a robot after all.

Taken to Heart

Our family was watching TV and a person was talking about how he needed a heart transplant.  Meredith asked me if you are still the same person if you get an organ transplant.  I put two and two together and asked her, "Do you think you would lose all your feelings if you got a new heart?"  "Yes," she said, quite seriously.  There is that literal, pictorial mind again.  Sweet and sad at the same time that she wondered about that.  I was wondering how she pictured love residing in her heart.  Did she see literal pictures of feelings sitting in her heart like she sees Merebith in her brain?  I got the chance to ask her that yesterday and she thought about it for a minute and responded, "Mom, Merebith is only in my brain--she hasn't left Brainsburg [that's where Merebith lives and works] and gone other places in my body."

We had a lot of fun thinking about how Merebith could take some travels around Meredith's body.  Maybe she could jump in a gondola and travel around on the blood, visiting different organs.  But then Meredith say that every time she moved, Merebith would be tossed around against her body.  I guess this doesn't happen when Meredith is in her brain, because she isn't in Meredith's literal brain...she's really just in her mind. 

Look to Mental Pictures to Judge Emotional States

Yesterday, Meredith had a bad day and came home crying saying that she was depressed.  She even missed her soccer game because of it.  The problem was that I couldn't pinpoint the source of her emotions. It's not as simple as asking her what is wrong, because often she can't find a way to express her emotions and asking her sometimes just makes her that more upset. Usually she will show that there is a problem by crying, refusing to do anything I ask her to do, getting upset with any little inquiry or suggestion I make trying to help her, and being very over reactive to any minor stress. In these situations, the only thing that I have learned to do is to give her lots of space, remove any stresses, and provide opportunities to refuel her right brain like drawing, watching TV, listening to music, or playing with her dolls.

So, she watched lots of TV, drew me a picture, sang and danced in her room, and had lots of good snacks.  I didn't insist she go to her soccer game, do any chores, and made sure her little brother stayed far away.  After dinner, she came into my room and we were able to talk rationally about what was bothering her.  She had mentioned a few times last week that she was struggling with some math concepts--the relationships between fractions, decimals, and percents in particular--so I thought this could be it...especially since I knew these are generally difficult concepts for a visual thinker like Meredith to grasp.  And sure enough, that was it. 

Meredith said that she just doesn't get the concepts and can't process what her teaching is saying.  She has always struggled with these concepts in math.  She says that all she hears is "Blah, blah, blah."  Not in a disrespectful way at all--just that she literally can't process what she is hearing; it doesn't mean anything to her.

Over the last few months, I have learned a really good way to judge how Meredith is feeling or what problem she is experiencing by asking one simple question: "What's Merebith doing?"  Meredith told me that during math class last week, Merebith was in a coma being kept alive by a machine.  And because Merebith is Meredith's "Control Center," (according to Meredith) no learning was happening...the factory was closed essentially.  That gave me a pretty good idea about how math was going for her lately and what her emotional state was.  Merebith always displays an exaggerated version of how Meredith is feeling--she's like a cartoon character in that way.  This exaggeration is really helpful because it leaves me little doubt as to what Meredith is feeling!

I know that Meredith really enjoys geometry (hello again visual-spatial strength!) and so as a contrast, I asked her what Merebith does when she is doing geometry.  Meredith told me excitedly that Merebith wears a T-Shirt that has a lot of colorful shapes all over it and the words, "Math Rocks!"  She also wears a visor and has a pencil tucked behind her ear.  Usually, Merebith is furiously doing math on her paper because she loves it.

Continuing with this topic, I asked her if Merebith acts in any peculiar ways if she is having trouble or having a lot of success in other subjects at school.  The one thing she told me was that in Language Arts, a lot of the time Merebith has a frog stuck in her throat.  Merebith gets a frog stuck in her throat when Meredith is trying to figure out what a particular figure of speech means (Meredith understood the irony that Merebith is acting out a figure of speech during these times).  Until Meredith understands the figure of speech in question, Merebith continues to choke and Dogot uses the Heimlich Maneuver (in his robotic nature) to try to dislodge the frog.  Once Meredith understands what the figure of speech means, Dogot successfully dislodges the frog from Meredith's throat and it goes flying across the room and hits a wall--splat! 

At least I know that Meredith understands irony...