A random act of kindness

A-One's laptop died today.  He did his brain training in the study, drawing my attention to the cafe (memory) game where he's surging forward.  Only two PBs today, but his overall BPI is now almost at the 10th percentile for his age group, which is a good advance on when he started.

Mum: Did you have music going?

A-One: Yes, but I'm not paying attention to it.

Mum: Did the music have lyrics?

A-One: Yes.


As he was sitting at the computer, he mentioned that he gave some money to a couple yesterday near his work.

They were asking people on the street for money. From Toowoomba, they had a sick baby and were just back from the hospital. Having borrowed a car which had run out of petrol, they couldn't raise the owner. A-One gave them $10.

A-One: That was kinda like a random act of kindness wasn't it Mum?

Mum: Yes, it was, and very good of you.  Do you think they were genuine?

A-One: I don't think they were playing me, Mum.  She looked really worried. The baby was in a pram, although I didn't quite see the baby.

...

Before we started the clocks exercise we talked about a daily routine for his brain training.  He is still unwilling to agree to a set time even though he follows a pretty consistent routine from 2pm onwards: shower, pack his bag for work, eat, spare time, clean teeth, head off to the bus.

Mum: So what about setting a time for brain training?

A-One: Well, clearly it needs to be before 2pm.  But I can't say a time, because there are other things I want to do too.

Mum: How much time do you want to allow for the other things, so that we can work backwards to figure out when you need to wake up?

A-One:  I don't want to talk about this - it's wasting time.  Let's just get this over and done with so I can do other things.

He whizzed through one page and would go no further.

Forging new neural pathways requires significantly more than 20-30 minutes per day.  At this stage, if I mention the 3-4 hours per day that is spent at Arrowsmith schools, I expect I'd see the heels dig in big time.