My kids both experience the same thing, Flint. For Minifob, it's only sleeping--he can't fall sleep unless there is loud music playing to drown out his racing thoughts. For Minifobette, it's basically everything. She has to constantly have something going on in the background in order to focus.

Me, I'm the opposite. I work best in total silence, and even if I'm not working, I need a certain number of silent hours in the day or I start to get very cranky. All sound is a massive distraction.

Clodfobble wrote:

My kids both experience the same thing, Flint. For Minifob, it's only sleeping--he can't fall sleep unless there is loud music playing to drown out his racing thoughts. For Minifobette, it's basically everything. She has to constantly have something going on in the background in order to focus.

Me, I'm the opposite. I work best in total silence, and even if I'm not working, I need a certain number of silent hours in the day or I start to get very cranky. All sound is a massive distraction.

It's reassuring to hear that this is a "real thing" (because it's only true if someone confirms it independently), and doubly heartening to hear the little ones are experiencing a better, more understanding world than when I was a kid. As for silence, for me silence is the mind killer. I have a box fan running in my room, pointed at the wall.

griff wrote:

This is interesting. It sounds like you're saying you have a neural network engaged in YouTube science, which maybe had been activated by something unproductive interfering with your work networks. Brains are wild. We could all use ours better.

This talk of neural network engagement reminds me, when all of my siblings used to play Hell at my Dad's house (card game where everyone races to play on the same solitaire piles in the middle of the table), we used to laugh about how the craziest sh!t comes out of your mouth when your mind is completely engaged by the requirements of this game-- memorization, monitoring, and updating of multiple numerical values while simultaneously maintaining maximum physical reflexes and response time. The part of your brain that normally monitors what is coming out of your mouth doesn't have enough RAM and just shuts down.
 

griff wrote:

I just came from the home of a 33 month old boy who initially, about a year ago, didn't vocalize or engage with people. After a fair amount of failure I expanded singing with him, all the classic kid songs. He initially just locked in his attention, then he filled in when I left him hanging on a word, then we learned the alphabet song, then we learned an animal name for each letter... now he is reading, talking, following directions. My mind is blown.

So heartwarming! Well done, Griff x
And the education bigwigs in UK say that music is just an extra ...

Last edited by Limey (3/29/2022 4:51 pm)

Thank God for ppl like Griff.







And John Prine.
 

Srsly, man, you have a gift, I believe.