Working Memory, Part 2

Inspired by yesterday's experiment and your comments on it, I did a very short experiment with Sweet M today. The question we are exploring: Do we have a language processing problem or an auditory processing problem?

I wrote three sentences in her workbook:

I asked her to read them to me, which she did with ease, if not with prosody.

Then I closed the book, and asked her what color the house was.

She acted as though I was asking her what we used to call a no-brainer. Blue. A-duh.

Eureka!

Tomorrow I'll try to do the experiment that Kristina suggested, and see how it works if she can read silently. I actually don't know if she knows how to read silently yet, so that will be interesting. Apparently silent reading is a relatively recent inventions among we humans . . . Greek scribes and such used to read everything aloud and libraries were very noisy places because everyone was talking to themselves. Sort of like singing along with your iPod.

Meanwhile, Sweet M brought these drawings home from school. Those of you who are regular visitors at Autism's Edges will be familiar with the house motif . . .


I asked her about the green, and she said, "Oh, it's a tree house."

"Cool. Who gets to live there?"

"No one. It's for a club."

So, I suspect, social anxiety, and the desire for some sort of community, continues unabated. I feel as though I have to figure out something about this . . . We're more than half way through the school year and she's not had one playdate invitation, and has not been invited to a single birthday party. That is quite the change from last year, and worries me more than I can say.

In the same portfolio, there was also this image of a mother bird roosting — Sweet M pointed out that the six eggs are cracked and so just about to hatch — and I wonder to what extent it's a portrait of her me, having put all of my proverbial eggs in the one basket of one sweet child. I want every synapse to to have a chance to bloom.

On the other hand, check out the tag on the bird's leg. She told me scientists are following the bird. And perhaps we are, with all these tests and experiments.

Is the bird crying, or sweating, or are those just a couple of loose feathers?