Mom & Me Four Archive

    Uh oh, I thought, here it comes. Mom had been quietly, concentratedly working her way through the non-vocal Brain Age initial test. I'd been attempting to watch over her shoulder but LCD screens weren't meant for communal viewing. I could see her writing the digital answers on the right screen to the simple math problems on the left screen. Sometimes she'd lean her fingernails against the screen and those would register as marks and incorrect answers; or her hand would shake a little trying to write with the stylus without leaning against the console, which she was holding upright in her left hand, the computer would misinterpret her scribble and would "mark" one of her responses wrong. She'd argue with it, then notice how the computer had interpreted her chicken scratch. I only had to clue her into this once, although she went through several trials and errors with it. In the meantime, of course, she was racking up time, but I didn't bother her about this.
    She finished the written test, sat back in her rocker and sighed. I thought the sigh was a satisfied one. Then, she asked The Cost Question.
    I didn't brush it aside. "All together, Mom, after the rebate comes through, including shipping, we will have spent $95.00."
    "Oh!" she said. "That's not bad! I'll tell you what. I'll give you the money and you get me one of these things."
    "Mom," I said, gently, "this one is yours. I bought it for you."
    "Oh! My goodness, child! How did you know I'd like this?"
    "Well, I wasn't sure, but it seemed like something you'd find interesting." It sounded like she was not connecting her yesterday viewing of the 60 Minutes segment (which I decided against showing again today). No need to remind her. The story is never as impressive as the actual experience.
    Getting started was a little iffy. Instead of going directly to "Daily Training", I thought it would be a good idea to choose "Quick Brain Age" (I think that's what it's called), in which nothing is written in stone. Good idea. We discovered, from the Brain Age test in that section, that audio answers were not going to work with Mom. Either she'd talk too much or her coughing and throat clearing would be interpreted as speech. At any rate, that particular test was beyond her (which, I imagine, says something about her actual brain age). The test consists of several names for colors written in one of four colors of type: Yellow, Red, Blue or Black. As the names for the colors come up, you are supposed to say the name of the color of the type. It took a lot of coaching for Mom to even get a glimmer of what was required. At one point I had so confused her that I wasn't sure whether she was actually seeing a colored screen or a black and white one. Anyway, from the experience on that test, which was frustrating for both of us, although she did pick up the skill of clicking through screens with the stylus rather well and accomodated quickly to clicking the upper right green button to continue, I realized that when she set up a profile under the "Daily Training" section, it would be best if she answered, when asked, that she doesn't speak. Rather than explain all this to her, I just clicked her through that. The math test was clearly more up her alley. She played it twice, noticeably increasing her facility with the stylus through both runs.
    "You know," she said, "someone could just fold this up and take it along in their pocket!"
    "You bet," I said. At this point I'm still not sure if she'll be able to play it unsupervised, but I don't care. She clearly loved it. "We'll get you squared away on it and you can play it anytime."
    "But, I still think we should get another. Don't you want this one?"
    "Mom, this allows for four players."
    "But what if I'm playing it and you want to play?"
    Oh! Yes! Excellent sign! "Mom, I've got all kinds of things I can be doing, computer things. Believe me, I won't begrudge you your time on it."
    Later, before laying down for a nap (just as a thunderstorm is preparing to sweep through our area), I mentioned that there are other games that can be played on this console.
    "Oh," she said, "I'd like to try some of those games."
    I'll just bet there are a few she'd enjoy and wouldn't find frustrating.
    A few technical aspects of the game for Ancient Ones and Those Demented:

• LCD screens are tricky. My mother can be said to have gotten the hang of it within the game, which has very clear, spacey screens and is easy to read, but she claimed she couldn't see anything through the console set-up screens, and she probably couldn't. The printing was small, light and the coloring was not definite.
• Stylus behavior was a breeze, once I told her to hold it like a paint brush, the object being, of course, that one doesn't lean on one's canvas when one is painting. She was a little shaky, at first, but got the hang of it pretty quickly. It was necessary to tell her:
  • not to tap the end of the stylus on the table;
  • not to play with the tip of the stylus in any way (she was rubbing it with her finger);
  • that her fingernails will register as a stylus if she scrapes them across the screen;
  • Not to hold the stylus on the screen for longer than it takes to touch a selection, or she'll scroll through a bunch of screens and have no idea where she is or what's going on with the game;
  • that she needs to learn to hold the console so that she doesn't "lean" on any of the buttons with her fingers.
• The game, itself, seems designed to catch and hold the attention of the player, especially a player of older years. It's very clean and not hard to enter. My mother was almost at sea with the console set-up, but she led herself through the game set-up, once she got the hang of looking for the guy on the left screen and the green "More" or "Select" button to the upper right of the right screen. I was, frankly, surprised that she caught on as quickly as she did, although her failure at the oral test did not surprise me. It does the game credit that it has an alternative.
• An interesting oddity: I had already set the date on the device, but the game asks every new profile to confirm it. My mother read it easily then studied it for a moment, then turned to me and said, "My, is it really June?"
      "Yup," I said, wondering, briefly, why she didn't express surprise over the year, "and tomorrow is Rabbit, Rabbit Day for July."
      "I didn't realize it was getting that late," she said.

    When Mom realized that she was going to "get this thing" and enjoy it, she became so excited that, at one point, she shook. It was very gratifying! She used a lot of concentration, both in playing it and understanding what she was doing, thus, it exhausted her (mental energy is energy), but she decided to nap about in line with her usual nap time.
    Her experience with it, I am sure, has a great deal to do with her having Dementia-Lite, with emphasis on the "Lite", and, I think, also has something to do with her untroubled spirit in regard to her dementia, light or not. It occurred to me, as I watched her make sense of the tools, that one has to have retained some simple self-confidence to get satisfaction from a game like this. They also have to have a sense of "the marvelous" about them, still, a willingness to become excited about what exists and what's possible. My mother, too, has always been a "gadget" person, which is amazing considering that, until she went to college, all her living situations were primarily without electricity and running water. World War II, I think, created The Gadget Generation. My mother also has taken pride in collecting and operating technical gadgets ahead of me. She is beyond operating most of them even with assistance, now, but still sees the sense in them and the need for new gadgets. I'm, frankly, surprised and pleased that a fun gadget exists that she is going to enjoy and with which she'll be able to interact.
    I expect that, most of the time, anyway, light supervision will be required; I'll need to be aware of what she's doing in the game in case she gets stuck or doesn't realize she's at a crossroads.
    Oh, and, her brain age (the audio section became confused and couldn't measure her brain age)? 80. Younger than her age, the game said, but could benefit from some exercise. All in all, she did better than me!
    Later.