Mom & Me Four Archive

    Since company left last Saturday, Mom has played with the device almost every day. She never remembers it or suggests it. When I suggest it, the name means nothing to her but after a short explanation she goes along with the idea.
    Sometimes, once she's started, she'll say, "Oh! I've played this before!" Sometimes she'll say, "This looks interesting," as though this is her first time at it. Either way, I always explain the device to her and show her how to play the various games.
    She doesn't play most of the games accurately, but she isn't aware of this. The two she plays accurately are the simple math game and the reading aloud game. She continues to play all the games with which she's presented (the software introduces new games almost every time she plays), regardless.
    I remain a distant-to-close coach when she's using the device. If she plays a game wrong (which is often) I'll try once to explain how to play the game correctly without saying she's playing it wrong. If she doesn't get it, I stop coaching and let her play the game however she wants. The proctor of the game, Dr. Kawashima, is especially forgiving, too, and congratulates her often for simply "being there".
    She continues to find it astonishing that the game remembers her name, especially during those times when she's sure she's never played it. I think this may be one of the reasons the device fascinates her...it always knows her name, addresses her and says something pleasant and encouraging to her.
    She usually spends about half an hour playing before she tires of it. On Wednesday of this week, though, in the evening, she spent forty-five minutes at it.
    I think what she likes best about the device is that it is a computer device. It appeals to her desire to keep up with the latest gadgets. About every other time she plays it she'll say to me, "You should get yourself one of these. I think you'd enjoy it," at which point I show her my profile. I actually haven't played the game since I set up my profile and checked it out for Mom's usage. The reason I haven't played is that it requires enough concentration so that when my mother's awake and I'm keeping half of all my senses trained on her I do poorly on the games. When she's asleep and I'm awake I always have other things I'd rather do or need to do.
    I don't bother to check her Brain Age. Sometimes she'll click into the Brain Age test but, when she does, I treat it like any other game: I coach her a bit, get her going and walk away to do other things, keeping my ears open for difficulties she might run into. So far, this has meant that she's finished the Brain Age test and she's moved onto another game before I am back to see the results.
    I will, of course, continue to suggest the game almost daily and walk her through it each time until she gets to the place where it makes no sense to her, if that day ever comes. I have no idea if it's "improving" her mental capacity. In her case, it's impossible to tell. After every session, though, she's revved, talkative and she has yet to decide to take a nap immediately after the game, which means it hasn't tired her.
    Hmmm...something just occurred to me. Flash back to the phrase above, "...when my mother's awake and I'm keeping half of all my senses trained on her I do poorly on the games." As I was reviewing the sentence while continuing to write, I suddenly made a connection with Dr. Vitaliano's cognitive testing of intense needs caregivers to Ancient Ones (see immediately previous post). Perhaps the "cognitive problems" Dr. Vitaliano notices in caregivers aren't cognitive problems but, rather, a cognitive state in which one's concentration is mostly trained upon one item, in this case the care recipient, so that when the caregiver is tested for brain function, the brain says, "OK. What I'm focussed on (the care recipient) is more important than this little test. No reason to switch concentration. I'll apportion only a little attention to this." It may seem that this condition could be easily overcome by separating the caregiver from the care recipient for a period of time, either when the care recipient is asleep or being cared for by someone else while the caregiver is out of the home. I can tell you, though, even, and maybe especially, during these times, the caregiver is usually super-tuned to the care recipient. When an alternate is caring for the recipient, the caregiver remains engaged with the care recipient, usually on a deep level that might be considered akin to ESP (which, of course, hasn't been "scientificially" documented, probably won't be for some time, and is believed to be a myth rather than a reality), in order to be available for what would be considered inexplicable and, therefore, nonexistent signals that the caregiver (specifically the primary caregiver) is needed.
    Maybe it isn't that caregivers are cognitively impaired, maybe it's that they are continually cognitively super-engaged in the one area that most needs their attention, thus, the brain downgrades all other bids for attention and apportions much less power to all other bids. Perhaps, as well, this is not an "impairment". It's possible that our brains are capable of operating this way for long periods of time without deleterious affect to any part of the brain. Thus, the labeled, "impairment" is actually a case where the brain is presented with a bid for attention that it deems to be insignificant, like a brain function measurement test. Sort of like sorting the junk ads out of the mail and discarding them unopened.
    I wonder: Suppose these brain function measurement tests were redevised to test the brain's level of engagement with caregiving and the care recipient and its level of functioning within this engagement (is this even possible?). Would caregivers then score a great deal higher on these cognitive tests?
    Just a thought.
    Later.