Swimming in Your Thoughts

Meredith just started swimming with a new swim team. She has always loved swimming, but it really has to be the right environment. For instance, the last team we joined practiced in an enormous indoor swim complex that was exceptionally loud and chaotic, which meant the coaches also yelled a lot. Not good. Then Meredith swam with a summer league where she enjoyed practice at the outdoor pool, but detested the meets which were loud, long, chaotic, unbearably hot...you get the picture.

So, she is so enjoying her new arrangement. There are maybe 10 kids at the most at her practices, swim meets are optional, it is at an outdoor, heated pool, and the coach is a very sweet mannered young woman. I'm shocked that she is actually wanting to practice three times per week because she complained so much in the past about going. Obviously the difference is the sensory environment. The...sensory...environment. Nine times out of ten the sensory environment is what stresses Meredith.

And that brings me to the point of swimming as an attractive sport for people like Meredith--highly visual thinkers who have weaker auditory systems (i.e., Mavericks). Swimming quiets down all the noise so the auditory system isn't working in overdrive. It eliminates visual distractions so the visual system isn't engaged in it's perpetual scanning mode. The elimination of the auditory and visual distractions allows you to enter that state-of-mind where you can freely wander through your thoughts (without being accussed of daydreaming). The physical aspect probably helps in engaging the right brain as well.  You don't usually get too cold or too hot.  Really, it is quite ideal for this breed.

I once was talking to my massage therapist during a massage (why do I always do that?!) and she clearly was a Maverick. She told me that her work place environment is perfect because it is dark, there is soft music, and she is doing something physical--all of which really allowed her mind to wander into places she enjoyed going to. She appeared to be so fullfilled with her work.


So, as always is the case, Merebith is following along with Meredith and has also started back with swimming, but she has her own Olympic sized pool. Guess who her coach is? Michael Phelps! Apparently he struts into practice wearing all eight of his gold medals around his neck.  Merebith loves swimming.

Dogot, meanwhile, has his own smaller pool filled with oil. His favorite thing to do is to lie on his back and spit mouthfuls of the oil up into the air. Can't you just picture it? Of course when he gets out, he is covered in oil. No problem!  He just rolls over to this huge blow-dryer looking machine and when he turns it on, it blows all the oil right off. How convenient!

Language in Pictures

For picture thinkers, the English language can present so many strange pictures.  Last week, Meredith told me that she hates homophones in particular--words that sound the same but have different meanings.  One example she gave me was "duty" vs. "dooty." (You can see where this is going, right?)  Meredith says that whenever she hears that a teacher is on "lunch duty," she gets a disturbing picture of the teacher on top of dooty. 

Last weekend, the students at Meredith's school ran a water stop for a local marathon. As we were driving to our volunteer spot early in the morning, we went over the instruction sheet. The instructions said that in addition to handing out water, a portion of the students were going to be on "Encouragement Duty."  It just took one look from me with my eyebrows raised for her to share what she pictured that to be.  She said she pictured a pile of dooty holding up signs and cheering.  Wouldn't THAT be something to laugh at!

Some people need more processing time when they are told something, when they read something, or when they see something.  But what many people probably don't realize is that for some people, it is not because they have "slow" processing speed.  Visual thinkers, for example, tend to have extremely FAST processing speeds.  It's just that they are processing something else--like why a pile of dooty would be acting like a cheerleader!!  They need to sort out the pictures from the words--something I think almost all of us take for granted, especially with the plethora of idioms and other figures of speech in the English language.

This reminds me of a really funny example given by a great blogger for Psychology Today, Lynne Soraya, who writes about life with Asperger's Syndrome.  In her post, she writes:

During a recent trip, running through the airport, I caught a brief glimpse of something that made me stop dead and burst out laughing. I know it must have seemed strange to those around me - but that's not unusual. The unique way my brain processes sensory inputs had played yet another trick on me.

Suitcase-bearing travelers made quick course corrections to navigate around me as I turned to re-examine the door I'd just passed through. A decal on the door read, "No smoking" and "Pets must be kept in cages." That wasn't what had made me laugh - what made me laugh was how my brain, desperately trying to make sense of the visual chaos of the airport, had translated it: "Smoking pets must be kept in cages."

Musical Paint Chips and Purple Textures

The most wonderful thing has happened.  Meredith has found a new friend who shares the same style of thinking as she does!  Her new friend also experiences a lot of synesthesia just like Meredith.  They are so happy together and are a wonderful support system for another.  How wonderful it must be for them.

It does make for some funny happenings, though.  For example, the two girls and I decided to start a small little business making crafts out of paint sample strips.  (I had thought the two girls would love this idea since they are crazy about color, probably due to their synesthesia.)  We went to Home Depot to collect some materials and spent a good amount of time looking at all the colors. 

It occurred to me while were were collecting our samples to ask Meredith whether she was hearing a lot of music because of all the color on the wall.  (I asked her about whether she heard music because one time she made a collage of paint chips and hung it up in her room.  She told me that she looked at it to hear the music when she wanted to relax.)  So, yes, Meredith said that she was indeed hearing lots of music.  We continued gathering our paint chips and then we came across the paint chip samples that were textured.  I saw Meredith's friend rubbing her fingers over a sample of textured beige paint and I asked her as well, "Are you hearing anything, seeing any color or anything with that texture?"  She responded, "It's purple." 

Sweat and Despair

Quick story: I was tucking Meredith into bed, still in my workout clothes from earlier in the day and she said, "Mom, you smell like sweat and despair, like you failed at lifting weights at the gym."  I just love that!

String Around Her Finger

Meredith was dosing off on the couch and snapped up and said, "Mom!  I just saw a ribbon on Merebith's finger and I remembered I have something to tell you.  I know where the missing remote control is."

Of course I had to ask more about this and Meredith explained that Merebith right now has about eight ribbons around her fingers to remind her of various things.  I asked her what colors they were.  (The ribbon about the remote control was tie-dye blue.)  I asked her how she knew what each color meant and she said that she has a chart in the files that tells her.

Whew!  From the outside looking in, that seems like a very convoluted way to remember things.  But on the other hand, I have no method whatsoever.  Maybe I'll give it a try.

"Potentially" the Right Answer

I was just reading an article talking about learning conversation scripts. That reminded me of a funny story.

I took Meredith to the doctor to check out something or the other, whatever it was I can't remember anymore. What I do remember is that the doctor asked Meredith whether something on her body hurt. Meredith answered, "potentially," not in a sarcastic way, but in a matter of fact manner.   The doctor and I laughed heartily and then explained to Meredith that the question the doctor asked was a "yes" or "no" question. Then we really had a belly laugh--Meredith responded by saying, "Whenever I ask my Dad a yes or no question, he answers 'potentially.'"

Taking Mental Pictures and Triggering Mental Slide Shows

Meredith says that she's been taking "pictures" ever since she can remember--that is, she takes a mental picture to remember something.   (To be more accurate, Merebith takes the picture with her camera as you probably guessed!)   It reminds me a lot of the children's book series, "Cam Jansen," where the main character is nicknamed "Cam" because she takes pictures of everything like a camera by blinking her eyes, which helps her in solving small mysteries.   Or on a grown up scale, I'm reminded of the new T.V. series, "Unforgettable," in which a detective uses her ability to remember everything she's seen and to take mental pictures of crime scenes to help solve crimes.  Maybe this ability to take pictures is more common than we realize.

One picture thinker I know defies the male stereotype by noticing any little difference in his house...like a new photo frame, a new pillow, or whether a knick knack moved to a new location.  He explains that all he does is compare the before and after pictures he has in his mind--like those "find the difference" games in magazines.

Apparently, some visual thinkers can combine all of these individual pictures (or "slides") to make up a slide show--sort of like swiping from photo to photo on an iPhone, only much, much faster.  If you saw the movie, "Temple Grandin," it would be very similar to the scene where she hears "shoes" and begins to see pictures of all the different kinds of shoes she's ever seen in a very fast slide show fashion. 

Here's an example of one of Meredith's slide shows.  We recently moved only two houses away from our old house.  A family with a young girl moved into our old house and Meredith often goes to play with her at her house.  Meredith says that everytime she enters the old house, all of her memories from living in that house start playing.  All 11 years of memories from that house!  She described the memories as slides that appear only for a nanosecond each, but all together, they last for about an hour.  She can't control it--it's an automatic response that goes from start to finish.  I asked Meredith if she can turn those pictures off, but she responded, "It's like putting a dollar in a vending machine. Once you put it in, you can't take it out." 

I assume this automatic memory response happens to most people, but on a smaller scale?  Like whenever I smell curry, I think of my trip to India.  But my memories are pretty vague and definitely don't appear as a slide show in my mind.  Or whenever I use my teaspoon set when cooking, I think of the different advice my mother and my best friend's mother gave me about whether to pour the ingredient into the teaspoon over the batter or over the sink.  But triggering 11 years of memories from start to finish every time you walk into a childhood home?  That's amazing.

I asked Meredith what her first memory in this slide show was, and she said it was coming in to the house for the first time...as a baby.  OK, this is where my radar goes up and it really is hard for me to believe that.  She said she remembers me looking at her with bags under my eyes (hmmm, maybe she does remember!) and she remembers her Dad gazing at her with the extreme love of a new father.  Lastly, she describes leaning over her crib and watching her drool drop down to the floor.  Who knows.  I do find it interesting that she wasn't describing memories as if she filled in the blanks after seeing baby pictures of herself.  She was describing things that she saw from her point of view. 

Ironically, as I'm sitting here writing this, Meredith and I were looking at this photograph of her on the bookshelf.  A company had come into her preschool (without the parent's prior knowledge) and dressed the kids up for these slightly over-the-top pictures.  Meredith started telling me how she was really upset that day because people were dressing her in different clothes--besides the cowboy getup, she said they dressed her in fairy wings.  Again, I had no knowledge of this because I never even knew that this was taking place.  She said they made her sit on a ladder in front of really dark background walls, and she just didn't like it.  The thing about this is that she was only 2 1/2 years old when that picture was taken.  I didn't really think it was possible to remember things from that young of an age.  So, maybe there is something to what she says... 

I would love to hear if anyone else can take mental pictures or has memories from a very young age--say under 3 years old.  Please share your stories!