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String Theory

I have a teeshirt from a friend. It portrays a cat playing with a ball of string. It says “String Theory Research.”

Fleur asked: What does that say?

So, I read it. It didn’t register, so I started to explain:

Everything we touch and feel are made up of these teeny, tiny so small no one can even see them strings…

She changed the subject.

This interaction reminded me of a saying that if you cannot explain something to a 6 year old, then you do not really understand it. Some claim Einstein said. He said a certain topic was not teachable to undergraduates. Feynman was closer in saying if can’t explain in very simple terms, you don’t understand it.

25 years ago, I did some work in a classroom assisting the teacher. After teaching the Solar System, she lamented that I wasn’t doing Elementary Education because I was gifted at helping others understand. Others have said similar.

I love to explain things. So Fleur will roll her eyes. But some things will get through.

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Random toy noise

Back when before Fleur was born, Ada and I were shopping a store’s closing sale. Some of the toys were things she would not get until she was a year-ish.

A few things I resisted were noisy toys. My stance was: The adults in her life are going to get her those kinds of toys, so we don’t need to add to it. Aunts, uncles, and close friends will give her the unicorn that sings the most annoying song ever when you hit the button. Grandma will give her the karaoke Elsa. We won’t have to.

One thing to regret life because of others. Another because of ourselves.

That said, it hasn’t been too bad so far. Fleur plays with the thing hard for less than a week. She then returns to it for a small amount of time, diminishing over time.

From the stories my parents told and my vague recollections, I held on the noisy fire siren on a fireman’s hat my uncle gave me for weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeks. I even replaced the batteries, so my father glued that compartment shut. (I haven’t taught Fleur about batteries.)

The weirdest thing are that these toys wake up on their own. The karaoke Elsa, will ask if Fleur if wants to sing with her if the play stops. Putting the laundry basked on the couch squeezed the paw of Pandy, who started with the Gabby’s Dollhouse intro music. My home is a mine-field of things making noise.

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Ambush predator

Domesticated cats are not great ambush predators anymore. Mama cats don’t teach their kittens the skills.

I knew a few great ones in my life. Winnie would hang out in the middle of the yard below a power line. Mockingbirds and Blue Jay’s would hang out and screech, “Cat!” Over and over and over. Then get brave enough to dive. She act intimidated, which encouraged them to get closer. And then when they got close enough, she attacked and knocked them out of the sky. We found a few at the door every year.

Booker T’s owner kept a kill spreadsheet for all the things he brought home. She locked the cat door to be able to determine what he brought as he came insude after the baby snake.

We had a mouse and our cat didn’t even play with it just watched. The same as she does with insects.

With the two new kittens, there is a lot more play. Mostly, they lay in wait for one of the other two and attack.

I like to pick them up when they are waiting on ambushing another one. That gets the loudest protests.

And, I am teaching Fleur to use ambush tactics to get ahold of her kitten. Cats weren’t apex predators, so they are skittish around things like children who are loud and scary. Anyway, my hope lies in giving her the tools to hunt him down instead of being upset he isn’t in her lap. As a result she will stop being loud about it.

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Social development

I love watching Fleur work through challenging behavior with others. It reminds me how much more I need to work on myself.

Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com
  • Spending time with her older cousins, she doesn’t accept their unfair behavior.
  • She used to just cry. A year ago, she would tell me “no, sir!” Or sometimes just cry. Now often she has the vocabulary to tell me after getting over the crying. We have work to do getting to the point of expressing the need instead of crying. Baby steps.
  • There is also this sense of not wanting to disappoint us. So, when she does something wrong, she experiments with deceptions. Some of my favorites:
    • The stuffie did it.
    • The stuffie told me to do it.
    • It was her cousin.

There is also the good:

  • Organizing play dates. When Fleur and Lyra (the best friend from the Friendship post) get picked up at the same time, they emerge from the building, they tell both parents their plan. It might be dinner or the park.
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Adding ABCs

The Dr. Seuss ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! is a fun tongue twister to read to Fleur.

Since she is starting to read, I wanted to help associate the letters with things more… tangible.

So, when it returned to a bedtime reading staple the other day, I included her name in the appropriate letter. She commented about it, so the next time I included her cousin. She commented about both.

Now, I as I read, I am trying to anticipate the next letter and include for her a person’s name in the appropriate letter. The reaction tells me she is engaged more than when I read it without the personal connection.

Hopefully, that game is the kind of brain game appropriate to staving off my own impending dementia? I’m multi-tasking reading and also searching for names.

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Game: Superwoman

DragonCon 2011 cosplay girl

Back in May, I posted Game: stuntwoman where described it as “I started off throwing her Superwoman style.” What’s funny is I don’t remember it. Until recently, it had to be:

  1. She curls up in a ball. I support her back and throw her.
  2. I hold her by the legs upside and swing her.

In both scenarios she lands on the bed.

I guess we’ve gone full circle because now she lays flat so I hold her chest and thighs for me to throw her on the bed.

  • Ball: stuntwoman
  • Legs: stuntwoman extreme
  • Flat: Superwoman

Either way, I get in a work out.

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Hawkboy

Ada took Fleur to the animal shelter because they had an adoption event. She was specifically interested in one named Hawkeye.

Hawkeye

Funnily enough, she ended up not being large enough to get spayed, so Ada opted to bring the whole litter home with us. So we had four kittens for a month.

Through that ordeal, Ada fell in love with one and Fleur with another. So, we gained two.

Hawkeye and Hulk went on to a new home.

During their time with us, the big cousin Sophie started calling Hawkeye: “Hawkboy”. Okaaaay. Fleur picked up on it too. I gave up trying to correct them when it became clearer she wasn’t going to stay with us. It was wrong for a couple reasons:

  1. Wrong sex
  2. Wrong comic universe (Hawkeye is Marvel.† Hawkman is DC.)

† The Hawkeye television series passed the mantel from Clint Barton to Kate Bishop.

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Classical conditioned

We have kittens. A mistake I have noticed is how we fed them. By preparing their food at the same spot in the kitchen, they associate movement to that spot with feeding them. So come running. At least 10 tines a day.

The adult cat associates feeding with the sunroom where we have her stay overnight. Originally that was because we needed her not to wake us in the middle of the night. This was intentional behavior modification to make it easier to get her settled. She makes clear she wants food. I go to the sunroom.

Of late, she resists because she prefers the kitten food. So, I give her treats… in the sunroom.

Most people associate Pavlov and his dog with Classical Conditioning. The salivation is a great image and story.

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Societal pressure for extraversion

This paper struck me as interesting. I saw it from Adam Grant on social media. But, it got me thinking.

Our results suggest that mothers preferred extraversion over intelligence and conscientiousness, despite their strong, empirically demonstrated predictive validity for important life outcomes.

Rachel M. Latham, Sophie von Stumm, Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 119, 2017, Pages 262-265, ISSN 0191-8869. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917304865

I, personally, test as a strong introvert. Like, over 90% on every test since the 80s.

At the same time, I am well aware society values extraversion. For 30 years, I have mostly faked not being an introvert. It is hard. It takes a toll. Often enough, the faking it makes me exhausted.

This started before I knew research…

  • Extraverts are more popular.
  • Extraverts get better jobs and promotions.

No matter how high my intelligence and consciousness, extraversion allows others to discover it. So. It should be ranked higher.

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Spatial ability can influence verbal ability

As a child, I loved LEGOs and spent hours upon hours building with them. We got Fleur Megablocks early and she aspired to build towers taller than her. I tried getting her in Duplos (toddler LEGOs), only to find her interested in the Minifig(ure)s. For the past 6 months she has really been interested in Magna-Tiles to build zoos for toy animals and houses for her Minifigs.

Coincidentally, she has also had a verbal explosion about the same time.

And I’ve run across a study looking at bleed over affects spatial ability into the verbal domain. These are older students, getting new lessons on spatial ability who then showed skill gains in verbal reasoning backed by changes in the brain through longitudinal fMRI scans.

The more students improved on spatial scanning and mental rotation, abilities that are specifically theorized to support mental modeling, the more they improved on verbal reasoning, and improvement on spatial scanning mediated the association of the spatial curriculum to improved verbal reasoning.

Robert A. Cortes et al. Transfer from spatial education to verbal reasoning and prediction of transfer from learning-related neural change. Science Advances, 8, 32. 2022. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/sciadv.abo3555

This might be something akin to findings that students who struggle with reading find word problems more difficult, so improving reading also improves math ability. The mental modeling aspect is truly fascinating.

The SAT wants verbal and math to be separate things, but we keep finding that they are subtly linked.