Saturday, August 06, 2005

Pod person

My son has been going crazy for his iPod Shuffle lately. Wearing it and listening to music at bone-rattling volumes seems to have a proprioceptive sort of calming effect on him. Of course, I make him turn it down, because he's got enough problems without hearing loss; and I try to make sure that he doesn't listen to it for long hours straight, although the peace and quiet this buys me are powerful incentives to the contrary. But I'm sort of fascinated by the therapeutic and behavior-management possibilities of this little plastic gadget, particularly since technological solutions like GameBoys and computers have never held much interest for him. We've already had some success with him listening calmly during a usually disruptive doctor's appointment, and I'm thinking hard on a way to use it appropriately during our last remaining frontier of untamed behavioral uncontrol: Church. Do you think if I loaded it up with Gregorian chants, he could wear it to Mass?

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