To Start Where the Kid Is

Conrad Ho

It was a cool spring night in early March 2005. Heavy fog was all around our apartment when Conrad was telling Sum, our younger son, a story before bed. It was from a child’s bedtime story book, the name of which happened to have seven words. Conrad read out the name once and waited for Sum to read out, too.

It was a pre-story-telling ritual which both sons had been enjoying. Conrad patiently waited and waited. No response. Sum was looking everywhere but not at the words. Conrad was annoyed since it was Sum who engaged him tonight for story-telling. He SHOULD pay attention! Conrad repeatedly read out the words with long pauses in between, to allow time for Sum to hear the words and read them out. Still, Sum was seemingly wandering in his thoughts and not focusing on the current task at hand.

At last, Conrad lost patience and spoke loudly at him. Amy heard it and intervened. She finger-pointed at the first word and read it out. Sum miraculously “came back?from his thoughts and promptly followed! They continued with the process several rounds and Sum eventually could read out all seven words in a row. How satisfied his look was after successfully completing this task!

Conrad was struck dumb. He felt he had learnt something important, though he could not articulate it right away. He retired to watching TV while he was multi-tasking to hear how the story-telling was proceeding. After five minutes, the idea crystallized.

Sum was at this point unable to process seven pieces of incoming verbal information at a very short time, the time that Conrad needed to read the seven words out. His system was desperately working hard to make sense out of Conrad’s reading but was hopelessly overwhelmed by the task. Instead of wandering in his thoughts, which was Conrad’s interpretation of the situation then, he was gathering his thoughts. He was not paying attention externally because he was working at it internally.

Conrad felt grateful to Sum, who had so obediently working at his best to do a task unreasonably demanding of him. What might have happened if Sum chose to refuse? Probably, he would be even more fiercely scolded at. Conrad at that time was definitely not having the appropriate sensitivity to come up with the most fruitful action, which is to start where the kid is, not where the parent would like his kid to be.