"Mango Full Waffs and Bably!"

Even before I started this blog, I would often journal about the highs and lows of my sleep deprived days, just as a means of survival. I'd forgotten I had so many of these notes on my phone, but I'd like to share them here every now and then because they paint a very raw portrait of what it was like in the moment of some of our darkest days, when, miraculously, there were still glimmers of joy and connection. It fascinates me to look back and see that the learning was ever-present in amongst the chaos and exhaustion. I'm glad I wrote these moments down, the good and the bad, because I'd forgotten many of them.

So, here's a positive story from September 2022, deep in E's Minecraft days. This example of his learning shows how coding not only inspired his creativity, but also allowed him to be so fully regulated, to rest in his silly, smart, connected, affectionate heartspace, from which he could better access basic needs. Giving him ample time to pursue special his interests, with the coregulatory presence of an attuned adult, if needed, is how I most often facilitate E's learning.

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It’s 6:30am on a Saturday morning. E is in the fully nocturnal part of his Non-24 cycle and has been awake all night. I was an overwhelmed mess of exhaustion when he woke up “for the day” at 11:30pm having been awake with one or both children almost continuously for the last 48 hours with just a few short naps to sustain me. Thankfully, since it was a Friday night and my husband knew he could sleep the next day, he offered to stay up with E overnight and I took a sleep aid to ease my anxiety (would E accept my husband overnight? Would my husband be able to stay awake? Would the sleep medicine I take work, but make me so groggy I would feel worse if I did end up having to get up in the middle of the night? Would B sleep through or not? Would she wake super early? So many unknowns and I was in a panicky state of exhaustion). But the one thing I did know was that I needed a full night’s sleep and my husband could help meet that need tonight, so I would go to bed.

I fell asleep and stayed asleep for 6.5 hours. It was bliss (even though I could have kept sleeping, I will appreciate a decent block of rest when I get it). E and my husband woke me at dawn when my husband couldn’t stay awake anymore and he passed the baton to me in our never-ending tag team parenting adventure. Thank goodness we have each other.

Dragging myself out of bed was tough, but E was thankfully able to recognize I needed some time/space to wake up properly. He is a very good sense of energy, and as he emerges out of his burnout crisis, he can handle periods without my constant presence for coregulation, so he asked for a bowl of chips and retreated to watch some YouTube in his room. I made coffee and while it brewed in the French press, I did a quick tidy up of the kitchen and living room so I could start my day without visual clutter from the previous night spilling over into my morning. Space tidied, coffee poured, E finished his snack and was ready for me to come play with him in his bedroom. I thanked him for giving me the space I needed to feel more awake, and he told me about his plan for our time together. He had an idea for a map he wanted to make in Minecraft, but he didn’t need my help yet, so I was given permission to work on my own world on the computer next to him in the gaming station we have set up in his room. We chatted and connected as we worked alongside each other and after about an hour, he was ready for my help.

From watching a video on YouTube, he knew it was possible to copy and paste Unicode symbols from Google into Minecraft to use in certain commands, and he wanted help figuring out how that worked. I had no idea what Unicode was or how to do this, but I was used to learning alongside him so I was up for the challenge. I was instructed to research it on my own computer and then report back.

After a few minutes of Googling and a few check ins about what exactly he was trying to do, we found a list of Unicode symbols and he recognized the one he wanted, §, which we learned is known as double S vertical or a section mark. He had seen on YouTube that when you use § in Minecraft and follow it with the letter k, you end up with scrambled, continuously changing text that looks cool and glitchy. With a little more research we learned this is called obfuscated text and is one of several formatting changes you can make using different letters after §; for example, §l for bold text or §m for strikethrough. Similarly, you can also use § followed by a different number to change the colour of the text you want to display. This is called formatting code – who knew?! Not me. It can be used to format text anywhere in Minecraft such as books, signs, title screens, in the chat, in command blocks, etc. With just this one formatting trick, I can see how the creative possibilities of special text are endless, and once again the learning potential of this game amazes me. For a child like E who thrives on creating rich digital worlds where he is in complete control, the section mark is now one more tool he can use to make his imagination come to life.

Satisfied his question of how to format the glitchy text had been answered and excited to use his newfound knowledge, E went back into the map he was creating and finished off a few last details using formatting code. I played a little more in my own survival world at the workstation beside him until he was ready for me to join his LAN world so we could try his newly created map together. Soon, it was show time.

E was brimming with pride over his work. In under an hour, inspired by an idea he saw about scrambled text, he had created a custom world where you spawn in a black box, and click a button to start playing through the map. You immediately start seeing text on the screen as if a personified version of The Void (the blank space outside Minecraft worlds) is talking to you, warning you about something, but the message gets ominously cut short. As you press more buttons and are teleported to new spaces, the story unfolds further and the player learns through reading the text (that E had written independently) that an evil villain, the Void Lord, is trying to take over The Void and make it spread over the whole world. Eventually, by using the §k formatting technique we learned, the text spoken by The Void Lord becomes increasingly garbled and eventually the player is swallowed up by the evil. I always enjoy seeing his creations come to life, but this map, in particular, for a 7-year-old Minecrafter, was masterful; the coding, the build, the story, it was all so well done. I was impressed by his work, and, more importantly, I knew he was, too.

Also impressive, was E's ability to deal with the inevitable bugs that come with coding. Since it was the first time playing through the map, there were a few technical glitches along the way, but E was able to address them patiently. For example, when we clicked one of the buttons and nothing happened, he said, in the playful voice of a mastermind, “Wait! Don’t move. I can fix this because I am a creative genius!” and he quickly switched back into creative mode to go check the code in his command blocks and fixed whatever it was in seconds. Going into a role to solve the problem is yet another example of equalizing to override the uncomfortable feelings that come along with an activated nervous system; the bug needing fixing is a demand, and also a mistake, two things that are hard for him because he is no longer in balance with the world around him. But, in this instance using the “creative genius” role, voice included, he can override his threat response.

It isn’t always so easy for him to address his mistakes; sometimes he gets stuck, and his frustration tolerance is so low that he deletes a project and attacks me because he feels so vulnerable that his ideas weren’t working the way he wanted. Depending on his overall nervous system activation and his level of tolerance, small setbacks can feel extremely threatening, causing him to go into fight-or-flight. Or sometimes, he wants to play Minecraft with me but doesn’t feel inspired to do anything specific and nothing we try feels right. Without an idea to ignite his imagination and lead him into his flow, he gets agitated, and the dysregulation can spill over to the whole day. Other times, our playtime together gets cut short because Bronwen wakes up from a nap or needs me for some other reason and that is very hard for Elias. I am not a stranger to coregulating him through difficult days that can result from any of these scenarios, and a myriad of others.

And then, sometimes, when all the stars of the universe align and I am rested, he is inspired, we have no interruptions, and solving problems is doable in a manageable time frame, being at his side to witness and support his self-directed learning is magical. In these moments, I am filled with hope and confidence that the skills he is learning, even if they are vastly different from what second graders would be learning in public school, are exactly right for the path he is on.

After we played through the map, I could tell he was so happy, still feeling the creative juices flowing perhaps, and he wanted to spend a few minutes role playing what kind of voices The Void and the villainous Void Leader would have. We each gave it our best coming up with voiceovers, laughed a lot, and decided that his were the best (naturally).

Then I was ready to move on so I said I was ready for breakfast and E said he wanted, “mango full waffs and bably.” We both giggled again. Coming up with silly words for things, especially food, is not only an enjoyable vocal stim for him, but also an equalizing behaviour that allows him to ask for something he needs without feeling a loss of autonomy. After so long learning about PDA neurobiology and deeply observing my son, I recognize now that there are so many levels to why he was able to ask for what he needed in this instance and access the food he wanted; he was at his most regulated because we had just spent an hour in playful, joyful connection over his deep interest, where he had my undivided attention for coregulation, allowing him to access his most regulated, creative state, I used a declarative statement to say I was going to the kitchen to get breakfast for myself, through this statement, he realized he too was hungry (which is a huge step for him because interoception can be a challenge), and his PDA neurobiology kicked in with silly words and syntax to equalize the power imbalance he was feeling at having to recognize the demand within his body for food, and ask me to get it for him. So, waffles and mango Bubly for breakfast it is! Every day does not go like this, but when it does, those golden homeschool moments feel so right, I know we are on the right path.