[brightball]

Analog clocks are interesting in that they exercise your brain when you read them. You have to do calculation (what is the number system for each hand), spatial reasoning (where is each hand) and categorization (what is each hand).

There’s a program called Arrowsmith that has a summer program called the Cognitive Intensive Program. It’s basically 3-4 hours a day of speed reading analog clock for 7 weeks. You start out at 2 handed and work up to 8 handed.

Changed my son’s life. He was a completely different student afterwards, for the better.

[msteffen]

This one? https://www.arrowsmith.ca/cip-arrowsmith-school

[komali2]

I kinda rabbit holed on this and it seems to be a very lucrative scam

https://medium.com/myndplan/myndplan-9961a084f750

[brightball]

All good points, particularly the control group piece. Scrutinizing control groups makes it easy to invalidate most studies about treatments in this space because control groups are so difficult to assemble. You should see the variance in autism spectrum.

It still worked for my son and my friend’s two children.

I have no affiliation with the program at all. I talk about it because it worked for us.

I latched onto it because I know the type of things that I have struggled with my entire life, but just learned a lot of coping mechanisms. I’m also very self aware. I pay a lot of attention to how my own brain works because of the need to develop those coping mechanisms. When I saw the full program, everything made perfect sense to me and I absolutely believe that it would have helped me when I was younger.

Had I been able to tolerate working half days for 7 weeks, I would have participated in the program myself.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Just $6k to change your life by speed reading clocks for 3 hours a day for two months...

Needless to say this trips my crank/cult smell meter.

[brightball]

That is the program, yes. I’m not trying to sell you on it, just sharing our experience.

I found out about it from one of my neighbors who has two children with dysgraphia who did the full time program for 3 years each. He tells everybody about it.

I toured that location when my son was going into 3rd grade and we ended up sending doing just the summer program after 7th grade. What I saw on the tour would have helped me when I was a kid and my sons brain seems to work just like mine.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

If you threatened me with 3+ hours a day of speed reading clocks instead of a normal summer I'd probably double down on effort too. And probably not in a way that's healthy long term.

[brightball]

Well, it wasn't a threat. He knew exactly what he'd been struggling with from 1st grade on (officially minor ADHD) and we were trying really hard to keep him off of medication. Since the program has finished he's asked to do it again several times (but we haven't because it's expensive). I've thought about teaching him programming by having him build his own clock trainer.

It's hard to explain to random people on the internet but here's the difference we saw.

- Went from doing homework everyday after school until 10pm to always being done by 6pm at the latest.

- Went from forgetting to turn in that same homework and sometimes major assignments frequently to rarely. 7th grade year he had over 20 zero's for assignments that he did and simply kept forgetting to turn in. 8th grade year he forgot two homeworks all year.

- Went from years of extreme disorganization to...still disorganized but a significant improvement.

- Went from uncertainty about whether he was going to be able to keep up with the workload in high school to, for lack of a better way of saying it, a star student. Teacher reports changed. GPA is a 3.7 (he's in 11th grade now). Juggling seasonal sports, Scouts, school, clubs, social life, honors/AP classes with no assistance from us at all.

It's hard for people to understand when you watch the same patterns and struggles for 6 or 7 years and then they just stop being a struggle. That 7th grade year, all that my wife and I did after we got home from work was try to make sure he would get his work done. It consumed our life to the point that, after me trying to convince my wife that this could help (because she was very skeptical too) that it was bad enough that she finally agreed it was worth a shot.

He and I were actually going to fly across the country to stay in Seattle for 7 weeks to have him do the program in person because I didn't think he would be able to pay attention to the virtual. The hotel that we had booked a couple of blocks from the school cancelled our reservation due to renovations and we ended up pivoting to the virtual program at the last minute. He did surprisingly well in the remote class format. The hotel was also close to Microsoft's campus and I got the impression that Microsoft had paid them to renovate to prepare for a lot of people they were going to have in town.

[komali2]

Well that is interesting and if you had results then that's all that matters for your family of course.

But sorry to clarify I'm still hung up on the "8 handed clock" thing - what does that mean? What information is displayed on the clocks other than hours, minutes, and seconds?

[komali2]

What information does an 8 handed clock convey?

[thrwaway55]

Time?

[komali2]

To the hundred millisecond?

[optionalsquid]

You could also include day, month, year, and how close we are to destroying the world [1].

[1] https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/

[1718627440]

> Analog clocks are interesting in that they exercise your brain when you read them. You have to do calculation

Interesting, for me it is the opposite. With a digital clock I need to do a division/comparison to know how much part of the day/hour has already passed. With an analog clock I can read a proportion directly.

[CGamesPlay]

Hours, minutes, seconds, degrees, arcminutes, arcseconds... I could try to read 6, but honestly I doubt I'd even be able to see the arcseconds hand, it would be moving so quickly.

[refibrillator]

This is hilarious, I don’t even want to know if it’s legit.