Relativity and fasting.

Recently, my young sons have had the experience of fasting. They have endured it pretty well – Fintan, 8, and Ainan, 11, anyway, Tiarnan, 5, is too young to fast.

Fintan had an interesting take on the effects of fasting:

“When I fast, the day seems to last much longer.”

This remark had an added poignancy considering that he was in the middle of a fasting day at the time he made it!

He then went on to describe his perceptions of each fasting day. They did, indeed, seem to stretch out ahead of him. Fintan certainly did experience a "time dilation of fasting". It was funny since, for him, this was a first experience with the perceptual alteration of time – though for any adult, this will be an old experience and one well known.

It did seem, however, that the effect of fasting on his time sense was particularly pronounced and that it really DID make the days seem longer. I have no comparable experience of fasting, at his age, to come to my own assessment, however. As an adult, I find that fasting has no real effect on my time perception at all – perhaps because I am very used to fasting and it doesn’t bother me at all.

I should note that Fintan wasn’t bemoaning this elongation of his time perception...he was just observing that it was so. As a faster, he is very good. He doesn’t complain and just endures. This is characteristic of him when faced with any personal challenge – he just gets on with it, largely in silence. I think, in this way, fasting is a good challenge for young children – it strikes at the very heart of their natural instinct to eat and eat, non-stop all the junk they can possibly get their hands on. With fasting, they have to come to understand the value of food. In the case of Fintan, that seems very much tied up in time. Perhaps food is his clock and he has been measuring the days out by their meals. Stretch the meals and you are stretching Fintan’s day!

Well done, Fintan, on being able to fast so well. I am proud of your strength of will.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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Eternal Child Hunger Pangs

Today, I met Tiarnan, twenty months, on the stairs. He was going up, I was coming down.

He paused and looked up at me, as he drew level, and opened his mouth to show me a big splash of green, in there. "I'm eating.", he declared.

I could see that. I smiled, for it was the assured way that he said it, that I found humourous.

Then he said, to clarify his position: "I always eat."

He doesn't, really. He eats no more and no more often than any other child. He is not a one child representation of world hunger. Yet, it is interesting to note that, from his perspective, the regularity with which he eats constitutes "always eating".

It seems that he monitors himself and marks his own behaviour for frequency and habit. It is funny to see self-awareness in children so young because, somehow, it is unexpected. Though it may be hard to conceive it, they are much more self-aware and self-determining than one might at first allow. Yes, Tiarnan is a little toddler - but he is also a self-aware intelligence, quite capable of perceiving his own nature and place in the world. A lot goes into those first couple of years of life, I believe - a lot more than one might suppose.

As for Tiarnan, he has the eternal hunger of every child - and his pangs are in common with all little kids.

For me, the best point of this was a subtle one. It was green in his mouth...you try most kids to get to eat vegetables!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)