Ram was definitely delicate this morning. Even though he was able to watch our usual Thursday night comedy slot on BBC 2, he still couldn't get to sleep very well.
In fact he was so stressed that when Willow rang to see if Woody could come up Ram actually burst into tears and said no! I don't think he has ever said no to Woody dropping in. I knew it was probably the last time that they would see each other this summer as Woody was going to his grandparents for two weeks, but I couldn't tell Ram that because I knew it would put too much pressure on him.
It did show me just how stressed Ram has become. This needs some serious thought.
One good thing we did do this morning is start our next book which is The Science of Discworld. It is written by both Terry Pratchett and a couple of serious science writers. It is set up in a really fun way. One chapter is about the wizards on Discworld who are running an experiment in creating a new world which happens to be Round World, and the next chapter is about the science of our round world, and it alternates like that throughout the whole book.
I like the 'science of' books because they don't appear to be too educational, and yet you can learn an awful lot out of them. We have read a couple by Roger Highfield, The Science of Christmas and The Science of Harry Potter. We have also read Sophie's World which is a similar set up except it is a novel in which a philosopher teaches a girl about philosophy.
Enid Blyton, who was an educationalist first before becoming the author of some much children's fiction, must have known that this technique was a good one for teaching children without appearing to. She wrote several nature books in this style. One was about three children make friends with an old retired naturalist who takes them on two nature walks a month, describing to the children what they see. So from the point of view of Ram it is a work of fiction, but at the same time he learns by proxy the same things that the children in the story learn.
I am going to be learning a lot here too. It is a book aimed at adults, and is heavy going in places, but Ram seems to take it all in, and while I am reading to him in bed he is visibly calm and less stressed than when he is up.
Post script:
Last night after we turned the lights out, Ram started asking me about long chain hydrocarbons. I did do organic chemistry at university level, but that was 25 years ago and I haven't done anything since so I am a bit rusty. But not only that, we were both half asleep! So I was talking, and drifting close enough to sleep that I kept getting the valances of carbon and oxygen mixed up, and Ram was drifting close enough to sleep that he was mixing up what I was saying.
In the end as I was going to sleep, I heard him say, 'You can stop talking now mum. Oh, you already have!'
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