What Does IM Feel Like?

Many people who watch others do IM think it looks easy. You just clap your hands or stomp your feet to a beat. How hard can that be?! I make IM fun, too, as fun as I possibly can. I need to! Children need to find success with the program to stay engaged. From a distance, it may look like the children just come and "play" all day. But when I hook up onlookers to the machine and let them have a go at it, almost every one is surprised at how much focus, attention, and energy the program takes. Often times they'll say, "Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be!" Looks can be deceiving. You need to try it!

Personally, when I went through IM, after every session I felt like I had just finished a day of college finals - you know - your brain feels squishy and spent. Think about the process.

In IM, a person is given a goal: To move to the beat. Upon clapping, they receive feedback as to how close they were to the beat and what correction they need to do to be more successful. They then have to process that information very quickly, adjust accordingly, and attempt to reach the next goal more accurately, all with in one second.

Now add the emotional piece. If your choice proved to be erroneous (you hit farther off the beat than you expected to) then you will have an immediate emotional response to that error. Some children have quick impulse to give up. They only want to do something if they can do it well the first time. For these students I have to catch and praise them very early to keep them engaged. On the other end of the spectrum, if you hit exactly on for a bit, often you have an emotional reaction of excitement that can cause you to lose focus too. All emotions need to be checked and controlled - not easy for some people. When individuals reach "mastery" level on a task - about 18 ms or lower, they enter a very unique and positive mental state of calm intense focus with exceptional control of any emotions. At this point you enter an almost meditative state.

Back to the challenge of IM tasks, now we add distractions. I may be talking, someone else is clapping slightly different than you, there's visual movement outside the window. Distractions can be added to load the tasks as children become more proficient. One IM provider said she doesn't graduate her students until the siblings can come in and play beside the child while the child maintains their best performance. This will help children stay focused in the classroom when their neighbor gets up to sharpen a pencil or the computer is on across the room.

We're not done yet, add physical fatigue. At first you are only stringing together about 100 to 300 decisions/hits, but I am always working towards longer and longer tasks. This lengthens your focus time. Functionally I want a kindergartner to be able to sit and do about 10 minutes of work before their brain needs a break, by 4th grade this is maybe closer to 25 or 30 minutes, in high school 45 minutes or so. This length of focus time requires one to two thousand hits/decisions strung together. Please don't share these numbers with your child. Even the thought of a 1000 rep task overwhelms many children early on. I get them up there, but let me do it. :). I offer bigger prizes and tell them how awesome they are so most children will push themselves physically. Every child is different and I adjust accordingly. In the end most children make it up to the focus length that I believe is appropriate for their age.

The whole IM picture put together: You make a decision, move accordingly, receive the feedback, deal with the emotional response and the distractions, every second, all while analyzing the feedback, adjusting your next hit accordingly, for increasing lengths of time all while your muscles are aching. The amazing part is, with a few prizes and a quick smile, they love it - usually.

I often ask the children at the end of the day if their brain feels squishy. If the child says yes, I give them an excited high five and say, 'Good for you! Awesome! Great Job!' I know they worked VERY hard that day! IM is harder than it looks! Sometimes children are having so much fun, they don't realize how hard it is! Shhh, let's keep this part of IM our little adult secret! But if your child mentions it's hard, acknowledge that she/he is telling you the truth, but then quickly shift the focus on to the fun breaks and great prizes!