psych!

Hey! The 200th blog post. Too bad it's just another humdrum one. :)

I realized the other day -- when I asked someone -- that I've never told y'all, or in this format, at least, what Lizzy and I are doing with GWU. Not that I really know, myself. But I'll be happy to tell you the little that I do know.

When she was born, despite the fact that we didn't go to a hospital -- oh! maybe it was those wacky folks at Kaiser P! -- we were put on some mass-mailing list that no new parent can escape. You've got a baby? Well, how 'bout 50 offers for Gerber life insurance? Or 279 opportunities to buy a few ounces of our overpriced baby formula, so you'll get hooked? That sort of thing.

One of our fabulous opportunities came from GWU -- would we be interested in helping them out on a study, someday? A study involving infants, or perhaps small children? I said, eh, sure. I'm all about helping out. And it sounded interesting. (Matt was none too eager, for the record. But I allowed him to have perhaps less say than he should've at this point in Lizzy's life.) So I mailed in my affirmative, and, after thinking they'd forgotten all about me, I received a call saying that someone from the -- I dunno, sociology, or mental health, or somesuch department -- was doing a long-term study on the effects of stress on children. STRESS ON CHILDREN. Perhaps that should have been my first clue that -- hey! -- they will probably be putting my child under some form of duress, should I choose to participate. But I thought, what can they do, ethically, really? Not much, right? So -- sure. Take my child. Put her under stress. Observe her. Learn. Improve humanity.

So we've been taking part in a long-term stress study. This has taken the form of three visits to GWU, of two or three hours each, and a few lengthy -- and I do mean, LENGTHY -- surveys. Part of the "fun" of it for me has been second-guessing what they're trying to get at with both the visit, and the survey, portion. You know how some surveys are mind-numbingly redundant? They're 100 questions long, but only because they ask you the same 20 or so questions four or five times, in different ways (are you often happy? Are you rarely in a good mood? That sort of thing), I suppose to catch you in some sort of lie. To yourself? To them? Who knows. I don't really care enough to backtrack and catch myself in inconsistencies. It takes too much time, as it is.

But back to the interesting part -- the actual visits. So they try to hook Lizzy up to all this equipment, allegedly to "monitor" her reactions to things. A cord around her belly, to measure her breathing; stickers under her shirt, to measure her heart rate; stickers under her eyes, to monitor her blinking. And they're (possibly) taping, and watching, from another room, as well. The most ridiculous of these has to be the space hat they have her wear. They stick this rubber, form-fitting thing over her head -- or, as in the case of yesterday's visit, they try to, but she flat-out refused, and bawled until we could calm her down, hatless -- and stick a lot of gel into certain points of it, supposedly so they can read certain brain waves or something at key parts? I don't know. I am highly skeptical of all this, especially the Space Hat. My theory is that they are secretly measuring either -- or all -- of her reactions to these things, or her and my interaction at these times, or my reaction to it all. That it's some sort of blind study. (because they've never mentioned this might be the case -- of course, because it would bias my reactions.) Someone at work said that maybe even the assistants who do the testing don't know. It's in the hands of some all-knowing psych prof. I think I can find out the results of the study after it's all over. Or maybe we'll never know.

So, after the hat/belt/patches are, or are not (as yesterday), administered, they do a saliva test -- have Lizzy chew on a piece of cotton, then extract some spit -- then they do some weird games with her. Such as, do some calming activities, then have a loud, staticky burst of noise come through the speaker. The activities are so repetitive that I wondered yesterday whether they were trying to goad her to impatience, and gauge the stress that way. But she didn't get impatient. Last time we were there -- when she was about 2 1/3 years old -- they had her doing puzzles that were a bit beyond her ability. But here's the thing -- they have me in the room at all times with her (a liability thing, someone else suggested? But it's still part of what makes me wonder if I, myself, am part of the study), and they told me not to help her. So I wonder if they're just testing how much I'll try to follow their commands, before I bend enough to help my obviously frustrated child complete a task that, ever before, I had totally helped her with. This time around -- yesterday's visit - I'm proud to say that she either could do everything they presented, or she just tried patiently and didn't get frustrated.

They also throw a couple of freaky fear elements in. In one case, they have a (normally) scary thing that I'm supposed to convince Lizzy to touch -- a gorilla mask head, for instance, or (yesterday) a really realistic motorized toy dinosaur -- or, they'll have one of the assistants dress up as a slightly weird, menacing character -- a clown the first time, and yesterday a pirate, complete with sword that she was waving around -- and I have to get Lizzy to try to say 'hello' to her, and touch something on her person. (the parrot on her wrist, for example.) Lizzy's not wild about those. But she's never a huge fan of adult strangers.

Lizzy and I do so much talking and explaining of things before and after any experience that it was weird to not really know what to say about this one, either before or after. Before, I simply said that we were going to play some games with some ladies who needed our help. After, I asked her if she thought it was fun. "Yes," she said. "I knew all the answers!" (there was a flash card portion that involved some stretches in thinking, such as, "Point to the photo that best describes 'decorated.' ") So I guess it couldn't have been TOO traumatic. The only part that had her stressed and crying, actually, was trying to put the monitoring equipment on.

It's rather mind-blowing to think that they have hundreds and hundreds of kids that they're following, over a five-year period. That hundreds and hundreds of parents are going along with this. I'm not the only nutty one! (we're subject No. 599.)
Fortunately, we have just one 'event' left -- a home visit when she's five. I'm thinking a home visit can't be TOO bad.