Spin Doctor

Miss8 has been having some trouble focusing lately.

On Thursday, I took her down the road to Brisbane Children's Hospital for some tests, where she was wired to a computer and put through her paces so they could measure her brainwaves. As I suspected, she had lots.

One of the tests involved her blowing into a handheld kiddy windmill to make it turn.

Miss8 was doing very well for the first minute and then she seemed to get bored and stopped.

"Keep going!" the Doctor called out.

"Don't stop," I told Miss8. "You'll have to start again."

She stated up again. And then stopped again until we encouraged her. As we progressed the stoppages occurred more and more frequently.

"It's too hard!" Miss8 complained. Too hard? Breathing? Honestly, how ridiculous.

"I'll help you," I told her. Kneeling beside Miss8 I began taking deep breaths and exhaling with her. For about thirty seconds we did this together, with Miss8's little windmill spinning dutifully.

And then I got a dizzy spell and fell on my bum. After that I let her press ahead by herself. Turns out I was wrong - breathing can be hard.

Tests done and nothing untoward revealed. Which is good and bad all at once - you naturally don't want there to be anything wrong, but then you want to know some answers so you can get on with fixing things.