How MyLot and an acting out kid made me an extra seven dollars and fifty cents or so today.

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I worked from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM at my friend's preschool today. I am a child psychologist who is good with kids who act out. As I have written about before, I am currently working with a kid who curses out his teacher in Spanish when she tries to get him to take a nap. Today, I was asked to stay late to get him to sleep. I patted his back to the rhythm of the sleepy music she was playing on the little boom box. I told him that was what I was going to do. He fell asleep to a piece that was in 3/4 time within a few minutes. I let him slide through that first bit of REM sleep into deep sleep and then went home. While patting his back, I thought up a hypothesis about why a slow beat on ones back to a 3/4 time tune would help a kid sleep. It has to do with the rhythm of a mother's heartbeat when one is in the womb. Have you read "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin? He is a neurologist who studies the psychology of music as well. I have met him and conversed with him a couple of times. I may run my "theory" by him and see what he thinks. I will summarize thus: If you have a kid who struggles to get to sleep, try gently patting their back in rhythm to a musical piece in 3/4 time. Bach's famous Minuet in G is a simple example. Maybe we can all publish a paper together. I'll write more about my hypothesis once I do a bit more research on the sound/feel of a mother's heartbeat and the timing of a slow 3/4 time piece of music.