We forgot the cable. Three weeks later, the phone was at 40%.

I promised the cable story in Edition 11. Here it is.

At Christmas we went to stay with my parents for ten days. On the second day I realised I had left my son's tablet charger at home. The tablet had about sixty percent battery. We were three hours from Barcelona in a village with one small shop that sold neither chargers nor anything we actually needed.

I made a decision without quite deciding it: I would not tell him about the charger. I would say nothing, ration the tablet use naturally by not offering it, and see what happened.

What happened: he used the tablet for about forty minutes the first evening. The next morning he asked for it and I said sure, go ahead. He used it for about twenty minutes and then put it down and went outside. The pattern continued. Not because I restricted it — because nothing was recharging it, and he began, gradually, without knowing why, to ration it himself.

By day five he was checking the battery percentage before using it. By day eight he was asking me if we could 'save it for later' — meaning for the journey home. The tablet finished the holiday at forty percent.

The key detail: he never asked where the charger was. I expected him to. He didn't. He just adapted to the condition he found himself in, without knowing what had created it. The adaptation was the interesting part — not the result, but the process. He noticed feedback and responded to it without an adult directing the response. He still does.