Every quarter, the review committee at Maplewood Centre sat down with the same reassuring data. Arjun's IFDP showed steady progress. His therapist noted improved emotional regulation. His teacher reported satisfactory participation.
Nobody noticed that Arjun had stopped asking questions.
The Gap No Spreadsheet Catches
Attention erosion doesn't announce itself. It doesn't show up as a failing grade or a behavioural incident. It shows up as a silence—a gradual withdrawal from the learning conversation that no end-of-term metric captures.
At Maplewood, Arjun's daily evidence told a different story than his quarterly review. The timeline was clear in hindsight:
- Week 1–4: Consistent engagement, 3–5 tagged moments per session, active participation in Zone 2.
- Week 5: First untagged session. Teacher noted "quiet day" but no flag was raised.
- Week 6–8: Tagged moments dropped to 1–2 per session. Carryover prompts sat unchecked. No alert fired because the threshold was set at zero moments, not declining moments.
- Week 9: Arjun spent 40 minutes in the quiet nest during a routine transition. The team called it a one-off.
The system was designed to catch absence, not erosion. It was built for the wrong threshold.
What Continuous Telemetry Reveals
When we reconstructed Arjun's evidence timeline, the pattern was unmistakable. Not a sudden collapse—a slow decay curve with a clear inflection point at week 5. The trigger? A seating change that moved him away from his co-regulation partner.
No quarterly review could have caught this. The data was there. The question was whether anyone was watching the trend, not just the snapshot.
A continuous record doesn't just store evidence. It watches for the shape of change. That's the difference between a filing cabinet and a diagnostic instrument.