What Color is the Sky?
I asked my four year old son this question on a wintry, overcast day. The ground and trees were covered in heavy wet snow and the sky matched the ground in a thick layer of white cloud.
My son, who was eating a bowl of oatmeal, paused for a moment and looked out the window to the sky, and said confidently, “white.” He resumed eating his oatmeal, and left me musing about the consciousness of the child and the way in which language informs and transforms our understanding of the world. The sky is blue. That is not what I saw; it is what I know.
It is hard to imagine how the preverbal child experiences the world. There must be an intimacy and openness to the environment that is unimaginable to the adult consciousness. As children grow, they slowly start to give names to the world around them. In this process, they start to form pre concepts of the object. When we think of the word “sky”, an image of the sky, likely blue, comes to mind. We categorize and sort the world in ways that make it easier to digest and take less energy to understand. This is a blessing, and it allows us to do other more complicated tasks and engage as social beings. However, it can make us more likely to not see things as they really are. If someone were to ask us the color of the sky, we often no longer pause to look. We already know. This is a different kind of knowing. The world inside our mind that projects onto the world.
Looking to Understand
My goal in my work as a sleep consultant is to support caregivers to see clearly what is happening with their child and to deepen their trust in themselves and their child. We can learn from the child’s innate ability to be fully present and be curious about what is happening in the world without preconceived ideas. It is easy to take all the “knowing” we have about sleep, the advice, our experiences, the blogs, the books, the science, expectations, and forget to try to learn from one’s most important teacher, the child herself. The gardener can know all the science, read every book about gardening, but it is often more important to observe the plants, understand them, and change their practices based on how the plant is responding to what they are doing and the environment conditions. Similarly, we must observe the child to know how to respond and when to adapt our sleep practices.
Part of this process is working on ourselves too. We have to clean the glass we are looking through because we often don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. We sift and navigate all our own biases, personal history, and traumas. Questions loom: What is my relationship with sleep? What are cultural influences on my understanding of sleep? Why does supporting my child to sleep make me feel this way? Am I doing it wrong?
The expectations that we set for ourselves before we become parents also impact the lens through which we see ourselves and our children. We create expectations for ourselves and our future children that can make us feel like failures when the expectations are not met. It’s normal to create these expectations for ourselves, but it is important to recognize when we may be holding on to a story that is not serving us or our child.
These feelings are further complicated by comparing ourselves to other parents, often conflating our internal experiences as synonymous with the other’s external projections. This is especially true in the world of social media where individuals carefully craft narratives about themselves that often don’t reflect their internal experience.
We also tend to judge another way of parenting without understanding the context of family’s experience and temperments of both child and caregiver, especially around sleep. Like everything else, supporting children to sleep is not black or white, it lives in the gray. There is no one method or way of doing it right. It is as unique as the individuals and relationships involved. Our work as parents is to deeply know ourselves and deeply know our child. When we truly see our children, it is obvious that they have a deep need for an abundance of rest, and we prioritize it. Studies show that the children of parents who understand their child’s cues overall sleep better. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34409935/
Deepening our Understanding
The best method I have found to deepen our understanding of ourselves as parents and caregivers is having a meditation practice.
Even very small amounts of time devoted to self reflection can be beneficial. Good thing! If there is one thing in short supply when caring for young children, it is time!
It can be done sitting on a meditation cushion, on a slow walk with a child, in the five minutes in the car before school pick-up, washing the dishes, sitting by your child in the bath, or folding laundry.
Slow down your breathing, Focus on your breath. If your mind wanders or your child interrupts you, you can use it as part of your practice. Pull yourself back into the present moment.
Journaling, therapy, art of all kinds, movement in nature, are also wonderful ways to practice self reflection.
The best method I’ve found to deepen our understanding of children is a child observation practice.
Observation helps us to understand what our children are communicating, realize the difference between our children's needs and our projections, and know whether to intervene or stay out of their way.
Take moments throughout the day to observe your child quietly with the intention of really noticing and understanding your child.
Notice what questions come up. Be curious and interested.
Try not to interfere unless your child has a clear need.
Allow space for your child to work through discomfort or frustration. Observe how your child takes on challenges. Find the tipping point where intervention is needed.
In these moments of quiet observation, we give our full attention to our child, while they, held in that space of loving attention, are able to explore the relationship between themselves, their bodies and the world uninterrupted.
In turn, we develop a practice in which we learn to respond to our child in the right way at the right time. This promotes healthy sleep habits and helps to develop an attached and responsive relationship.
The only constant in parenting (and in life) is change. The best tool we can give ourselves and our children is to deepen our skills of observation and reflection. It’s from this foundation that we know how to respond, when to adapt, when to stay the same, when to be engaged, and when to rest. It helps us to take away the veils of internal and external expectations and preconceived notions and see ourselves and our children as we truly are.
