Kids are fun to watch and follow. If you find your life getting a bit boring, follow your child around and do what they do. If you don’t have one, see if you can borrow one. They are so free with their bodies and us adults would do well to be more so. Here’s some of my recent joyful observations.
A family walking along a sidewalk with various vegetation along the way. The parents stay on the sidewalk and their son (maybe 10) jumps across the thick limb of an old lilac bush. The parent’s words to stay on the path are unheard. Thankfully he follows what he is drawn to do and jumps on and off the path through the varied vegetation. He looks caught up in experience.
Here is another sidewalk scene. This time the child is around 4 years old, and her parents want her to stay close to them and not go on the sidewalk where people are walking along. So, she walks up to the sidewalk about puts a foot on it – just one. She looks around and the parents are close but not saying anything. She just stands there a few minutes, one foot on the sidewalk.
This one is a favorite. I was at my brother’s wedding reception with music playing. There were some kids on the dancefloor and an occasional adult. There’s a 3-year-old girl having fun in her solo dancing. Sometimes she is wildly dancing, and other times looked like a headbanger with her head bobbing up and down. She seemed oblivious to anything going on around her. Her various family members were less free with their bodies. Some even needed an excuse to be on the dance floor and she is it. They interrupt her joy of her own moving and try grasping her hands. Over and over she non-verbally says “NOPE! Don’t tread on my dance!” She shakes free of their hands to keep moving.
These children are listening to their bodies and what brings them joy AND not letting unneeded limits impinge on their happiness. We (adults and children) need both – the freedom to jump and move in whatever way brings joy and to have some self-control like the one-foot-on-the-sidewalk kid. Follow your kid around, do what they do and say yes as often as possible. They will be 18 soon – says the father of seven, Don Ronish. Thank you, Don for this wisdom when my youngest son was three-weeks old. He’ll be 28 in December.
Song by Billy Dean, “Let Them Be Little” – I hope this song always makes me cry.