In her wonderful book On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz takes a series of walks in different environments. What does a geologist see on a city block? What does a naturalist see walking through a park? What does a dog see on a short walk around the block? But the most interesting walk was the one Alexandra took with her nineteen-month-old.
The idea was to really try on her son’s perspective on the world. So they walk out of the apartment, down the hall to the elevator, into and then and out of the elevator, and across the lobby to the front door, where they would start the walk. And as Alexandra went to check in with her baby boy, she suddenly realized . . . that the walk had begun all the way back inside the apartment.
To a kid, the world is a very different place from the one we live in and walk through and, if we’re being honest, take for granted. This has more to do with their size and their inexperience than anything else, but that doesn’t invalidate their opinions and impressions. If anything, it opens a new window for us to look at the world through, as it did for Alexandra. It reminds us of how we felt about new things when we were their age. It is an antidote to cynicism and world-weariness.
As parents, we have to appreciate the fact that our kids can help us see the world maybe better than we can help them see it. They can help us see that anything can be special and fun, that a walk doesn’t have to be outside, that dinner can be anywhere and a cardboard box can be more fun than the Christmas present it was carrying. We have to encourage this spirit. We have to make sure we don’t crush it with subtle corrections and insistence on the “official” way things are or should be. Most of all, we have to learn from their perspective and add it as much as possible to our own lives.