Knowing our kids – Mother’s Diary – Nitya

At a recent SWA session, I was asked to share one observation about my child. Just like everyone else, I said”my child loves xyz and spends a lot of time doing that.”That was too easy. Can we move on to a deeper level of observation, please? Observing is not rocket science. As a loving and intentional mom,I observeall the time. I observe multiple intelligences. Energy management. Task person balance. I practically am the HR head in my home. Apparently, I was wrong. Observationis ascience (thankfully not rocket science). It requires a scientific, clinical, objective outlook of even your most intimate relationships. So what is observation? Voilà!

“Yesterdaymy daughter spent4 hrsdoing xyz.”That’s an observation.

Here are three tips for how to observe:
Do Not use preference-loaded words like love, enjoy, like, hate

Do not use present tense absolutes “my daughter does xyz for 4 hrs a day”

Avoid adjectives

If you use any of these 3, then your statements become judgments not observations. How? Let’s analyze this: Since you’ve come this far, I’m guessing you’re an awesome parent (That’s a judgment!!) Take a look at this statement below.”I am a wonderful parent who loves to earn, cook, clean, and facilitate my child’s growth for about 4 hours a day.”That’s not so dangerous, right? In fact, it’s a positive pat on the back. But let’s dig deeper.

The use of present tensecagesme into the absolute of being a magically wonderful parent, who needs no help from others to remain wonderful. Use of the word “loves to” is again an absolute thatdoesn’t allow me tohate, be bored of, stop, fail, slow down, delegate, or ditch. And there are definitely several instances when I do all these with earning, cooking, cleaning, facilitating, and every other task.

So what does observation do? It is like a photograph. It freezes a moment or an hour or an activityin time and articulates just that. No sense of past or future. SELAH.”Today, I spent 4 hrs cooking, cleaning, facilitating my kid’s growth.”That’s an observation. It frees me from this bar of expectation for tomorrow. Tomorrow, I might spend 8hrs or none at all. Observations help me take life one day at a time, rather one moment at a time, like one photo after another. They help me remain childlike in my heart and mind. Play and grow freely without the burden of expectation. What does judgment (un)do? It imprisons me and the observed object (person or relationship) into thecage of expectation. Then like aself-fulfilling prophecywe will end up fulfilling only our premade judgments, if at all. You can also google up selection bias. Let me close with an example. If I judge that “my child is a visual learner”, it becomes an absolute and I close all other options of kinesthetic learning, auditory learning, etc. I don’t even look for it. I only look for and am satisfied to find evidence of visual learning. Rather if I observe, “today my child learned for 2 hrs visually” then there’s plenty of room for both of us to grow.I wanna end this on a nerdy note. “The absence of proof is not proof of absence.” Let’s not miss out on evidence because we were not even looking for it in the first place, caught up in our own judgments! Chew that!