A SIMPLE SHIFT IN HOW YOU LOOK at your children can give you a brief experimental and completely drug-free high. Instead of looking at them through your adult eyes, try for as long as you can muster to look at the world through their eyes. You may find great refreshment, or at least a new sympathy for your child's own struggles.

Being Baby
Take a deep breath and for a moment try to get inside your child's mind. This can be quite mind blowing. The more you can clear your own mind, the more you will get from this.

You may want to prepare yourself by spending some time observing your child quietly. Just watch and let your other concerns drift away. Take a few breaths to relax a little more. As you watch your child, let yourself imagine what the world looks like through their eyes. Who knows what is really going on inside a baby's mind? But if you try to see the world through the eyes of a baby, you may be overcome by a sense of timelessness - of living without a deadline or somewhere to go.

I often have the experience of rushing around trying to get something done while carting my baby along. My brow furrows only to be interrupted by my baby as she makes a razzing noise with her lips and looks off into space with great intensity. She seems to be just dwelling in her enjoyment of her capacity to make funny noises with her mouth. If I take a moment to take in her wisdom, she seems to be inviting me to join her in the land of Being instead of the land of Doing.

Babies can help you access that sense of boundaries dropping, of openness to what is and to melting with another. You can feel your heart open like a baby's and let yourself flow into the fusion of oneness that babies feel with their mothers.

Totally Toddler
This can work with your child, no matter what the age. The high energy and exuberance of a toddler is a fix most of us could use. Try to take their perspective and imagine what your life would be like infused with so much passion.

Even when your toddler is tormenting you, he may still be offering you an altered state of consciousness with which to experiment. Think of your toddler's loud insistence and forceful repetition at lunch time, "no beans, no beans, no beans." Try to get inside the inelastic mindset that knows what it wants and doesn't compromise. What areas of your life can benefit from such direct communication and refusal to bend?

When you look at the world through the eyes of a toddler the whole landscape becomes enchanted. One of the worst things for any adult is being stuck in traffic near a construction site. Not only do you have to sit in your car going nowhere, but you have to contend with the "noise pollution" and offenses of the construction crews.

This whole scenario is quite different through the eyes of a small boy. The traffic jam is a great opportunity to stand still to watch the huge tractors and cranes do their magic. Each day I drove my son to day care, we got stuck in just such a scene. I hated it, but my son's enthusiasm as he "ooohed" "aaahed" became infectious. Even a pit of a place and the offense of a traffic jam became enchanted when viewed as if through my son's eyes.

Tween Time
Even the awkwardness of the tweens has something to break open our way of looking at the world. Get into the mind of a child who finally understands the world enough to know they are going somewhere; that someday they will be somebody, but that the whole world is still an open book. Imagine the excitement of wonder. Wondering where you will go, who you will meet, having every reason to think you're destined to set the world on fire.

What if you could wrap your mind around that and bring it into your own world? Too many adults have lost themselves in planning for security and have forgotten the sheer exhilaration of searching for something as yet unknown. Recapture the sense of life as an adventure, the feeling of flowing, being flexible, open expectations and comfort with not knowing what's going to happen next.

Most tweens also have the comfort of knowing they have a security blanket at every new venture. Their parents are still close at hand and often still idealized. Tweens still look to their parents for guidance and know they have a soft landing place if they fall. Tweens haven't quite separated and aren't striving for the fierce independence teens are wont to do. For tweens, there is no pressure to leave the nest, and there's still the comfort of a watchful eye to accompany one into the explorations of the larger world.

For many adults that sense of being wrapped in a loving warm protective cocoon is but a distant memory. If you can feel into your tween's emotional world you can invite that sense of sweet safety to stay for a while. Maybe you've seen too much of the world and its harshness to trust in the safety of the world. You are right to be wary, but it becomes a false rigidity if you can't see the warmth and protection that still is there for you. By letting these feelings in, you can learn to offer your own feelings of protectiveness for your children back to yourself.

You can think of a threatening situation and tell yourself that you will take care of yourself, that you can handle it. Tell yourself that you are committed to protecting yourself and you'll do everything in your power to make sure you don't get hurt. You promise yourself deep care and consolation if you fall and scrape your knees. You let yourself feel the support that is there is for you, and promise to become your own security blanket. For many adults, this taken for granted comfort of being a tween can open our eyes to a new way of being in the world.

Smells like Teen Spirit
Instead of fighting against your teenager and feeling sidelined by their mood swings, let yourself try to get into their world. What if you let yourself be deeply moved by every event and let the whole world know what was on your mind? Maybe as adults we've gotten too hurt by wearing our heart on our sleeves, but what if we took back some of that recklessness in our emotional life? What if you let your heart careen out of control with yearning for someone or something? What if you plastered photos of what you want or who you want all over your home?

Have you become too cautious in what you let yourself feel or what you show others about what you do feel? Take a few moments to really feel what your teenager feels like every day. This effort can take you on a roller coaster ride of emotional intensity which you might find an exhilarating contrast to your role as parole officer/parent trying to enforce rationality in your teen.

Your teen can guide you to the state of mind that questions the way the world works and takes pains to defy rules. When your teen looks out at her world, what does she see? When your teen looks at you what does she see? Rather than fighting your teen, for a few moments when she's hurling insults your way, look beneath the anger and try to see what she sees.

Perhaps you have gotten too crusty and could loosen up a little bit. Perhaps you do need more fun in your life. Maybe you need to get in touch with your wild side. Let yourself entertain the crazy ideas your teens have. Let yourself get into the frame of mind that questions everything that doesn't feel right. If you opened up to this defiant stance, what rules in your own life would you challenge? While you will want to remain firm in your role as an authority in relation to your teen, you can secretly indulge in the release of looking through their eyes and see if it opens up your own eyes.

These experiments in seeing the world through your child's eyes may not only open up new experiences for you, but they might increase your connection to your child. By imagining the world through their eyes, you see not only their defiance but their vulnerabilities. You might see that there is something to be gained by taking their perspective, perhaps a new view that honors your child's struggles as well as your own.

For more tips and tools about parenting visit http://www.visionarysoul.com.

To listen to Dr. Honos-Webb's internet radio interview with IP Editor in Chief, Sandie Sedgbeer, click here...

SPECIAL NOTE: As an expert in ADHD, Lara has created a number of FREE video tips and tools and uploaded them to YouTube. To access these, please click on the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyD41IhOqsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvqU3b6Wfno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O7iAsumBDw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWjAV687EQc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vk-C3FAlgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLF-3mL0UB4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q53zBvBdfbw

© Lara Honos-Webb, PhD, 2008

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