Try to see world's wonders through child's eyes

The other day I had a vision that was heavenly. I saw a mother see the world through the eyes of her child. It was an ordinary day. I was not in any place special, no mountain top or grove. (Is a pediatric office considered holy?) The mom had her child on her lap. The baby was about 9 months old. The mother had a book in her hand. Almost without perceivable motion her daughter turned to notice some drawings.

"You see the book." That was it. It was a miracle before my very eyes.

This mother, like so many other good women, saw the book as if she were 9 months old. It was incredible to think that this adult of two decades or more had become like a little child. The light from the object traveled through the lenses of the baby to the brain and then on to the brain of the mother. Their brains for an instant became one, looking at the same ordinary simple book of pictures. It was divine.

At the one-year exam I will often comment that the parents and the child have circled the sun once. The journey together crossed millions of miles of space and took over half a million minutes. The child has grown, tripling her birth weight and has transformed from a fetus to a child who can walk, feed herself and understand between 100 and 200 words. In that time the infant has imprinted onto a person who has become her major attachment figure. This person is now the child's tour guide to the galaxy. If done right, the parent teaches security, promotes curiosity and discovery while giving not only words to the objects seen but meaning to the things she feels. The infant brain cannot do all of that on its own.

Sometime during the few minutes together I will occasionally ask the mother or father, "What have you learned about the world this past year from your child? What has your child taught you?" One father immediately answered, "Ants." The son had discovered these amazing insects as they marched along their trail on the driveway. The father had rediscovered these fascinating creatures along with him.

Nature does everything it can to prompt the parent, especially the mother, to look into the eyes of the newborn. The orbits of the eye are large relative to the face. The child increases the scanning back and forth of the parent's eyes as the guardian talks to her. The infant will momentarily open her eyes as she starts to feed like a gesture of thanksgiving. The pupils enlarge with excitement. The optimal viewing distance of the baby is 8-10 inches, the distance between the two faces as one feeds the other. The human eye has a white sclera that helps the other members of the species to follow where they are looking. There are multiple enticements.