Each individual has a different perspective on a situation. An individuals way of looking at things is due to many factors of the information they have received over the years. While in this post I won’t go into how you collect information and why you believe in certain things, I want to show you how the world looks in someone elses perspective. This can lead to radical changes in understanding of another person and how you can interact with them.
Now understanding someone elses point of view and then realizing you are wrong in your own opinion can be a hard pill to swallow. From a quick story I will share with you here, those of you with kids will understand how heart breaking it can be if you actually accept you did something not in your childs best interest.
As a lot of parents do, babies and small children are left screaming away at night in their bedrooms. A situation most commonly referred to as controlled crying. The point here is to let your child continously cry for longer periods of time before you come in until they eventually stop crying all together. With my first child I didn’t do the longer periods of time, but normally left him crying in his cot. Until one day something clicked. What if I was new to this world only a few months old, left in a dark room and no one came when I called? It would be scary and terrifying. They don’t have the ability to know they are safe and we are just outside.
It was from then on, he was rocked or sat next to every night until he fell asleep. Over a year later he is getting better going to bed by himself, but I am still sitting there next to him every night. My second child, my wife and I knew exactly what to do and made sure every cry was attended to. And now only a few months old you can leave him in the room and he will go to sleep by himself, most nights, they still are the occasionaly few.
I now have seen control crying kids put off to sleep. And yes they go down and don’t say a word, but its a very sad thing to watch. They huddle up in a corner, clinging on to a teddy bear for dear life and most often sucking their thumb. They are nervous and insecure, and wasn’t this the main thing control crying was meant to avoid, an insecure clingy child?
Yes some nights its hard to get them off to sleep and I can become extremely frustrated and sometimes yell. This is mainly due to sleep deprivation. But yelling makes them scream louder. Go outside take a few deep breathes and come back in. Leaving them to cry for 30-60 seconds is much better than yelling at them, when they aren’t actually doing anything other than expressing they are scared or overtired themselves.
So while might resonate particularly strong with parents, I hope you can all see how if you look at something through someone else’s eyes, you can see the issues or emotions they face and help them through it. Trying to see through your life experiences to deal with other peoples perceptions is pointless unless you both have an identical consciousness and had identical experiences.
