Five Ways Observing Children Can Help You Shift Your Perspective

1. Children explore their curiosities…

Whenever we think about children we mostly gush and smile about how cute they are or we occasionally thank heavens that our children are not loose canons like those of our poor neighbors and friends.

Rarely do we look at children and think that there is something valuable about how they look at the world that we could also benefit from.

The truth is, there is so much we can learn from observing how children navigate their world.

Here are the top five ways in which observing children can help shift your perspective.

1. Children Explore Their Curiosities.

There are so many things you can learn about, but You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut — Dr. Seuss

Children are born curious, they want to know everything they can about their world. Children don’t need any inspiration at all to wonder about the natural world around them.

Now you could say that it is because they are young and know so little hence it is only natural that they become curious about the world. That may be so, but what is also common is that instead of fanning that flame as we get older what is happening is that people get less curious.

We become so complacent and passive with the pursuit of knowledge and new wonders as we get older. The thing is people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would not have created what they did if they hadn’t pursued their curiosities, they fanned their inquisitive nature and pursued their passions — out of that came incredible creations.

We need to stay curious about our surroundings, and if we can’t do that we at least need to stay out of the way of people with inquisitive natures. Just because we get older and more knowledgeable doesn’t mean we now know all there is to know — because we don’t!

“An adult scientist is a kid who never grew up” — Neil deGrasse Tyson, a world-renowned astrophysicist.

2. Children Question The Way Things Work.

Children ask a lot of questions, many of which can make adults uncomfortable. They ask obvious questions that can have teachers and parents gritting their teeth by the end of a long day — but they ask them anyway.

The older we get the fewer questions we ask. Part of the reason why we lose our curious nature as we grow older is that at some point someone told us that we asked too many questions, questions which had obvious answers, or that no one likes someone who is too inquisitive.

There is no shame in questioning the way things work. We need to ask obvious questions because that is how we make changes. Karen Maeyens states that a question is a powerful tool that can lead to an interesting story or an unforgettable anecdote. Questions can also lead to great discoveries both within and outside of us.

Isaac Newton, a man best known for his theory on the law of gravity, asked himself a lot of questions. He was curious about his surroundings from an early age of his life and he fanned that curiosity by asking more questions and then attempting to answer them. If he had asked you the questions that intrigued him, you might have thought him crazy!

Why does an apple fall straight to the ground but the moon stays up in the sky? — Isaac Newton

3. Children Make Mistakes Over and Over Again

Who has lived and hasn’t made mistakes? — Oprah Winfrey

Children are going to make a lot of mistakes, that is their process of learning. When you observe a child learning a new concept whether it be brushing teeth, eating by themselves, or trying to read. They are most definitely going to make a mistake, make a mess of things — but, they are going to try over and over again until they get it right.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson states that the educational system fails at education by not telling you that if you are doing something no one has ever done before — or if you are learning something for the first time — you are going to make a mistake. It is part of the learning process.

By the time we age out of the educational system into adulthood, we are so fixated on doing things the right way that we can’t handle the first signs of failure. How many people have quit writing on Medium because they didn’t get curated the first time? How many people have stopped pitching to publications because they got rejected the first time? Countless of people!

Mark Zuckerberg on failure;

“So many things go wrong when you are starting a company and often I think people ask what mistakes should you avoid making. My answer to that question is that don’t even bother to avoid making mistakes because you are going to make tonnes of mistakes. The important thing is that you actually learning quickly from whatever mistakes you make and not giving up. You bounce back and you learn. Nothing is impossible you just have to kind of keep running through the walls.

4. Children Ask For Help

I am yet to meet a child who has never asked for help. I have a little sister and she is constantly asking for help. I used to encourage her to think for herself and not always depend on people for help until I realized that there is nothing wrong with asking for help.

Children don’t think twice when asking for help. In most cases, the reason why a child starts to develop a hesitancy for reaching out is when we (adults) berate them for always asking for help with this and that.

As we grow older we associate help with dependency. We start finding it difficult to ask for help when we need it. I have seen people fail because they struggled to ask for help that was so readily available. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness or an inability to think for yourself.

Two minds are often better than one so please, reach out to those around you, whether it be fellow workmates, a spouse, a stranger — just ask for help.

One of the biggest defects in life is the inability to ask for help — Robert Kiyosaki

5. Children Are Always Looking For Opportunities To Have Fun.

Children can be relentless in their pursuit of happiness. Tell a child that they can’t go outside the next thing you know they are banging pots in the kitchen to an imaginary concert.

Children don’t despair for long, they look for joy and happiness. In an article written by Tom Scheve, he discusses whether kids are happier than adults. Tom states that adults tend to perceive children’s happiness based on a lack of challenges. Adults will say things like, ‘what could a child possibly be stressed about that they couldn’t be happy’.

This view allows for adults to justify their lack of happiness, saying things like it is impossible to maintain childlike happiness and joy as you grow older because life happens.

There is no mistaking that the older you grow the more different factors start to play on your level of happiness. Yes, children have a lot fewer responsibilities so it easier for them to be happy.

Adults having more responsibilities than children being key to happiness is not the focus, but how children pursue happiness and joy. We need to be relentless and proactive about being happy, it just doesn’t fall in your lap. It is like practicing mindfulness and breathing techniques to calm yourself, you have to work at it.

Think of happiness as a muscle you have to exercise every day starting by naming three things you are grateful for despite the hardships you encountered.

It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine — Winnie the Pooh

We have so much that we can and should teach our children about. We think about how we want to raise them, how to shield them from the dangers of the world as well as praying that our children will be principled and not just be taken by whatever wind comes their way.

However, in the process of teaching them, we forget that they can also teach us something valuable. Think about a time a child reminded you about kindness and patience.

Observing how children navigate their world, can help us shift our perspective on how we also approach our world.