Those Blue Eyes...

First of all, I must say that raising children keeps one on their toes! For the last couple days I have been having some difficulty getting my littlest guy who just turned one to go to sleep in his bed at nap times. It isn’t that he lacks the sleepy ingredient nor is he in any type of pain. No, he just doesn’t want to do it for whatever reason is rolling around in his little head.

In the course of dealing with this new development (number 2,798 in his life) I have been noticing an oddly familiar trick playing in the general vicinity of his eyes. When it is time to lay down and go to sleep his eyes dart from place to place. The cutest little smile plays over his face and he begins a cute little dance to go with it. It wasn’t the smile that caught my attention or the little dance but rather the eyes. At first I blew it off in my hurry; however, on later encounters I decided to test this interesting phenomenon in an effort to find out its roots. I would change him, feed him, smile at him, hug him, kiss him, and sit him on the bed all the while keeping eye contact with his undeniably happy little face. The next step in the nap time process seemed to send the eye contact scurrying for its life. Those five simple words, “It is time for bed,” would mysteriously make his eyes begin to dart from here to there. I would crouch down and try my hardest to get directly in his line of vision while he would successfully divert his eyes over and over! Now this may only be development number 2,798 in his life but for me, having been through this with a few others before him, this ranks in the tens of thousands. I begin rustling through the dusty files from Jeffrey, Anani, Josiah and Kellan. Yep, they all did this! I even recall realizing how important eye contact is as they get older too. Oh my, now we have ourselves a battle line!

This afternoon before nap time I decided to spend some time just training him in the special art of giving eye contact. I wasn’t sure how to do it but do it I must! It ended up with me calling his name and as soon as we locked eyes I began a mini-circus complete with the cheering crowd to which he responded with smiles, delight, and... more eye contact! After only one success at fulfilling my covert request (eye contact) he caught on and happily repeated the act a few times over.

As I was laying him down to nap or rather while I enforced the “laying down to nap”, I began to mull over what just happened and try to see from his point of view. Remember, our initial problem was him not wanting to lay down for a nap. I realized that he is waiting for me to cross his line of resistance yet all the while he is dancing way over the line of my tolerance. How is it that one so small can so easily get the upper hand without my even knowing it? I realized much of his success is because of his TOP SECRET operation DMEC - DON'T MAKE EYE CONTACT (Nathan says the names of operations are all capitalized). It seems that from his point of view, as long as he isn’t looking me in the eyes, he doesn’t have to obey. I know deep down inside that this is true. When I don’t have the time to gain that much coveted eye contact neither do I have the time to give a well thought out command, much less follow through on it.

I have also inadvertently facilitated the “TOP SECRET” factor in his operation. His little life has been made up of picking up on cues from day one. It didn’t take him long to figure out what I look like. Neither did it take him very long to figure out who his daddy was or who his siblings were. Little did I know that it didn’t take him very long to figure out which commands were going to mean something in the end. To me, giving him the command to “lay down and go ni-night” is but a tiny blip in my day while to him it may be the major study of the whole month, the biggest thing in his world! He has been perfecting something I wasn’t even taking notice of! He found in diverting his eyes he could successfully shelter himself from feeling pressure to obey and I found that in my hurrying from one thing to the other I was neglecting to realize and deal with his secret operation, DMEC, thereby creating the battle we found ourselves in.

“My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.”

Proverbs 23:26

“For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.”

Matthew 13:15

How interesting that eyes have something to do with hearts! My little one-year-old has figured that out without any help! So, let the work begin; time to train, train, train!