Location, Location, Location

They hung on every word I said as I searched the house for them during hide-and-seek. They followed me without my saying a word when I paused from playing to do my work-out. They told me what was on their minds when I picked them up to snuggle or tickle them. But when I asked my son to help pick-up toys, he played with them. When I asked my daughter to set something on the table, she turned and walked away. When I reminded my son he had to try everything Mommy made for dinner, he covered his ears. All through dinner I kept thinking about this barrier between me and my children, as if it were a pane of glass through which they can see my mouth moving and my hands gesturing but they can only make out the sound similar to what the Peanuts gang hears when adults speak. If there is one thing I'm beginning to learn, it's that whether my kids hear me depends upon where I am standing when I speak to them. Am I on their side of the glass or mine? Does there even need to be a glass pane? The difference in the examples above is becoming more personal to me. The second set of examples of communication is not inherently wrong, nor is the first set of examples inherently right. I find that in the second set of examples, however, I typically engage my kids with some form of guile, meaning I look happy on the outside but feel frustration or impatience on the inside. Or I am frustrated and impatient outwardly, but inside I know I am being lazy or selfish. I think kids can sense the disconnect between reason and emotion, but do not know how to communicate on such a nuanced plane. So, they ignore it, misinterpret it, get frustrated by it, joke about it, or run away from it. They are only 4, 2, and 1, after all. They communicate on a plane of innocence, where reason and emotion are both transparent, and often so in sync as to be indistinguishable. They are guileless. My theory is that when I engage them as in the first set of examples, they are more responsive because I'm more prone to engage them on their plane of communication--innocently, without other motives. The principle I draw from this is much more simple that the discussion of it: I need to make sure I engage them with pure motives or they won't be responsive. That necessarily means I need to hold my tongue until I'm sure I'm not issuing commands or lecturing out of pride or selfishness.