The other day, as my dad was holding my 8 week old daughter, I found myself saying “try making eye contact with her – it helps calm her down.”
I’m not sure when I had this realization. It is just one of the many small things that Arden is teaching me. The power of eye contact. The connection that comes from really looking into someone’s eyes and trying to communicate them with only that single point of reference. I am sure that I could dig deep into the neuroscience on this. That there is something to be understood about neurons and synapses and everything else going on in there when she and I lock eyes as she’s guzzling another few ounces of milk (which my wife has dutifully transported home from work, streetcar to subway to streetcar). At the same time, I don’t need to go deep into the neuroscience to know that the eye contact is working. To know that when I make the effort to look into her eyes and get her attention, she eats better, goes to sleep faster, calms down more easily, smiles more, touches my face, gurgles, and, perhaps most significantly of all, does her best, in her own little world of many involuntary movements, to make eye contact with me. To maintain that point of connection. And its nice – because, for the time being, its all that we have.
3 Ginger Snaps 