One thing I feel is essential to convey to my students in the behavioral sciences is the importance of joining another’s space. This starts with infancy in the shared gazes, shared smiles, shared hand gestures, shared snuggles. It continues in later infancy and early childhood where the little person seeks, by pointing a finger, making eye contact, and perhaps showing a smile, to share a gaze with their companion at something that intrigues them.  

The child sees something. She looks up at her Special Big Person (SBP), hoping to catch their attention. Then she shifts her gaze to the interesting thing, pointing to it, then looking back at her SBP hoping that they will look with them. A SBP who is attuned to the child, will remark about it. Look at the cat!  See how furry it is!  It looks so comfortable curled up on the chair! 

My view on this is that now sharing with the child the things that they are interested in leads to the beginning of so many things, including attachment, mutual respect, and even discipline. If the SBP will pay attention to the child’s interest in the present., then the child will be willing to pay attention to something of interest to the SBP in the future. The habit of shared interest is getting established! What arises is a basis for mutual trust. SO simple!! Also, it is so much fun to share that moment with a child! And yet this simple skill is not taught to parents, to teachers, or to anyone in a consistent way. 

In spite of my sensitivity to the importance of ‘shared space’, I have recently realized that I have been insensitive to the importance of ‘shared time’. What do I mean by that? I mean that sharing a momentum, a pace, a rhythm with another also matters.  I can get excited about how a shared experience is meaningful to me, and with a broad brush, paint my meaning all over the shared time. Yes, I looked at what my friend was looking at – I was able to share that moment – but then perhaps I ruined it by not letting my companion experience it in their own way. It is as if their view of the shared experience was expressed in watercolor, and I splashed my colors over theirs so they could no longer color the experience with their own eyes. 

So, better that I slow down and speak less about what I see. Better to take my view of the experience and write about it in a blog such as this, I can store it in my head as a file for future view. I can give that mental file a name such as ‘Shared Space… Keeping Pace’. By making such mental files to reflect on later, I can try to prevent my meaning of an experience from covering over the meaning of another.