Patience, dear boy, patience…
I’m not, on the whole, a patient person. My friends would echo that statement; my husband certainly would. If I decide to do something, I want to get on and do it now – I’m wasting time by waiting. I get frustrated by drivers, who won’t take the opportunity to pull out at a T-junction or roundabout. If I’m in a queue, I want it to move faster. But all that is slowly changing…
You see, I’m now a mum – to a handsome, funny, curious 16-month old boy. And I know every mother thinks her child is the cutest, brightest kid ever, but that’s Nature’s way of ensuring we protect our young and nurture them from the outset.
I’m finding it fascinating watching him learn. Watching him interact with the world. Watching our surroundings through his eyes, because everything is a new experience. We get lazy because we’ve seen it all before but he hasn’t. And it’s brought me up short. It’s forcing me to take a deep breath and notice more on his behalf so I can point things out to him. And, as he learns to do everyday things, it’s forcing me to be patient.
Learning is essentially a series of repetitions. I’m no neuroscientist but I understand the concept of laying down neural pathways and, through repetition, making these thicker, stronger and more familiar so that eventually we do things automatically. But watching that process in action is a valuable lesson.
I’ve been fortunate in my career to be surrounded by lots of intelligent people – and it means that, sometimes, you forget about the learning process. You expect people to understand your point of view, to be able to solve the problem, to apply the rules or theory first time. But it’s not that straightforward.
So, I’m humbled and grateful to my little boy for reminding me of the importance of taking things step by step; of repeating things over and over and gradually getting better at doing them; and of demonstrating in ‘glorious Technicolor’ how the learning process really works.
‹ Those ‘lightbulb’ moments Do we really have to know it all? ›