Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Today I wanted to talk about our eyes and what our children read in our eyes, in our gaze. Little ones and medium-sized ones and big ones, they are taking a special note of what we express through our eyes.
They look at us, they're always, whether they're doing it consciously or not, like sometimes it's very conscious, you know, like saying, now don't you drop that on the ground, you know, don't you pick up food with your hands and they pick it right on up and they look right at us in the eye. Don't drop it on the floor now and just drop, they drop it, like what you gonna do about that? And they're looking at our eyes, they're reading us. In some ways, the eyes, you could think about the eyes as the arms of our heart, you know, it's they reach out, we reach out our feeling life through our eyes and our children know it and they're looking at it and they pick it up.
And one of the things that I'm struck by is how with our eyes and nothing more, we can either inflame or we can soothe. We can either be playful or harsh. And the way in which we look at our child, I think if we can become more and more conscious of it, it also gives us a signal of what's going on somatically, perhaps inside ourselves as well.
So if we become aware of what's going on with our heart's arms, our eyes, it helps us and it helps a child. Let's start off first of all with one particular polarity is what I think of as javelin eyes versus discus eyes. I'm using the, you know, the Olympic, the old, the ancient Greek, and the modern for that matter too, metaphor.
Javelin eyes are eyes that come to a point. And a javelin eye is like a spear eye. It's right to the point.
And it's okay. But if we look at children with a javelin eye, it's often they feel pierced. And it's as opposed to a discus eye.
A discus eye, as we know, is this rounded gesture and it's more of a sweeping. So we might look at a child and they're doing something that's a little bit naughty or a little bit, you know, whatever is going on. And we don't stay with it.
We just look around. We look at them. Huh, my goodness.
And we keep our eye, it's a sweeping movement. So it's not fixing a child and getting them ready for battle. It moves more into the middle distance.
And it sweeps a little bit. And we sweep, sweep around. Obviously, we're taking a child and we might pause a little bit and say, oh, my goodness, that's, that is a very big mess.
Huh, look at all the things that we've got to tidy up. Oh, my goodness. And you're not only looking directly at the child.
In other words, you're not getting in their face. And in this case, you're not getting in their eyes. And they will follow our eyes very often.
And then they will look around. Whereas if we've got javelin eyes, they will do javelin eyes right back to us. The mirror neurons in the brain, they can't help it.
They will imitate that. The other kind of eye, the kind of polarity, and it picks up from this a little bit, is that kind of eye that is that is really not just not just javelin, but it's fixing a child and you're staring very hard at them. And it's it's not shifting.
You're just staring at a child like, what are you doing? It's that kind of eye. As opposed to an eye that's softer to say, oh, my goodness, that's hard. And it's a little bit related to the judgment eye or the wondering eye.
A judgment eye, similarly, is that is not okay. That is and it's a shaming eye. It's a judging eye.
As opposed to an eye that's, hmm, that's a wondering eye. A wondering, when you wonder, you're wondering, I wonder what's going on. Gosh, a wondering eye.
A wondering is a softened eye and you get these little wonder wrinkles here at the side of your face. You get these little wonder wrinkles. And the eye is not alone, of course, because the eye then has an associated expression right through our physiogamy, you know, the body language of our face.
Because when we wonder, hmm, we get these wonder wrinkles, but our mouth softens, and our jaw drops a little bit. Now, this all might sound very technical, but a child picks it up on a dime. They read it all the time.
They're reading our eyes. And through having, for example, wondering eyes, having discus eyes, having middle distance eyes, when you find yourself going into javelin eyes, to spear eyes, and judgment, the judgment and javelin eye, as opposed to the discus and the wondering eye, when you find yourself going into judgment and javelin, try to become aware of it. If we can become aware of it more and more, my eyes are fixing a child, and that is going to trigger them into their own fight or flight.
It's going to trigger them into, I'm getting ready now for battle, because we're signaling that to them, that's what's going on for us. If we can be aware of that, and just release our gaze from a child, and just sweep it. This is my piece.
This is the first piece of advice I can give you, is when you fix a child with your eyes, and it's a harder look, one of the things you can do, it's almost like a little bit of a brain trick, is just be aware of it, and then just sweep your eyes. What that will do is it'll take you into a different place in your being, if you sweep your eyes like, and you look around, and you almost can't help but take a breath. The moment you unjavelin your eye, and you go into discus, it just creates space.
You take a breath yourself, your child takes a breath too, and you're in a whole different place. And this is the beauty of knowing that the eyes are the arms of the heart, and those arms can either be pushing away, the hand at the end of those arms can be forming a fist, or it can be forming a receiving gesture, a hug. The eyes can hug, or the eyes can threaten.
And if we become more and more and more aware of what our eyes are doing, it's a fast track into releasing that fixed gaze, sweeping, softening, middle gaze, wondering, and then you're in a whole different space very, very quickly. And I wonder if this week you can pay a little bit of extra attention to what your eyes are doing in an encounter with your kids. And then if you find yourself with the javelin and judge eyes, sweep it, sweep your eyes, release it, breathe, and come back to it.
It's a deep theme actually, just for a little sort of 10 minute talk like this. But nevertheless, I hope that is helpful. Bye bye for now.
