If you are going through or have already passed through that stage in which our children are small and are exploring the world and their abilities, surely you once laughed and at the same time you were amazed at how what seems to us an action of the simplest, for them it is something adorably awkward and complicated to achieve.
Have you ever wondered how it would feel to see and feel the world like them? With the help of gloves and special glasses, Lego was given the task of "convert" parents into young children and we can see the result in a very funny video.
Something that surprises me a lot now that I'm a mom, is the see how my daughter is slowly learning and developing. It amazes me to think that what I am doing today is an automatic task, such as drawing or stacking objects, is something that at some point in my life, like my daughter, did not have the capacity to do so.
When our children are little, they are learning to know their body and try to control their movements. Motor development is something that is learned over the years and coordination between our eyes, brain and hands is something that takes time and requires a lot of practice.
Probably like me, many fathers and mothers have wondered or astonished with those adorable and clumsy first movements that our little ones make. But do we really understand them? What for us can be something tender and funny, for our children it could be a cause of frustration or anger.
The experiment that I want to share next, is one that Lego did with the intention that parents could experience firsthand (and first eye), how children of age see and feel the world toddler, which ranges from 12 months of age to approximately 4 years.
For it they used two elements: the first, a virtual reality glasses to simulate the vision of a small child or "toddler vision", as they have called it, which are responsible for limiting the coordination between hands and eyes. The second, special gloves, which will limit fine motor skills.
Once the fathers and mothers were ready with their "toddler skills", they were asked to perform some basic exercises that young children do When they are learning to develop these skills:
- Catch a ball.
- Make a tower with Lego pieces.
- Put on an apron.
- Paint a self portrait.
The result is totally hilarious, because we see fathers and mothers trying to make this list of activities and fail while laughing at their failed attempts. I leave the video below:
What was the purpose of this experiment?
In addition to laughing at each other for a while, parents are finally asked what they learned or what this exercise left them. One of the mothers commented that this definitely gave them an idea of why young children did so many tantrums.
Another one commented that he would start to be more patient with his son, while a father learned that those activities that seem so simple to us, become terribly difficult when you don't have the necessary coordination.
What we can also see and learn from this experience is that maybe we need to put ourselves more times in the place of our children, to try to understand why they may feel frustrated. The road to learn to coordinate your body is slow, but with our help and support with activities to develop your skills it will certainly be easier for them.
