Being WITH; being aware

This is about BEING with your child. Being WITH your child. Being with YOUR child. If I emphasize all the words at once, the emphasis goes away again. Very much, though, it's about how the parent is being, and that the being should match the child's being, for a moment.

BE with your child's being.

Emotional Perspective
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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Perspective

How you view a thing is affected by physical realities (height, vision, lighting), cognitive aspects (familiarity, spatial ability), emotional factors (attraction or revulsion), age, experience, biological states (hungry? sleepy? impatient?), etc. Anything adults and children see or do "together" is sure to be different for each.

See that as a good thing, as a feature of a rich life. They are not you. Shared experiences are still individually perceived.

SandraDodd.com/angles
(These words aren't there; others are.)
photo by Abby Davis

Perspective, attitude, emotion

I love my children and think they're really important, and that it is part of my privilege to be their mom and to introduce them to the fun and interesting parts of the world, and I hold them in esteem. They are of higher value to me than other things and other people. That isn't respect they had to earn. But it's emotional and it's attitudinal, and it's relative to me.

—Sandra Dodd, in 2010

This and a bit more, near the bottom of a page on respect.
photo by Sandra Dodd (sprouts growing in my kitchen recently)