Sometimes I forget to let my son just do his thing. Yesterday I wrote about paying attention to all the small changes he's going through; today I dared to take about thirty minutes to go through the miscellaneous papers in my in-basket and just let my son just do--whatever. He was cooperative enough, choosing to ransack the two laundry baskets at the entrance to our bedroom. He threw much of their contents on the floor, then tilted over the lighter, bendable mesh basket and tried to crawl into it; then he got up--and then, for about two minutes, I stopped paying attention to him.
When I looked at him again, he was backing up and moving forward again--without holding onto anything. In other words, he took three or four steps. This was perhaps only the third time (in about as many days) that I've seen him take more than two steps without holding onto something. What struck me was that as useless as this activity of "resorting" the laundry might seem to me, he exhibited both concentration and delight in what he was doing; and at the moment he took those steps, it was obvious that he wasn't even thinking about walking. This has happened each time he's taken more than a couple steps. He just launches himself into walking, without stopping to think. Very instructive; it could probably be used as a general technique for beginning work on any difficult task.
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