Essential Questions

What prompts reflection?
Dialogue, questioning and literature play complementary roles in prompting reflection. They help us to discern our lenses by listening to others, testing assumptions, and participating in another's perspective through a story.

Two kinds of reflection
There is a sense in which this reflection (thinking about things) is prompted by reflection (as in a mirror). Recently I had my two daughters on my lap to webcam with their grandparents via Skype. My five-year-old tried to explain to her grandfather, "The picture that you see is wrong. I'm on this knee, and Katherine is on the other." She said this because she expected the video window on the screen to function like a mirror - with her image on her left, and her sister's image on her right. But since the webcam is a camera and not a mirror, it presented instead the image from the perspective of the desk. Although Elisabeth was on my left knee and Katherine on my right knee, in the video Elisabeth was on the right side of the screen and Katherine on the left.

This confusing experience prompted a flurry of questions. "Why does it look like I'm on that side? Does a mirror really turn things backward? How can we tell if the video image is reversed or not? Do I look different from what I see in a mirror?" In this case, these questions were prompted by an image that my daughter took to be a reflection. The image prompted reflection in the form of questioning that made her far more aware of how she sees the world - and how there may be more to a thing than meets the eye.

Reflection guards us from blindspots
Without reflection, we naturally tend to assume that the way we see things is the way they really are. This isn't a fault; it is simply the nature of trusting our vision to render reality truly. The danger is that we assume that there aren't any distortions in our lenses. Listening to others, asking good questions, and seeing through the eyes of another in a story play two roles. They open the way to seeing that our perspective is not the only one, and that the practice of perceiving reality is refined by reflection. This is not the same as saying, "Everyone has a different perspective," and avoiding the hard work of looking more closely at reality. On the contrary, reflection prompts us to more deeply understand reality, knowing that we are seeing something and that we will see it more truly by considering other perspectives of that same something.

Seize opportunities to reflect
Using a webcam or looking in the mirror can be the occasion of discussing with your child the way we see the world. Each time you ask questions, engage in dialogue, or read a great children's book together, you are promoting the reflection that enables your child to see more clearly. In doing so you will help your child to look more carefully at the world around her, to be aware that things are not always what they seem at first. In the end, you'll both see more clearly.