Sight – A Connection Beyond Words

Posted on February 8, 2016

Our eyes facilitate vision by bringing in light – by enlightening us. Through our eyes we can brighten the darkest of feelings and situations. And even though our eyes are a silent sense organ, they speak volumes. Sad eyes, happy eyes, mad eyes – all are mirrors of our emotions. As Charlotte Brontë wrote in Jane Eyre, “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”

When children are little, they say a lot through their eyes, and parents can easily pick up on their child’s mood through eye language. When my daughter, Nitasha, was four and she got mad, she would start by squinting her eyes; then she’d tilt her head, fold her arms, and say, “I’m not your friend.” It didn’t take us long to pick up on her cues. The moment she squinted her eyes, my husband would say, “Uh-oh, here it comes. She’s not my friend!” When my son was angry at that age, however, he would sit in a corner, fold his arms, and close his eyes, as if he were trying to hide his feelings.

“Why do you close your eyes when you are mad?” I asked him once.

“Because I don’t want to talk to anybody when I’m mad,” he said.

“If you don’t want to talk, all you have to do is close your mouth, not your eyes, don’t you think?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, “because when you’re sleeping and your eyes are closed, no one talks to you.” Basically, Navin was using his closed eyes as a silent language to tell us, Not now, I’m not ready to talk about it. 

An anonymous quote puts it well: “Look into my eyes and hear what I’m not saying, for my eyes speak louder than my words ever will.” If we look carefully, we can easily see what our children’s eyes are saying. Then our own eyes can respond accordingly. Although we exchange feelings most often through words, our eyes offer the strongest and deepest form of nonverbal communications. No surprise, then, that this translates into strong connections with our kids.