Looking for Blind Spots

I was walking with some of the boys recently and one of them kept gliding into my blind spot. I’d turn to count heads and wouldn’t see him. Even when I turned all the way around I would end up looking right over him due to a combination of his stature and his proximity to me.

I don’t think they do it on purpose, but all of the boys at one time or another seem to find their way into my literal blind spot.

We all know what that’s like when driving. You’re about to change lanes having not seen anyone next to you and either glance one more time and spot the previously invisible car in time or are warned with a horn blast that you’re about to enter occupied space. I have extra-large blind spots mirrors on my vehicle to avoid exactly this.

We all have metaphorical blind spots too. There were several episodes in the early 2000s sitcom How I Met Your Mother that demonstrated this well. Whether it was showing how love can blind you to someone’s annoying little habits (unless someone calls them to your attention) or how all late 20-somethings have gaps in their knowledge about things that are pretty fundamental (one character doesn’t know how to use a screwdriver, another thought the North Pole didn’t exist, and, my favorite, is that the young professor always thought chameleon was pronounced “cham-uh-Leon”).  

All this points to an inevitable conclusion: we have blind spots with our kids too. And I don’t just mean when they’re standing behind us. The problem is, unlike what you may have heard in a 1980s G.I. Joe PSA, knowing isn’t half of the battle here.

We all know parents have kid blind spots. It’s so incredibly easy to see in other people and yet, instead of that leading to us adjusting our mirrors, it just makes us more confident there’s nothing to see there. Which there isn’t, because our kids are in our blind spot.

It usually takes a crash to open our eyes to our own kid blind spots. It could be a poor decision a kid made that in hindsight you should have seen and could have prevented. Or something your friends saw about your kid that you didn’t think was accurate until it was. Or misplaced trust revealed only once it’s broken.

I’d like to avoid the crash. I’d like to come up with a method for seeing things with fresh eyes or from a different vantage point where that blind spot comes into focus. Can’t say I know how to do that though.

Newer cars often have blind spot detection alerts and sensors to help bring what’s in your blind spot to your attention. But even then at least you know where your blind spot is. For parenting there is no technological “solution” to having kid blind spots. I guess the best we can do is to look twice. And listen when someone tells us to look out.