A TikTok video has gone viral for a mother's empathetic response to her toddler's mess.
Bri Knavel @briknavel posted the video on February 14, writing, "Sometimes it looks like a big mess until you get down to their level." She filmed her toddler's toys at the eye level of her child, "then you see their childhood". The clip has received over 6.1 million views and more than 837,000 likes.
Knavel wrote in the caption that sometimes she is overwhelmed by the mess her toddler can make, but when she slows down and pays attention to what that mess really is, "it's beautiful."
@briknavel Sometimes i get so overwhelemd with the “mess” When i slow down to really see whats in front of me then i see its their childhood and its beautiful 💕
♬ Bundle of Joy (From "Inside Out") - Benny Martin
The Importance of Play and Perspective
It is a well-established fact that play is developmentally paramount for children. Even the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights recognizes play as a right for every child.
In a paper published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the authors write that play encourages healthy brain development and acts as a way for the child to understand and master the world around them.
"It is through play that children at a very early age engage and interact in the world around them. Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles... As they master their world, play helps children develop new competencies that lead to enhanced confidence and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges," the authors wrote.
It is important that parents take a reasonable step back when letting their children play, the paper said. When play is controlled by adults, children tend to adapt to adult rules and ways of operating.
Research has even shown that a child's perception of the play space looks different to what adults see, adding scientific merit to Bri's perspective shift.
When scientists placed video cameras on the heads of toddlers and their parents as they played with toys, they found that the toddler view often consisted of a "single dominating object" that blocked other objects. Parents' views, on the other hand, were "broad and stable", and able to see all objects at once continually.
Bri's experiment to see the world as her toddler does, then, was not just an effort to empathize with her child. It was an engagement with a truth easily forgettable in adulthood: children do not perceive the world as adults do, and an adult's mess is often a child's world.
Parents and non-parents alike flooded the comments with words of reflection and appreciation for Bri, who revealed a perspective of childhood easily eclipsed by the responsibilities of adults.
"This makes me regret all the times I told them to 'clean this mess' ... little did I know, I was ruining their make-believe world," user @edelpra wrote.
"So crazy to know now that one day we all had our toys out to play for the last time and didn't even know it," @josiecarter36 posted.
"Omg [Oh my god] and we tell them to clean up this room, why?!" @.dgen commented. "This is their masterpiece."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
