The other day, I was sitting in a courtyard outside a tea shop, enjoying the sunshine and the general comings and goings of what is a beautiful place, when my attention was caught by a small family group sitting just back from me and to my left.

It was a man and woman, a young child and a toddler, maybe twenty months old or so. The family were having some cake and drinks, and a collie dog approached and was clearly curious, sniffing the toddler as he sat in his buggy and wagging his tail.

The toddler was transfixed, then excited, and clearly wanted to say hello. He reached out and patted the dog, a bit clumsily, as toddlers do, and the dog responded. He moved closer and gave the toddler’s hand a lick.

The toddler wriggled in delight, and his dad noticed, and encouraged him, saying what a lovely dog it was, and how nice it was to make friends and say hello. The toddler visibly expanded, reveling in this new friendship.

Grinning from ear to ear, he patted and stroked the collie, talking to him animatedly in his way, and receiving happy licks and tail wags back, as these two formed a quite beautiful bond. The world was a friendly, fun place where you reach out to other souls and they reach right back.

Then, this little person suddenly had a new idea. You could see it register. The deliciousness of it. He would share some of his food with his new friend! He broke off a piece of his cake, and held it out to the dog, smiling. With infinite tenderness, the dog very gently came forward to a position where he could take the offered food with his tongue so as not to risk catching the infant’s fingers with his teeth.

The moment was magical. The infant was giving something of his own, that he was able to give, and his friend was accepting it.

And then, the infant’s dad noticed. In the same moment, the infant realized that his dad had seen, and grinned broadly at him, expecting him to share the wonder of what was happening. Just like he had before when the dog had first come over.

However, his dad said, in a voice full of urgency and anxiety, ‘Don’t do that! He might bite you!’

The toddler’s face startled, then crumpled, and then his whole body collapsed, and he let out the biggest howl of a painful sob you have ever heard. And when he had his breath back from that first sob, he just sobbed and sobbed again. He was inconsolable.

The dog slunk away, confused. The little boy cried and cried, and did not know how to stop. His parents tried to distract him, showed him toys, tried to get him to laugh, offered him more of the cake, but all he could do was sob.

In the end, his mother picked him up out of the buggy he was sitting in, cuddled him to her, and walked away from the table and out of the courtyard. You could still hear him crying for a good ten to fifteen minutes.

Years ago, when I was a psychotherapist in training, one of the most emotionally challenging aspects of that training was a two-year child observation. We observed a child, and that child’s interactions with the world, every week for two years. We were trained to look and really see. To see the meaning, to notice what was going on in that child’s internal and external world, and watch how that child’s developing self was affected by those experiences. To respond emotionally to the detail.

For those of us who were parents, it was such a revelation, a privilege like no other opportunity ever, before or since, a chance to really see. And what had just happened reminded me of so many instances observed during that child observation where we, as grown-ups, well intentioned as we most certainly usually are, ride rough shod over a child’s emerging world so thoroughly that we spoil something that cannot easily be retrieved.

Now, some onlookers, watching that scene, would have felt that the father was absolutely right to say what he said. He had not wanted his son to be bitten by the dog.

But of-course, the father was not really looking. The dog’s body language was in no way aggressive, and both child and dog were being careful of each other.

Other onlookers might have decided that the little boy was having a tantrum. That he was objecting to not being allowed to do what he wanted. They would possibly even say that he wanted his own way and was spoiled, needed to be shown he could not have everything he wanted.

Others looking on might decide that the mother was making way too much of it all, taking him away and cuddling him for all that time. That it would teach him to do the same another time, showing him how to get his own way.

All these things you would find people thinking. We are brought up and conditioned to believe that children know no better, that they have no inner wisdom of their own, that the ‘grown up’ view of the world and how it operates is self-evidently the correct one.

However, when we do that, we miss the point. Just as that father missed the point. We miss the glorious truth that our children come into the world to teach us, and not the other way round. However, if you listened, really listened, with empathy, care, and openness, to the quality of the sobs coming from that little body, you would have known that it was not about any of those things that people not really listening might have decided it was.

Because the thing you would have heard, right there in the midst of those heart-rending sobs, would have been grief. And once you had heard the grief, you might find your own feelings stirred. You might find yourself experiencing flickers of long lost memory, of when you too were newly here, of when you still knew you were a spark of Oneness coming on an adventure, of when you still remembered the place where we all shared the same heart and were One, of when you still knew that we were all Love.

A time before the adults around you introduced you to fear.

That is what was in the sobs. That was the overwhelming grief. That was the loss. We do that to each other all the time, do we not? The word of caution, the hesitation in our voice, the warning, the frown, the look of disapproval or anxiety or dismay.

We perpetuate the myth that fear is the correct way, the sensible way, the self-protective way, the way the world is.

But just supposing we gave it a try, this other way. The way that this little boy sitting in his buggy offering some of his food to that dog came to remind us of, to show us all over again.

Just supposing we did that.

Wow, what a world this could be!