Why Do Children Always Lose Things?

Do you know how children sometimes do things veeery sloooowly precisely when you could do with putting a move on it?

Or how they endlessly lose the little gew-gaws that are very important to them at this moment? And life turns into one interminable search party for every tiny lost object?

It’s almost like they do it on purpose.

Because they do. Not consciously, of course, but there is a great and crucial purpose behind this behavior.

Let me explain.

One of the main tasks of parenting is to contain the children and gradually teach them to contain themselves. When they are very little, for example, there are rivers, oceans of saliva coming out of them, and parents have to stem the flow with bibs and whatnot. And then the saliva stops coming out. It’s done, the child has learned to self-contain. Emotional self-containment takes a lot longer, of course.

The child knows that it’s a slow process and wants to make sure the parents get it and will wait for their self-containment to mature. The little lost gew-gaws and the slow-motion movement are their love letter to the parents where they ask, “Mommy, will you still love me while I’m learning this? Daddy, will you be patient for as long as I need to learn to self-contain?”

We can respond to this love letter with one of the biggest gifts a parent can give to a child. This gift is the sentence, “Take your time, I’m not rushing you.” This has to be said from the place of complete inner peace. If irritability overcomes, practice breathing, meditation, deep focus, whatever. How are you going to teach self-containment if you are not self-containing successfully?

The incomprehensible importance of the little lost gew-gaws is not in the gew-gaws themselves. The point is to see if the parent will eagerly and patiently engage in the search for the misplaced item and do it as many times as needed. By losing the gew-gaw, the child asks, “will you still love me even though I’m imperfect?” And with every search you respond, “yes, of course, I will.” It really helps to avoid feeling annoyed if you remember that it’s your way of responding to a child’s plea for love.