The Miracle of Joint Attention
The Miracle of Joint Attention
Does Kūkūilama care about what I care about? Do you?
Aloha, welcome to They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir, a Substack newsletter in which I tell stories. Mainly stories about my life. Sometimes I offer an essay, which is another kind of storytelling. I have made my living in different ways, but I have always been a storyteller. I write here in hope that some of my stories connect with your stories.
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Miraculously, we can take it for granted that when we speak to another person - or for that matter to our dogs or cats or horses or potbelly pigs- we are actually communicating, sharing an idea.
Why did I never see this for the miracle it is until now?
I only learned this past week that “joint attention” is the term given in the field of child development to the ability a baby gains to observe something, and then point and turn their gaze to their caregiver to confirm that they are both observing the same thing1. Or the reverse, for a person to point or a dog to bark and wag its tail, and the child look to see what their aunty or pet is seeing. Again - with emphasis - the child has an awareness that they both will be seeing the same thing. Typically this happens late in the first year of a childʻs life.
What a revelation joint attention must be to a baby. It opens a whole world to them.
Joint attention is not just about confirming visuals; it is like it is even more about sharing feelings. We observe our own reaction, that what we are seeing shows up as something funny or sad or scary to us, and we look to see whether the other person shares the same assessment. We might high five or high tail it outta there, argue about whether the waves are dangerous or the music is awful. We actively seek the feeling joint attention evokes. Have you seen a green flash sunset or a hilarious wardrobe fail and wished your partner or friend was there to see it with you? No wonder we obsessively post those moments to our “stories”.
We take it for granted when we post there will be a viewer, when we write there will be a reader, when we record a podcast there will be a listener. And that the reader or listener might share our emotional response. Even when it is asynchronous, we are anticipating a kind of joint attention and that gives us pleasure.
And so I find myself simply in awe of the miracle of joint attention and all the possibilities we have because of it. Week after week, I can put words on this page, asking you to imaginatively share in my gaze and hoping you will be glad you did.
When I left off in my story last week, our shared gaze was turned in expectation of my going to see the 3-1/2 year old green broke Arabian gelding named Kolohe. As usual, I was unsure what to write next - whether there was enough in our first encounter and my decision to bring him home to warrant its own post. Or whether I should jump ahead to the first weeks of getting to know him. I have told both of those stories many times. Admittedly, they could be incredibly boring to anyone other than another fanatic horse owner (as if there is any other kind). Then this concept of joint attention kept butting into my thoughts until I realized it was a key element in both of those stories.
I asked my friend to accompany me to meet the gelding because I knew that our eyes would be focused on the same things, our background of understanding similar, but our evaluation and conclusions might be different. This was a situation in which I wanted to be able to look to someone who might have a different perspective on the object of our joint attention to help me make a sound decision. Thatʻs a whole essay in itself.
When “Kolohe” came home with me, I uncovered some big holes in his foundation - the fact we would have to cultivate what I know now is called joint attention being one of them. “Kolohe” was friendly to people and curious about the world in general. But he had little clue that coordinating attention and action with people could be something of value to him. His MO was minimal compliance with their inexplicable demands to avoid unpleasant consequences. His attention was always elsewhere.
Still, as I have written before, we are wired for connection. Humans are, horses are. I wrote “Being part of a herd, a team, a community IS our place of safety, of contentment, of contribution.” The key to unlocking my future with the gelding was for him to experience those positive feelings through learning to share joint attention.
When I hold a baby on my lap and we watch kittens at play and the child giggles and turns to me with delight on their chubby face, I experience a rush of oxytocin, or at any rate one of those natural feel-good endorphins. When I hang up the phone after a long chat with a dear friend, the high lasts for hours.
For weeks I have been writing here about trauma and stress, about the vagus nerve, about how to seek relief from our fight/flight/freeze responses. But right now I want more than relief. I want the feeling I get when we connect. Letʻs start a practice of joint attention, of reaching out, of sharing our love. If not with me, just begin somewhere.
See you back here next week.
I learned this from the brilliant Suleka Jaouadʻs Substack, with guest host Elizabeth Gilbert sharing Nancy Reddyʻs essay about a moment with her baby, his first moment of joint attention. The title of the essay is Unreasonable Love. I highly recommend clicking over to read it.