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security take hold.
becoming a place where those we love know it, by virtue of our attention, protection, and appreciation.

TWO
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Soul Fever
    L et’s begin at a comfortable starting place for any process: by remembering and appreciating what we already know. We know our children, that’s for sure. We know them as no one else possibly could. We know their best, shining selves, and every degree removed from that. The edge of their “too little sleep” selves, the delight of their “overcome with silliness” selves, and the sometimes dangerous intersection of those two. We know the cadence of their voices, their smells, the meaning behind their expressions, the things that engage them. We almost always know what they want to say, but can’t.
    The depth of our knowledge of these small beings is phenomenal. It’s certainly more than just what an accumulation of days, moods, or experiences would show us. More than what we’ve learned from others on the subject (of kids), or what we’ve experienced directly. More than everything we’ve done to record the time we’ve spent together … our notes and pictures, our videos and memories. Yes, we know our kids better than everything we could show, or tell you about them. We see them with a sort of X-ray vision, after all. Not exactly a superpower, but as close as we come to one. We see our children with a depth of vision equal to the sum of our attention, our connection, our love for them, and our fervent desire to understand them.
    This deep, instinctual knowledge of our kids—like everything else—waxes and wanes. While our love may always be there, our attention can suffer; our connection can sometimes falter, and when this happens, understanding them can seem like a whole lot of work. Our instincts are not always strong. Simplification is about stripping awaythe distractions and clutter that monopolize our attention and threaten our connection. It’s about giving kids the ease to become themselves, and giving us the ease to pay attention. To more fully develop, and to trust, our instincts.
    In the chapters ahead, we’ll begin the practical steps of simplifying, of peeling away the stresses and excesses that can overwhelm a child’s emotional well-being and short-circuit our instincts. But first let’s look at how, with attention and connection, we can recognize when a child is overwhelmed. When they are being rushed along by too much stuff, speed, stress, or when they have what I think of as an emotional or “soul fever.” Let’s look at how, instinctively, we treat an emotional fever in much the same way we do a physical fever: by drawing the child close and suspending their normal routines.
    As parents, we develop an instinctual sense of what to do when our children get sick. Our instincts are part childhood memories of what brought us comfort, a bit of science, a large dose of compassion, and some parental adrenaline. After all, it’s a rare mom or dad who isn’t humbled by their baby’s first high fever, or by a long night spent sitting perfectly upright—motionless—holding a little one so congested that they can only breathe in one position. Sometimes routine, sometimes downright stressful, our children’s illnesses are never convenient. Yet over time we develop ways to see them through, changing our schedules and rising to the occasion.
    We learn how to support them through the chills, coughs, fevers, and rashes we come to expect. Our instincts even carry us (and them) through some of the more unusual symptoms (“So this is ‘projectile vomiting!’”) they surprise us with (“You have nasty red bumps where?!”) . We learn that comfort is a large part of healing, an essential ingredient in any recipe for “getting better.”
    One touch of their forehead, one glance at their dull eyes and we know … the signs of physical fever are unmistakable, unavoidable. And so we begin the process of caretaking.
    Just as inevitably, our little ones (into