Shake It

Found this video of a mom teaching her kids to dance, or at least moving through a routine while they watched and imitated. Classical music in the background. No instruction really, just movement.

What struck me was how attentively they watched her. Kids that age usually don’t care about form or technique—they’re interested in whether something’s fun and whether the person doing it is someone they trust. Here both things were true, and so they tracked every gesture, trying to match it.

There’s a real skill embedded in what she was doing, not in the dancing exactly but in knowing how to be watched that way. How to move with enough clarity that a five-year-old can follow the shape of it. Most things in life you can’t teach directly—you just do them and hope the people watching you absorb something useful without realizing it.

Small moment. But those are often the ones worth paying attention to.