The Extraordinary Ordinary is an ongoing series exploring the remarkable things quietly happening inside ordinary moments. Together we’ll discover how everyday experiences shape our brains, our relationships, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

The Realization 

(Composite photo of toddler playing with her shadow as sunlight shines through open window onto wood floor created with Canva Premium, July 2026.)

How often do we notice the ordinary? There was a time the ordinary captivated our curiosity and felt extraordinary. Those ordinary moments combined to create our extraordinary selves. 

When we were brand new human beings every experience, every thing, was a discovery and we were there for it. We were fully present. Ordinary light and shadow became light play and shadow play, filling us with awe and wonder. Eventually, as we grew up, most of us were over it. We now open and close our window shades with our minds ahead of us, waiting for our bodies to catch up to the next task on our to-do list. How can we regain that sense of awe and wonder? 

Presence changes everything. As adults we can develop the conscious skill of bringing our mind to where our body is. Our curiosity, wonder, and aptitude for awe are still in us, just easily covered up like a favorite outfit lost beneath a pile of clean laundry. It stays there until we consciously reach through the laundry, shake it out, and choose to wear it. Young children can’t do this yet. They are at both an advantage and a disadvantage. They are already dressed for success.The curiosity comes naturally for them. But they sometimes need a partner in discovery, and that is where we need to be ready. 

My grandmother was ready. I remembered this while fixing my ordinary dinner. I came home with fresh picked green beans from a local produce stand. Ready to cook them, I put a large stockpot of water on to boil, then hurried along to the chore of snapping the ends off each long green bean.

Suddenly, the extraordinary broke through my dulled senses. As I snapped the end off a bean there was a tiny spray of juice and a scent that threw me back in time to my grandmother, now long past, picking green beans in her garden. My cheeks and forehead warmed from the summer heat. The scent memory of my grandmother and dirt now mingled with the beans as I saw her bending down to me, catching my eye, grinning, and snapping a bean. She sniffed it. Her smile grew. She held it up to my nose. I breathed it in. Then she ate it, right there in the garden. Nodding, she plucked another for me to eat. I was nourished, not by vegetables, after all that was just a taste, but by my grandmother’s presence and love.

Smiling and breathing, I brought my mind back to where my body was, standing in my kitchen cooking dinner, but now my grandmother was with me. There was joy in my heart. My energy had shifted. I prepared dinner and ate with my family with a presence that brought peace and pleasure. This was all possible because my grandmother brought her extraordinary soul to an ordinary moment as we carried out the summer chore of picking beans.

This time travel moment clearly had a positive effect on my emotions and experiences as an adult, but the effect of our presence in ordinary moments is even greater on children. Why? Because Brains.

Young children are brand new human beings, and as such, they experience things differently than us. This is partly because they are experiencing things for the first few times that we have long since taken for granted, and partly because their developing brains have differences from ours. Their brains are still being built. Part of that brain development includes a skill of attention that works like a lantern, shining their light and attention on everything around them, especially the ordinary everything that surrounds them. Sunlight and shadows are noticed as play things, and green beans are much more detailed than a menu item.

What makes adulthood different is we develop the ability to control our attention like the beam from a flashlight. Anything outside of that beam goes unnoticed while we work with what is in the light. That is a valuable skill for task completion, unless the task at hand is to notice what we are missing and to join children in their world of wonder.

We can adapt. Our attention isn’t fixed. Have you ever used a flashlight with more than an on/off switch? Some flashlights have a rim around the light that you can turn that adjusts the beam from narrow to wide and back again. We can develop that skill to grow and harvest the benefits of noticing the ordinary when it helps us and to fade it out of our perception when it doesn’t serve us. And as we master our attention’s light we can then help children grow and strengthen theirs. 

What happens when we join our children and notice the ordinary with them? It is extraordinary. Let’s think about the ordinary ongoing chore of laundry. As adults we might power through with super focus, or we might use a distraction like a show or podcast to help us cope with the tedious boredom. When children try to get our attention we may perceive them as an unwanted distraction because the interruption takes us away from getting the job done. Sometimes that interruption can even feel like an attack and trigger the less patient parts of ourselves. When we consciously choose to be present, to breathe and respond rather than react, we get our moment and our power back. This is when the ordinary becomes an opportunity for the extraordinary. 

A bid for attention is a bid for connection. When we invite our children to join us in the ordinary, we enable that connection. Through this connection, we open up opportunities for growth. Adults separate learning from living. Young children don’t. When we choose to see these interruptions as opportunities, we get to continue to develop our own task mastery and completion while nurturing the development of our children. Have you heard of the ancient stoic philosophy and modern book, The Obstacle is the Way? This is it. 

Curious about things referenced? Check out these unsponsored links for more information:

Lantern Consciousness – Check out the work of Dr. Alison Gopnik

• TEDTalk: Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?
• Website
• Book: The Philosophical Baby (not an affiliate link)

Power of Attention – From Dr. Becky Bailey and Conscious Discipline

• Video: The Power of Attention with Dr. Becky Bailey
• Website Article Explaining the Power of Attention
• Book: Conscious Discipline: Building Resilient Classrooms (not an affiliate link)