Never heard of people being able to do this– in Chapter 19
“With Jesse, when he was just a few months old I had the most fun with him doing what I called these “flying tours”. I would hold him so that his belly was over my palm and he could see everything from the correct perspective. (I got the idea from Candi’s brother, Peter Clark, who told me that if you hold a baby on its back, it’s always seeing everything differently than grown-ups do.) But the other way, the baby could se the world like we do. It was just logical.
“So I used to hold baby Jesse that way, and all of a sudden I could see his eyes would look to the left or the right a little. Then his head would move in one direction and stay there, and I’d realize, Oh, okay, he’s looking at the window shade. So what I did was I’d take him over to it. It was only fair. I’d let him touch it – I’d move his hands against it – and when he was done, he’d turn his head again, and maybe back toward his mom, and we’d zoom back to her.
“So we started getting in the habit of doing this. He’d be lying on my palm, looking at the big TV, and I’d take him to it. Or to the shelf, which had a top and an edge he could feel.. So we started getting around the world this way, and he’d always come back to home base at the end.
“Jesse got more and more confident. We’d start from home base and then go room by room through the entire house. He’d explore. I could feel his muscles tense in a certain way I could interpret as “Lift me up a little more” or “Let’s go a little lower.” Sometimes, when he got a little bigger, he would wave his arms and his feet like he was a mad swimmer, and that meant “Go as fast as you can.” So we had this great form of communication between us, and this was all before he was even eight months old. I was no longer just looking at the movements his head made; I’d feel his muscles tensing to tell me which way to go. I used to tell people this, and they didn’t believe me. So I’d tell them, “Okay, I’ll close my eyes. Drop something.” And Jesse would just tense his muscles and lead me right down to it. It really surprised people.
“I would try this with other babies – these flying tours – and I found out that after about twenty minutes, I could do it with them, too. All babies were the same! All babies gave the same muscle signals. I loved that I had figured out a way to let Jesse choose what to explore, before he could even crawl or walk, without having to be totally dependent on someone else.”
Assuming all babies are the same, wonder how easy for a parent to get the hang of that, if they’re told it’s possible.