📖 The Power of Observation: From the Laboratory to the Nursery 觀察的力量：從實驗室到嬰兒房

Lucy Kou

Oct 28

7 min read

📖 The Power of Observation: From the Laboratory to the Nursery

✍️ By Lisa H.

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“Careful observation, bold hypotheses, and cautious verification.”

This was a sentence I first encountered on the wall of my elementary school science classroom. I didn’t fully understand its meaning at the time, but those few words became the foundation of my academic and research journey.

Years later, in graduate and doctoral classrooms, I read hundreds of research papers. I came to a deep realization: nearly 90% of academic studies are not born from pure invention, but from building upon previous findings—extending, modifying, and verifying what already exists. And those truly groundbreaking, original theories? They often came from just a handful of “giants.”

I used to wonder—have all the great theories already been discovered? Are we just filling in the blanks?

But becoming a mother changed that perspective entirely.

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👶 The Most Profound Research Takes Place Between a Mother and Her Child

When my first child was born, I made the decision to breastfeed. As a psychology graduate student, I knew all the proven benefits—stronger immunity, emotional bonding, digestive health. I had read all the papers.

But the real challenge wasn’t knowledge. It was lived experience.

I had a cesarean section, and on the fifth day after the operation, I noticed my baby’s weight was plummeting—he lost a whole pound in a single day. I panicked and cried—I thought I had been breastfeeding, but in reality, he hadn’t been getting any milk. He had gone hungry for days without my knowing.

With breast inflammation, fever, and pain setting in, the doctor advised me to stop breastfeeding and switch to formula so I could take antibiotics. I felt defeated. I began to question—why did my background in psychology and child development feel so powerless in the face of real-life caregiving?

But I didn’t give up.

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🗒️ A Love-Driven “Observation Experiment”

Even though I could no longer breastfeed directly, I continued to pump milk every day. Every two hours, I repeated the same cycle—warm compress, massage, pumping—and logged every detail: how many milliliters I expressed, the time, my baby’s response after feeding—did he cry or smile? How many times did he pee or poop? Was he alert or sleepy? Was he fussy or calm?

I meticulously recorded every bit of data and built a complete log. Day by day, I watched his developmental trajectory unfold. And in the process, I found my rhythm as a mother.

That year became the most detailed and committed period of observation in my life. Not for the sake of publishing. Not for academic validation. But simply because—I deeply loved this small, soft being and wanted to understand him, support him, protect him.

Looking back, I often think of that year as a kind of “action research,” driven by maternal love. The subject was no longer an anonymous participant in a lab, but the warm child nestled in my arms. And the purpose wasn’t for a paper—it was for connection, for understanding, for life itself.

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🧠 Observation Is Not Just a Technique—It’s a Drive

From a scientific perspective, observation is the first step in any research.

From a humanistic perspective, observation is a way to have a conversation with life.

True observation doesn’t come from external demands; it comes from inner curiosity and care. When we want to understand, we pause. When we care, we look deeper.

But in today’s academic and educational systems, observation is often reduced to a checkbox—a process to be followed: clock in, fill out forms, enter data. Observation may still technically happen, but it loses its soul.

Like when a teacher is asked to “observe student emotional behavior” and only checks boxes like “calm / anxious / inattentive,” she may miss the real clues: the fear in a child’s eyes, the unconscious twisting of fingers, the one-second pause before a word is spoken.

Those are the true signals—not what’s on the form, but what’s alive in the moment.

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🌿 Observation Is a Living Awareness—a Willingness to Slow Down

In a world of information overload and rapid reactions, we’ve become used to “seeing” but not really “noticing.”

But if we’re willing to slow down, to breathe, to draw closer, observation can lead us into the deeper layers of life.

For a child, being observed isn’t about being monitored—it’s about being cared for.

For ourselves, choosing to observe is a gentle way of saying: “I’m willing to spend time understanding what I don’t yet know.”

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✨ Final Thoughts: Observation Is a Form of Love

We don’t all have to be scientists. But we can all be observers of life.

Observation doesn’t only happen under a microscope or with fancy instruments.

It can happen at 3 a.m. in a nursery, in a quiet classroom corner, or in a single moment of meaningful conversation.

It begins with a desire to understand—and brings with it connection, empathy, and real growth.

And this kind of observation, whether or not it’s published, is already a form of profound originality.

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📎 What I have found:

“Observation comes from curiosity and the desire to explore. It’s driven by our longing to understand the unknown. True observation arises when we truly care enough to see.”

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📖 觀察的力量：從實驗室到嬰兒房

✍️ 文 / Lisa H.

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「仔細觀察、大膽假設、小心求證。」

這句話，是我在小學自然教室的牆上第一次讀到的。當時我還不太懂它的真正意涵，但這短短的一句話，成了我日後求學與研究路上的根基。

多年後，在研究所與博士班的教室裡，我讀了上百篇論文。那時的我有個很深的感受：幾乎九成的研究，不是從零開始的創造，而是站在前人的基礎上，延伸、修正、驗證。而那些真正帶來轉捩點的原創理論，似乎都出自於極少數的「大神」。

我曾經懷疑——是不是所有的理論都已經被發現了？我們剩下的，只是沿著既有的軌跡，補上細節與變項。

但這樣的想法，在我成為母親後，徹底改變。

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👶 母嬰之間，最深刻的「研究現場」

當我的第一個孩子出生，我決定親餵母乳。作為心理學背景的研究生，我對於母乳的好處有充分的知識支持——免疫力、情感連結、腸胃發育……種種論文早已讀過無數篇。