When my son was born, it was not love at first sight.

It was almost exactly noon on January 13th.  Was it a sunny day?  A rainy one?  Honestly I have no memory of that detail.

One minute I was in the waiting room as they prepped my wife for a c-section and the next I was looking at slightly blue baby with grey eyes in a plastic box that was – I assume – taking some kind of reading on him.

The doctor comes up and asks if I want to be the one to take him out.

I answered with a hesitant and unusually timid “yes” (actually Si… since I was in Mexico).

The doctor probably didn’t notice the small film of of sweat building on my head as I reached in.  To my best recollection this was going to be the first time I held a baby.

“What if I broke something?”  I thought.

<spoiler… I didn’t>

So i stood there holding my son as the doctor to our photo together… and what was going though my head was not what I expected.

You see Hollywood had taught me that when I hold my fist child my world is suppose to shift, the stars are suppose to align and I am supposed to be bathed in a tsunami of love…

… except I did not feel that.

In my hands, I held a stranger.

I had just meet this being.  I know I was suppose to feel a connection but, I didn’t.

It just was.

Over the next 2 or 3 months it continued like this.

I did what I thought a good father would do, but I still did not feel that connection I expected.

I thought something was wrong with me.

But then, somewhere in month 2 or 3 I went in to pick up my son after a nap, and and as i walked in, for the first time he turned his head slightly, looked and me, and smiled for the first time.

Then, suddenly, there it was.

The stars, the music and that slightly nauseated feeling in the lower stomach that i think is love (or maybe bad tacos).

Since then it has only grown.  

Do what had happened to me.  In retrospect, separated by years from that event by years I know what.

Connection.

Or better put a lack of it.

You see my wife had a connection from day 1.  But, unlike me, that day was.not the start of their relationship.  Their relationship had started 9 forming months ago.  In that time they shared food, sensations, emotions and experiences.  But on the day he was born, him and i had none of that.  What was day 270 for my wife was day 1 to me.

It took time for me to build that relationship… that connection… and that is normal.

That is what it takes.

Amd that’s not only in families but also in education.

Building a connection with students takes building a relationship.  You do this by sharing experiences, wins, loses and outcomes that are not easily defines in either of those black and white outcomes.

Ot comes from not only sharing the knowledge but sharing perspective.  Sometimes it builds by listening and sometimes it build by assisting in things outside of the course itself.

But connectionnis the base of education just like in a family and as you build it your students will start learning.  And one day you’ll show up to the online class look up to the screen turn their heads slightly and smile just to see you.