Marion - I think you're seeing by the general direction of all these great postings that watching someone else's fingers is not a bad thing.

As you get more seasoned you'll learn little tricks like WHO to watch. If you know, for instance, that a certain fiddler, or singer, or banjo player regularly practices or plays with a certain guitarist, then its a good bet that's the fingers to watch, not the new kid on the block who has only played with the lead musician once before !

Also, if you're embarassed about watching the fingers, develop your "stealth" skills, where you nonchalantly skim your eagle eye past those important chord formations oh-so-casually just once in a while.

And you can develop your memory skills by memorizing the progression - G -C - G - D - G, or whatever, on the 1st or 2nd time through, and then work on counting the amount of time you spend in each chord on the 3rd or 4th time through 1-chuck, 2- chuck, etc. Pretty soon you won't have to watch the hands much at all.