According to Robert Brooks,PhD, noted speaker and author of “Raising
Resilient Children”, Resilient children, those who are happy and successful, learn
to manage their emotions, thoughts and behaviors in part through the common
denominator of living, working with and being educated by available and caring
adults”. Being able to manage one’s emotions is a metacognitive quality that is
associated not only with resilience, but with the development of empathy, or
the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and respond accordingly.
As we proceed through the continuum of social emotional
competencies as outlined by the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL), Marilena and I focused on Perspective Taking
with our students in order to determine how many sides to a given story they
could come up with. Once again, our 3rd Graders amazed us with the empathy of
their responses to the following scenario:
“Monica invites Andy over for a playdate, but Andy says he
wants to stay home. Monica feels that Andy doesn’t want to be her friend. Why else might Andy not want to go to
Monica’s?”
The students were separated into groups of 3 or 4 in order
to ponder this and other related scenarios, and then to role play some of their
solutions (your children love to role play and we love to see what they come up
with)!
After brainstorming and rehearsing for about 10 minutes, we
sat in our circle and talked about the various perspectives one could assume,
despite the some of the more obvious ones. In the aforementioned dilemma, one
student said that perhaps Andy wasn’t feeling well, or that something happened
in Andy’s family which made Andy want to be home, or that he might have gone to
a Red Sox game the night before and didn’t get much sleep. Or that he had to
study for a test, or that he might have invited a friend to his house for a
play date, or that he just didn’t feel like playing, to name a few. The
students came to the realization that rather than take a situation like this
personally, they should consider that there are a number of factors responsible
for others’ actions (in other words, 2 or more sides to every story). As we
moved through each of the 4 scenarios the children were asked to analyze,
Marilena and I were once again in awe of the ability of these young people to
be empathic in their understanding of the various situations that they and
others encounter and the reasons why they do what they do.
At home you can create a few dilemmas with your children and ask
them to think of some reasons why someone might respond the way they do. You
will be both surprised and pleased to see how caring and creative they are! One
of my favorites was this scenario:”Smilena is upset because Grumpelina won’t make
eye contact when she talks to her. What might be some reasons? – To which a
student replied: “Because the sun was in her eyes!” of course! Why didn’t I
think of that?
