Two weeks ago, we introduced green, red, and blue zones and last week, we chatted about balance (how to stay in the green zone longer) and resilience (how to expand the green zone). These are based on The Yes Brain Child by Siegel and Payne Bryson.

This week, let’s talk about empathy and insight. Both are tools for returning (hopefully quickly like kids-called-to-cake) to the green zone.

Empathy – unlike unicycling – is a skill that can be learned. Building empathy is the act of gaining awareness of how others feel. It can help you to understand others’ motivations and change your perspective from life happening to you to one of life happening for you. Developing empathy can help us operate from the point of receptivity rather than reactivity. It gives us control, or at least the illusion of control.

Ways to build empathy in kids:

• Replace judgment with curiosity, rather than, “why does Colin smell?” try, “I wonder why he didn’t shower today?”
• Question how the character in a book or movie is feeling. “How does The Dude feel when his rug is peed on?”
• Point out how a friend might be feeling, “It looks like Spruce is feeling excited to eat his homemade gluten-free, dairy-free, free-range, sugar-free, packed-in a bees-wax-canvas snack.”
• When your children are ready for it, broadening their circle of concern, look to empathize with natural disaster victims, the homeless, or the driver with road rage. For an added challenge, hang out at the return department of the nearest department store for 10 minutes.
• Play “fact or opinion” (ask if something is a fact or an opinion). The sky is blue (fact). That tree is beautiful (opinion). Occasionally you’ll get a false fact: a triangle has four sides.
• Teach kids (and partners?) that advice isn’t as powerful as listening, or at the very least, advice is more influential after listening.
• If all else fails, try this.

Siegel and Payne Bryson don’t make the distinction between empathy and compassion. I think it is an important one to make. I like to imagine they would promote compassion over empathy. Empathy can elicit pain centers in our brain as we put ourselves in others’ shoes; their itchiness is our itchiness. Compassion is when we start with empathy and then decide to offer aid – I will scratch your back, etc., etc. – which triggers the reward centers of our brain.

Ways to build compassion in kids:

• Practice the Mr. Rogers rule: in trying situations, point out the helpers.
• Ask what might make someone feel better.
• ​This book is a brilliant read with your kids - such an easy metaphor for kids to grasp.

OK, empathy is building an awareness of how others feel. Insight is building an understanding of how you feel. Like empathy, this can be taught, but – maybe more importantly – it HAS to be taught.

Internal feelings arise from our physiological state; you can think of it as a 2X2 matrix (see below) with excited <> relaxed on one axis and happy <> sad on the other. Emotions are learned by associating the internal physiological state (some combination of the 2X2) with external context and words. Think of it like teaching kids what farts are, er... the wind is, you cannot see it, but you can sense it, you see the leaves rustling, and it can startle the dog. We can help kids by helping them name their feelings - and they will start to associate them with their internal state.

Empathy and insight go hand in hand; they are both ways of starting to give our kids vocabulary to describe the unseen emotional world. By doing this, we can help them begin pattern recognition. They can learn that they can get worked up and that they will eventually feel calm. When they feel sad, it is not a permanent state. They can learn that before they blow their proverbial top. That they can take a pause and de-link their internal state from their desire to tear their brother’s artwork into smithereens. They start to learn how to make good decisions, which help them be in control of their lives.

Tactics for teaching insight:

• Teach kids calm. Before bed, when they are relaxed (not having the dance party to delay sleeping), have them put one hand on their chest and one hand on their stomach, have them feel how calm their body feels. You can then use this when they are losing their sh*t – ask them to put one hand on heart and one hand on stomach to try and find calm.
• As you see them getting worked up, ask them to pause before the explosion and try and calm down using breath or expansion of their visual field. Then, call it out for them when they’re able to be angry without seeing red.
• Name their emotions for them, ask them to notice how the emotion feels in their body.
• Get them involved in activities where they gain awareness of their bodies: martial arts, dance, yoga.

To teach our kids empathy and insight, we must have the right level of connection. Our kids need to know that we understand their inner world but are not overwhelmed by it, that she can feel dysregulated, and you will remain regulated to help her get back into the green zone.

Most of what Siegel and Payne Bryson talk about in The Yes Brain Child is just as helpful for adults seeking more creativity, ease, resilience, courage, and curiosity. And in many respects, we cannot support our kid’s yes brains unless we are ourselves in a yes-brain state of mind. ​​

Admin Deets:

Were you forwarded this email and want to get in on the action? Sign-up here.

Are there parenting books/articles/podcasts you'd like me to review? Send them on over to ash@happyvolcanoes.com.
​