Last night at the dinner table, my first grade daughter Emma told us about the talent show at school. She talked about how her friends did something funny, about how this one girl sang a song, and recounted all the highlights to us. Then she got to the part about one kid who stood up on stage and was literally petrified with stage fright. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move and I guess he made some funny croaking noise. My daughter gleefully told me how everyone laughed.

I’m sure it was funny but I decided to take this opportunity to talk about empathy. We’ve been struggling with that lesson in our house lately. Emma has a very sharp wit and a sharp tongue. She can run rip shod over her siblings with her mouth and stun them into silence or fits of frustrated rage. Her brain works so quick that her heart doesn’t have time to stop to think about being empathetic and what she’s doing to the other person. I want my daughter to be warm and caring and learn to control her wit and tongue. I want empathy to guide her choices. A lesson I still struggle with even in my 30’s.

I asked her how she thought that boy felt and she acknowledged he was probably pretty sad. And I told her that laughing at him wasn’t a good choice. Her reply “But everyone else was”. Well, just because everyone else is making a bad choice, doesn’t mean that makes it the right choice. (Isn’t there a different phrase I can use then this cliché? Hopefully it didn’t sound like a cliché to her.) I told her that I wanted her to be different from everyone else and let her heart help make choices not just her head. We talked about how it’s a good goal to make people feel good, not sad. And then she told me even the adults were laughing. So we discussed it’s sometimes hard to know what is the right choice and what is the wrong choice. Most of the time you can model yourself after adults you respect, but sometimes, you have to just follow your heart.

I really want my kids to be different. I want to raise compassionate kids who will stick up for the underdog. Who have a strong enough sense of self to feel confident not following the mainstream if they know it isn’t right. I really want my children to be different. But I’m unsure the best way to go about teaching them when it’s important to “conform” and when it’s important to “go your own way”.

It’s hard this parenting stuff. Especially when you are trying to teach your kids lessons you are still learning yourself.

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