Tonights post is going to be a little hard for me, yesterday I had a very real scare… my eldest daughter almost drowned in a river with me 10 feet away!  So here is the story, we were all playing in the river and I was playing with the baby while the other mom and her baby sat next to me. The 3 older kids were playing on the large rocks behind us (my niece, nephew, and eldest daugher) and then a dad was up on the other rock.   All of the sudden the dad yelled and jumped over the rocks and I turned around to see my daughter trapped between 2 rocks with the water gushing over her head and a look of pure panic on her face.  By the time I caught up to what I was seeing, the dad and a stranger were pulling her out of the water to me.   I grabbed her and started examining her and she was coughing up large amounts of water in between crying (I was about to cry too).  Once us parents knew she was ok I looked at my niece & nephew and they were playing around still acting as if nothing had happened.

What really gets me is neither one of them yelled to alert me that she had fallen into the water, neither one of them seemed concerned at all that she was drowning, and neither one of them came to check to see if she was ok after we got her out of the water.  I am SO thankful that the Dad looked over when he did, we aren’t sure how long she was actually under water because again, we didn’t get alerted.   What scares me is if that Dad didn’t look over when he did I would have lost my daughter (a thought that is bringing me to tears as I write this).

SO that brings up what this post is about…. Compassion.   I never would have thought that 2 kids who are witnessing this happen would have no compassion for the situation OR compassion to see if she is ok afterwards.   How often are we now numb to the world around us? How often do we look the other way?

I recently read an article that a man posted doing a “test” on society, he sat on a street corner with his 4 year old daughter and a sign that read “Single dad, need drug money, anything helps!” and the man raised $500 in 1 day!  The same man with the same daughter the next day on the same corner had a sign that read “SIngle dad, need food for daughter, anything helps!” and the man only raised $50… that is it! I realized by reading this article that we as a society are more accepting of the negative then the positive, and we don’t seem to show compassion where it is truly needed.

So, how do we start to make a change on this? How can we show more compassion in our own lives? Well me personally, I am guilty of making judgements which result in what I call “selective compassion” which isn’t where i want to be.  My husband recently pointed out that I at times have too high of expectations for some people and therefore don’t show compassion when they really need it. He is absolutely right.

Here is an exercise I have done in the past which seems to work for me, it is a play on an old saying “Put yourself in their shoes”. Now obviously I am not able to do this in all circumstances BUT I can place myself in their feelings. I close my eyes and I picture a time in my life that may be similar to what they are experiencing and I remember how I was feeling at that time and what I would have wanted from people at that time.  Boom!  It makes compassion so much easier!

Now what about our children? How do we teach compassion?  Well the children will automatically act as they see… learned behavior,,, so if they witness me showing compassion towards other people and animals then they will on some level learn what that looks like. But how do we teach it?  What I do with my children is actually quite simple, I ask them “How would you feel if you were going through that?” and it works most of the time. It takes them out of their experience and puts them into another persons.  I tell them a story. For example, if they harm an animal like our cat or dog, I say:

“Imagine you are in a home with a family who you love more then anything and that family most of the time shows you love back. But then one day one of the family members grabs your hear really hard and makes you cry. Then imagine they don’t say sorry or worse, laugh.  How are you feeling if that happens?”

Many of these “stories” help my children and they have now become very compassionate children and they get truly upset if they see other people not showing compassion & even try to be leaders in showing those people how to have compassion.

I am not sure what to do with my niece & nephew or strangers for that matter. But what I do know is that I am sad to see such a lack of compassion and will continue to search for a way to bring more of it not only into my life but to the people around me as well. ❤