foster youth could more easily recognize and appreciate the ways in which their own perceptions,
judgments and patterns of reactivity contributed to or exacerbated their stress and suffering, some
found it difficult to believe that they could find happiness, or that they deserved to be happy and
loved. One girl said that her greatest fear in life was not finding someone to love her, as she felt
worthless and damaged. Recognizing the source of these feelings is important, and we worked to
empower these girls to believe that they are not only worthy of receiving love, but also that they
often could already find sources of love and support in their lives. For some, it was helpful to
introduce a mentor or benefactor practice, in which adolescents recall the kindness, love and
support of a positive figure or role model in their lives. This priming of secure attachment can be a
helpful step in this process.
3. Developing Impartiality
Most children find it natural and quite easy to feel compassion towards family members and
friends. Many find it difficult to feel compassion for those who are not like them or who have
harmed or wronged them in some way. In order to develop compassion for all beings, it is
important to help children consider the ways in which all beings are alike in wanting happiness, as
well as the ways in which our own biases inhibit our feelings for and connections with others.
As shown in the story above, children and adolescents can initially find it daunting or even
confusing to imagine feeling compassion towards a difficult person or a bully. Helping children
consider the ways in which they relate to others, as well as the many ways in which they are like
others, is an important step in developing impartiality.
We like to play a game with children we call “I care/I don’t care”. In this game, we read out a
scenario describing another child or teenager in a somewhat difficult situation, and ask students to
stand along an “empathy scale” depending on how strongly they both relate to and care about the
individual described in the situation. Individuals in each scenario are varied based on gender, race
and social groups, as well as by categories of “friend”, “stranger” and “enemy”. Manipulating these
categories helps to demonstrate how our capacity to empathize is in large part shaped by our in-
group biases and judgments as well as by our own life experiences.
In one session with our elementary school children, we read out scenarios such as “someone was
sick on Halloween and missed Trick-or-Treating”; “the new kid at school is sitting alone during
lunch”; “a girl in your class couldn’t finish her math assignment”; “your best friend is getting teased
because of what he or she is wearing”; “the class bully gave the wrong answer in class and looks
embarrassed”, and asked the children to stand along the scale depending on how much they
cared about each person described in the scenario.
Invariably, children were better able to empathize with, or care for, their close friends, or those who
were in a situation that they themselves had experienced and could relate to. When we asked the
students what they thought about the ways in which we relate to others, one eight-year-old girl
shared this insightful response:
“[A] lot of the situations I could relate to but a lot I couldn’t. And for the ones I couldn’t, it
would be wrong [not to care]…but if I really, really looked into myself, I could find something
that related to me…so I cared the whole time because if you can really see it, you can relate
to all situations, really.”
The ability to “walk in another’s shoes” and to learn to feel for or with another is crucial to
developing impartiality, cognitive perspective taking and empathy.
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