How to teach children to see life from a different perspective.

"What does it mean to think like a Frog?"  My 7 year old daughter recently asked this question while reading a book where a Zen master was trying to teach his student how to think like a Frog.

I explained that the exercise was designed to consider life a from a different point of view.  I asked her where a frog would like to live, in a desert or in a lake?  She said lake. Then I asked her what kind of animals would the frog like to have around, eventually we identified that flys would be good because frogs eat flys and fish would be bad because fish eat frogs.  She caught on and then we moved to other animals, such as a mouse that would like cheese and no cats and a giraffe that would like trees with high leaves.

Recently we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge where they stopped taking a bridge toll and instead read an electronic sensor called a Fast Track or take a picture of your license plate and send you a ticket.  My kids asked how they collect the toll if you do not have a Fast Track Sensor. I explained how they took a picture of your license plate and sent you a ticket to your house.  Then they started to ask what happens if you don't pay the ticket and I was starting to make up the escalation process.




Then I remembered the lesson about thinking like a frog and I asked my daughter what she would do if she ran a bridge and people did not pay their tolls when a ticket was mailed.  She came up with different ideas for escalating the fine and then taking away people's driving license for a while until they paid.  While writing this article, I discovered that if you don't pay the toll within 21 days, a fine of $25 is added to the ticket.  If you don't pay the first overdue notice, another note is sent out and the fee is increased.  Finally,if you don't pay that fine, the matter is referred to the DMV and they withhold vehicle registration.  It turns out, that our assumptions were fairly close to the actual penalties.

 What penalties would you set if people didn't pay their toll?

Source Marin IJ

In another example, my daughter said that her teacher was kind of strict sometimes. I asked my daughter how she would act if she was a teacher with 30 first graders.  My daughter quickly realized that with that many people in the room, it was important to maintain discipline and she then had a little more sympathy for her teacher.

Next time your child does understand why someone is acting the way they do, teach them how to think like a frog and then ask them to try and think like the other person.  From the simple example of the frog, they should be able to make the leap to understanding why people behave the way they do fostering empathy, as well as ability to predict others behavior.