022: Helping Your Child Get Out of and Avoid Victim Mentality

In the Boat With Ben

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Victim mentality can take on very mild forms, like a child complaining about how it’s not fair her brother has a toy she wanted. It can also lead to a life spent pointing the finger and missing out on the fulfillment that comes from taking responsibility. It’s easy to simply tell our children life isn’t fair.

How do we help them to understand this reality while helping them maintain a sense of control over themselves and their environment? How do we empower them to stop seeing themselves as the victim and to believe in themselves as the victor in their story?

Ben and Rachel talk in this episode about practical ways to walk with our children through their journey of understanding and embracing responsibility, practical ways to engage our children in healthy conversation about victim mentality, and the confidence that comes from believing that we are powerful to shape the world around us.

Highlights, Takeaways, & Quick Wins

• Victim mentality ultimately leads to allowing your circumstances or other people to be in control of your happiness.
• We want to empower our children by showing them they have the power to carry out different choices.
• Story-telling can be a powerful way for us to not feel like the victim of somebody else and realize that they’re the victim of something, too.
• Help your children believe they belong with your words, your actions, and the responsibilities you give them.
• Blame is about trying to determine who is at fault, while responsibility is about doing what is in our power to make something right.
• When we forgive the people who have harmed us, they no longer have power over us.
• The most important thing we can do as parents to help our children avoid victim mentality and take on responsibility is to demonstrate that for ourselves.

Show Notes

• 02:33 Ben: Rachel asked me what we were talking about today, I told her this title, and Rachel, what did you say?
• 02:39 Rachel: I said, “Do we know how to do that?” I was intending that question more for the children.
• 03:02 Ben: I was kind of assuming she meant for both ourselves and our kids, because we’ve definitely struggled with some of that. Looking back over the years, we’ve struggled a little bit with victim mentality. We haven’t identified it or worked on it directly, but through some other things, we’ve taken steps toward getting out of it. Many adults, even without realizing it, struggle with this victim mentality, and it casts a shadow over their lives.

What Is Victim Mentality?

• 03:51 One of the biggest markers of victim mentality is the passing of blame. I think about those times when our oldest, Jadon, has been upset about something, so he does something to one of his brothers. We get onto him about that, and he says, “I hit him because he did this to me.” It’s a finger-pointing thing.
• 04:21 Rachel: It depends on the personality type. Some of our other boys don’t do that; it’s not all of them. When I was thinking about this at first, I thought, “Is it maybe a stage that kids go through?” But I think there are certain personality types that are much more prone to the victim mentality than others. Some people listening may totally understand and get what we’re saying, and other people may think, “I’ve never dealt with that.” Some of us just gravitate toward that more.
• 04:56 Ben: Even if this isn’t you or your children, you probably know someone who fits this profile. The way that we deal with this is a little bit different than you might expect.

Another marker of victim mentality is the feeling that bad things keep happening to you.

• 05:16 I think about that book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. As he is going about his day, it’s a combination of the bad circumstances happening to him and his comparison of himself to other people and him seeing that more favorable circumstances are happening for them. It’s that comparison, that feeling that things just don’t work out for you. It might even become a belief that that’s just the way life is for you. A lot of what we see with our children, when it comes to victim mentality, is complaining about unfairness.
• 06:06 It can be either, “It’s not fair that I don’t get to do something,” or, “It’s not fair that he gets that and I don’t get it.” Victim mentality ultimately leads to allowing your circumstances or other people to be in control of your happiness or your destiny. You’re handing that off by saying, “These things are happening to me, this isn’t fair, this isn’t right, and that person is to blame.” You’re saying, “My happiness and my ability to enjoy life and reach my goals depends on these other things that are working against me.”

Where Does Victim Mentality Come From?

• 07:08 Rachel: I probably struggle with this more than Ben does. I also think that certain things that happen in our childhood can make us feel more like a victim than other people. There are some real things people go through in their childhood that can make them feel like they are victims. There’s a lot of healing work that has to happen in order to get out of that mentality. Ever since we’ve had children, I’ve been on my journey toward healing from that. There are a lot of difficult things in the world, and we don’t always get to choose whether or not we go through them. Dad’s leave, mom’s struggle, and there’s nothing that we as children can do about that. As adults, as the parents of the children who are watching us and hear everything we say and the way that we frame things, it’s worth it for us to do that healing work.
• 08:26 Ben: One of the huge keys to this for our children is us being on this journey for ourselves, too. We shouldn’t just make it about them, but we should be demonstrating those things, living them out. The root of this victim mentality speaks to what Rachel just said. Part of it is feeling not worthy. This can come from somebody leaving or from feeling like the decisions you make are causing you to lose favor in the sight of the people that you love. In a former episode, we talked about protecting your child’s sense of self worth and how important it is for us individually, on a very primal level, that we are acceptable (Related: e20 Preserving Your Child’s Sense of Self Worth).

Anything that puts our acceptability into question compromises our sense of self worth, and that’s part of the root of victim mentality.

• 09:38 Another part of it is feeling like we’re not in control, like we’re powerless. That’s something that, especially as children, we experience. As we get into adulthood, we may not struggle with that as much, but there can definitely still be an element of that feeling of powerlessness there.
• 10:00 Rachel: If children aren’t empowered when they’re children, they can carry that into adulthood, and that’s where a lot of our junk comes from. We grew up in a generation where parents didn’t know how to empower their kids. Now, we know a lot more, and when we know better, we do better. We are trying to empower our children so that, hopefully, they don’t carry a victim mentality into their adult years.
• 10:37 Ben: There’s going to be some stuff they’ll still have to deal with, but how great is it that we get an opportunity to show them what it looks like as adults to still be working through those things? It’s not about arriving at this place where you’re perfectly healthy as a human being. It really is a journey, something you’re continually working through and toward. Showing our children that it’s okay to admit that we have parts of us that are wounded and broken and that we can heal and work through those things is a great gift we can give our children.
• 11:23 Rachel: It is empowering for them to hear us say something like, “We just can’t ever get ahead because life is always dumping all this crap on us,” and then to have us turn it around and say, “You know what, I was feeling like a victim, and I am not a victim in this situation.” How empowering is it for them to see something like that turn around? When we’re not perfect, those are the best teaching opportunities.

The Child Stuck in Victim Mentality

• 12:10 Ben: Among our children, the one who stands out to me the most as struggling with this is our oldest, Jadon. When he expresses that victim mentality, that is not necessarily my best opportunity to help him work through that. Once he’s expressed it, the catalyst that caused it has already played itself out. You can’t try to redirect that necessarily, so think about what you can do between now and the next time he’s faced with this kind of situation to help him have a better mindset about that. When they do express those things, I think of one of the examples we have all the time with Jadon. He will get upset about something, maybe he’s sitting down and reading, and somebody’s pestering him. Lately, he has been pretty good about saying, “Hey, stop. I don’t like that.” They keep on doing it, for whatever reason, to the point where he gets angry and hits or hurts them in some way.
• 13:50 They cry, because they’re younger, and they know that we’re going to hear them and say, “Jadon, why did you hit your brother?” One of the mistakes that we often make in that situation is to immediately put on this reactive, angry, frustrated tone. We’re frustrated that this has happened, that he has hurt his brother. What helps Jadon a lot in those situations is when we can step back, be really objective, take a breathe, and say, “I see that your brother is hurt. Can you tell me what happened?” He does the thing where he says, “He was bothering me, so I hit him.” He passes the blame. “It’s his fault. I was just sitting here, reading.” We can acknowledge his feelings and say, “Okay, you felt angry,” and then help him tell the story again. The whole story can be told so many different ways.
• 15:14 It is clear, if you’re looking at it objectively, that it’s frustrating for somebody to be picking on you, but there are many decisions that Jadon could have made in that situation that would have led to a different outcome. He’ll tell the story, and you listen to his story. You can offer an alternative story and say, “What if, instead of hitting your brother, you had gotten up from your chair and gone somewhere else? What if you had come and told us, after trying to get him to stop?”

Try to lead your child into an alternative story that has the outcome they wanted but didn’t feel like they could produce.

• 16:09 Rachel: Something we can do for our children in these situations, and we’ve talked about this before, is to empower them to communicate well with their sibling, why they don’t want them to bother them, how it’s making them feel, and that kind of thing (Related: e18 Getting the Siblings to Get Along). In that situation with Jadon, we want him to realize that it’s not just his little brother’s fault. It’s also his own fault. Don’t place blame on anybody, but help him to see what his actions did as well as what he feels like his brother’s actions did.
• 17:07 Ben: We’ve allowed Jadon to tell his part of the story. One of the really important things we can do is to retell the story, and empathize with the emotions of everyone involved. You’re acknowledging that Jadon felt a certain way—Jadon felt angry and upset because his brother was pestering him—and then Jadon hit his brother, and now his brother feels sad and feels like Jadon doesn’t like him because he hit him. Maybe he was pestering him because he wanted to show him a drawing or something, and there was just a miscommunication there. Tell the story again, but give a little more perspective. Give Jadon the opportunity to understand the feelings of the other person who’s involved.
• 18:04 Without having to say, “You were at fault here too,” that automatically helps Jadon to see the responsibility he had in the whole situation and the role that he played. Offer an alternative story line, and the really important thing about those alternative story lines and how they deal with the victim mentality is the victim mentality feels backed into a corner—“I had not other choice but to do this.” We want to empower our children by showing them they have the power to carry out different choices that lead them to the outcomes they really want.
• 19:02 After that, to further that empowerment, we would lead Jadon to an action, to something he could do to change the situation. This is a big part of taking responsibility, because regardless of how the blame is divvied among the parties involved, responsibility says, “I’m going to do what’s in my power to make this situation right.” That mindset offsets the victim mentality, because it says, “Regardless of who’s to blame, I’m going to do what’s in my power to make things right.”
• 19:57 When your child is expressing that victim mentality, take a step back and objectively evaluate the situation. Allow your child to tell their story. Retell their story in your own words and help them understand the role that they had with the other person. Give them an alternative story, and show them that they are powerful to carry out an alternative that would lead them to the outcome they really want.

Lead your child to an action that helps them take responsibility and do what is in their power to make things right.

Our Children Belong

• 20:43 For a child who is not in victim mentality, but you’re concerned that they might develop victim mentality and you want to avoid that, or for the child who is in victim mentality and you’re trying to work on the root in-between those times when they express that, these are the things we want to focus on. These are the three core beliefs that help us offset and avoid victim mentality. If you need to do this for yourself, you can replace “our children” with “I.”
• 21:27 This first one is, our children belong. If you’re doing this for yourself, you can say, I belong. That seems like such a simple thing, but as we talked about in a previous episode, children are inherently valuable, and their worth does not depend on their behavior (Related: e20 Preserving Your Child’s Sense of Self Worth). The same thing is really true for any human being. Our worth is not dependent upon our behavior. It becomes more complex as we become adults, but we have things that undermine that belief and cause us to feel paranoid or worried that our position in a community, that protection that we need, is compromised if we make a mistake or do something wrong.
• 22:41 It gets a little bit complex with children too, but the way that they receive love might be words of affirmation, and if they make a mistake, the words tend to sway in the negative direction. That can really compromise their sense of self worth, because their channel of love and acceptance suddenly feels interrupted.

One of the most important things we can do is help our children believe they belong with our words, our actions, and the responsibilities we give them.

Our Children Are Powerful

• 23:36 When you’re a kid, you don’t feel powerful. This world is built for adults; many things are out of reach. You’re so dependent on the people around you that it’s easy to feel like you don’t have any power. I think about that when our children throw tantrums. They see what happens—they see how powerful they really can be.
• 24:13 Rachel: Especially if you’re out in public. You get the stink eye from a lot of people if your kid throws a tantrum. That’s powerful to them, and if we’re not giving them other ways to be powerful, kids are smart, so that’s what they’re going to default to.

As parents, we need to give our children opportunities to assert their power.

• 24:41 Ben: Part of what we need to do is listen to them. This can be a difficult thing. We’re so used to speaking in adult language and dealing with adult problems, and we have this weird relationship with the things our children say. They could be very serious and earnest, and we say, “Oh, you’re so cute.” While that’s true and they’re very cute, taking the things that our children say seriously is a way that we can empower their words. We’re saying, “The things that you have to say matter.” In our home, we are very particular about language with certain things, especially at the dinner table. When somebody wants something, we don’t allow them to say, “I want this.” We tell them, “No, there’s a certain way that we say this. We say, ‘May I please have such-and-such.'” We’re showing them that there’s power in using your words correctly and politely.
• 26:09 Another thing we need to do as parents is to defend our children’s power. With siblings, it’s easy, because there’s always an opportunity to listen in on what’s going on. When somebody says, “Stop, I don’t like it when you do that,” and that person continues doing it, as parents, it’s appropriate for us to step in and say, “He said to stop. He used his words and he told you to stop.” We don’t always want to intervene that way, but we can take those opportunities from time to time and reinforce this idea that there’s power in using our words, and that power should be respected.
• 27:04 Rachel: One of the other things we try to teach our kids about power is that there’s also power in listening to another person’s perspective and putting yourself in another person’s shoes. With conflicts, we’re trying to help each side see what the other might have felt. That’s hugely empowering for kids, especially when it comes to the victim mentality. In our boys’ school, sometimes if there’s a kid who is being super loud or something, all of the kids in the class will have to sit out for 10 minutes of recess because this one kid messed it up. That communicates to the other kids that they are just victims of this other kid’s misbehavior. We can start helping our kids see even from the teacher’s perspective, though that’s a hard example.

Helping kids see something from a different perspective is empowering for them.

• 28:56 Ben: It’s important to respect authority, but I think what’s more respectful of authority is when a person doesn’t feel like a victim, but they feel powerful to speak up and say what they think or believe about a situation or offer an alternative perspective. When you’re not in a victim mentality, you’re more able to do that respectfully than if you’re in a victim mentality. I can’t imagine our six year old yelling out, “That’s not fair!” That’s a victim mentality. While there may be some truth to what they’re saying, no one can receive that because of the way it’s being said and the mindset it’s being spoken from.
• 30:05 Imagine if he was confident and understood that this was an unfair system and that he disagreed with that rule, and if he made that determination in himself, walked calmly to the teacher or raised his hand, and he said, “Mrs. So-and-so, it’s not fair for those of us who were following the rules to have to sit here and not be able to play.” If he was really calm about it and really respectful, if I was a teacher, I wouldn’t know what to do with that. That’s the kind of power I want my child to realize that they have. It’s not a power that bulldozes or bullies, but it’s a power of calm confidence.
• 31:24 If there’s something that isn’t right, they know that they can use their words and they are powerful to change it. Maybe in that situation he did speak up and nothing did change. There’s power in community and reaching out to the people who support you, so he can tell the story of what happened, and we as parents get to come in and defend his power. We can say, “He spoke up, he was respectful, and we happen to agree with him.” Again, we don’t speak in a way that is bullying or bulldozing, but he’s powerful, and we want to make sure that the teacher agrees with that and that he is heard.
• 32:20 Rachel: I want to go back to the empathy piece because I thought of a better example. Our five year old is in Kindergarten now, and he’s pretty young to be in Kindergarten, because his birthday was in July. He’s a really good friend, but every night at dinner when we would talk through highs and lows, his low would be that he has to sit next to this one kid. We would always ask him why that was his low, and he would always say that the boy would reach into his space and bother him a little bit. He wasn’t mean or anything, but sometimes he would make fun of our son, like boys often do. I have a love for the problem children, the kids who can’t sit still or are seen as bullies. I love them; I want to bring them home and show them that they belong and are loved.
• 33:34 I was trying to get our son to see the perspective of this kid. Our boy has dinner with his family every night, and a lot of kids don’t get to do that. I was trying to help him see a lot of the things that could be contributing to a kid who feels really desperate to have a friend. It’s really powerful for our kids to have experience with those kinds of things. We want to shelter them from this kind of stuff, but it’s also good for them to know that other kids are in a reality that’s not like theirs. Anything we can do to help them see that and welcome those people who maybe don’t know how to be a friend is really valuable and empowering to them.
• 34:28 Ben: I think about the game Rachel and I play sometimes when we go downtown. We people-watch and make up their back stories. We say, “They just flew in from California, but they’re thinking about moving to Texas.” We just make stuff up, and that story-telling is a great way to help our children to get into the minds and intentions of other people in a healthy way. With Hosea, our five year old, in that situation, we could say, “Let’s tell the story of this boy. Let’s try to find out what his story is.” We can help him through that process. He isn’t necessarily going to be able to come up with some elaborate back story, but we can help him do some of that story-telling.

Story-telling can be a powerful way for us to not feel like the victim of somebody else and realize that they’re the victim of something, too.

• 35:54 Rachel: When he was saying this every night, I noticed that he was framing his day as, “It was a really good day, except for this.” If we can reframe that into something that could be good, our kids can break out of that even more.
• 36:16 Ben: You always want to make sure that you’re acknowledging their feelings about the situation. This isn’t us saying to our five year old, “You don’t need to feel bad.” One thing being true doesn’t make the other thing untrue. You can say, “You know, I would feel upset if someone was doing that to me, too. Let’s try to figure out why he might be doing that.” That understanding has a byproduct of helping you adjust your emotional response to those things, but it doesn’t mean that we have to try and fix that. We need to acknowledge our children’s feelings and experiences.

Our Children Are Responsible

• 37:13 This is one of the most important core beliefs for me. As adults, we deal with this victim mentality in different ways. For you, it might be more the feeling of powerlessness, feeling like things are happening and there isn’t anything that you can do about it. I struggled more with the feeling of not being responsible. It wasn’t that I didn’t see that I played an important role in things, but for a long time, I would point to other things. I would point to circumstances. The root of that was that if I was responsible and I was carrying more of the blame, that would mean that I was at fault. If I was at fault, that would mean that I was unacceptable, and if I’m unacceptable… You follow that all the way down to those primal needs that we’ve talked about. Responsibility is different from blame.

Blame is about trying to determine who is at fault, while responsibility is about doing what is in our power to make something right.

• 38:41 Blame says, “It was my fault, and I bear the guilt and the consequence of whatever happened.” It’s not always about mistakes; sometimes it’s about circumstances. For example, our air conditioning keeps going out. I can look at our circumstances, where we are right now financially, and other things that might be going on, and I can say, “This is just one thing in a whole string of things that just keeps going wrong and I can’t seem to get ahead.” Responsible Ben says, “You know what, five years ago I should have started thinking about the air conditioning. That was when I should have started thinking about replacing it. If I had done that, by now, I wouldn’t have this issue where I’m trying to put a bandaid on it. So, what can I do to make sure that we’re going to continue to have air conditioning?”
• 40:09 Part of that was me going and doing some DIY stuff, putting a better bandaid on it for now, getting us through the summer. Responsibility, for me, looks like thinking creatively in this situation. Responsibility empowers us to think creatively about the problems in front of us. I’ve got a lot of responsibility. I’m a man who has six children, a home, a car, and all of that stuff. I get to try to solve these problems. I get to think about, “Between now and next summer, how can I replace that thing?” With a mindset of, “It’s okay for now, but next summer it may go out. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” it’s like I’m waiting for something to happen to me. Responsibility is, “I’m thinking about the future, foreseeing the potential problems, and working that out ahead of time.”
• 41:42 I made that a lot about me, but for our children, we want to give them the same gift. We want to show them that they can be responsible for the things that happen in their world, the circumstances they’re in, the wrong that has been done to them, and the wrong that they’ve done. They can be responsible for how they move forward and how they do better.
• 42:14 Rachel: Responsibility is a hard word for kids, but it’s a good word for kids.
• 42:22 Ben: It’s hard because it has carried so many different meanings. I have to be really careful when I’m talking to my kids about responsibility not not use it like I would use the word blame or fault. I don’t want to come into that situation with Jadon where he has hit his brother and say, “You’re responsible, too.” The responsibility I want him to have in that situation is that he is responsible for how he responds to his brother. His response, which is part of that word, in that situation could have been these alternatives. Beyond that, after the situation has already happened, his response can be this, and that can make things better and right. That can repair the relationship, and that’s something that he can do. If you’re the victim, it’s all about being passive, waiting, and hoping things work out, saying, “If they don’t apologize, I won’t apologize.”

Overcoming Our Own Victim Mentality

• 44:11 Rachel: For us as adults, who maybe have suffered trauma or hurt as a kid and may have carried that into our adulthood, we may not have a formal victim mentality, but we might have a subconscious thing. The thing that’s in our power to do is to go through some intense forgiveness work. One of the things we can do to empower ourselves is to say, “You know what, we’ve done everything we can to make this situation right, and there’s no other responsibility on us.” We no longer have to be a victim to the time when our mom or dad left us or when we were sexually abused by someone.

When we forgive the people who have harmed us, they no longer have power over us because we have done the work.

• 45:07 Ben: That’s a pretty advanced attitude and skill to have, to be able to work through those things. It starts with the little things when our kids are young. It’s so great for them to practice and not just know these things, these core beliefs that they belong, that they are powerful, and that they are responsible, but actually to put those into practice on a daily basis in some way. The most important thing we can do as parents to help our children avoid victim mentality and take on responsibility is to demonstrate that for ourselves. Kelsey asked, “What does the balance look like of helping your kids reach an empowering context of thinking like a winner and simultaneously reaching for that yourself.” She clarified that later and was basically saying that when we haven’t mastered it, can we teach our children to do that?
• 46:23 Absolutely. There’s no better time than when you’re working on those things personally to let your children into that world, to let them see the kind of work that you’re doing and be able to demonstrate that for them. These things are true about you: you belong, you are powerful, and you are responsible. As you put those things into practice in your life, your children are going to see that, and they’re going to take on those beliefs for themselves.

Help Your Children Re-Tell Their Story

• 47:07 Gabrielle asked, “When my five year old gets upset over an issue, he immediately pulls out the ‘It’s not fair’ statement. What are positive ways to answer this without the age-old ‘Life isn’t fair’ saying from our own childhood?” It’s so tempting to do that, to say, “You know what? Life isn’t fair. Get over it.”
• 47:35 Rachel: Our boys have gone through a lot of the whole “It’s not fair” thing. It’s because of what happens at school, things that happen at home, and whenever kids go through certain things, they do feel a measure of unfairness about a lot of things.
• 48:00 Ben: That “It’s not fair” is not the whole story. There’s so much more to the story. The entrance point we have as parents is acknowledging their emotions; that’s getting our foot in the door.
• 48:18 Rachel: I don’t think it’s helpful to tell kids, “It actually is fair.” It’s negating what they feel. A way to ease into an explanation is to say, “I know that it feels like it’s not fair,” and then move into the story.
• 48:42 Ben: The story really is that they feel a certain way because xyz, so when you acknowledge their feelings and you don’t deny those things or make light of it, you get to help them tell a more accurate story about what’s going on. “It’s not fair” is so broad and so general. A lot of what our children say is their attempt at describing something very complex that’s going on inside of them that they don’t have the language for or the patience to express in that particular moment. When we express and articulate more accurately what they’re experiencing, we arm them with more accurate language that they can use later. It goes back to the power thing. “When you say ‘It’s not fair,’ that tells me something is wrong, but I don’t understand what is really going on. When you say, ‘I feel sad because Jimmy has a car and I don’t,’ that tells me a whole lot more.”

Underscore how powerful your children’s words can be, especially when they’re accurate about the things they’re feeling and experiencing.

• 50:20 Gabrielle also said, “Getting silly is always a good way to get my kid to be less serious about being upset, but how can I make sure I’m not making light of his concerns or feelings?” We use that tactic every once in a while, when things are just too heavy and the kids are emotionally flooded. I’ll try to do something silly to lighten the mood and help shake them out of that, and that can be a very positive thing. The important thing is to always go back and help them deal with the emotions they’re experiencing, even if they’re only feeling the echo of that at the time. You’ve gotten them out of being really serious, but go back and say, “You were feeling pretty upset, weren’t you?” Help them, again, to tell the story more accurately about how they were really feeling.
• 51:24 Rachel: The story-telling piece is very important for any kind of thing we do with our children, but particularly for the victim mentality, because we can re-write that story into something that has less shadow. We can also do that work for ourselves. That’s part of what I do with my journaling, I re-write places in my life that may be full of shadow to my eyes as an adult and probably were to me as a kid as well. I re-write it as if I was not a victim there, but I was a powerful person, and I got to choose which way I went on the road. Any way we can teach our kids to do that is a really cool thing. I don’t think I was taught that as a kid.
• 52:37 Ben: Even if you never change the decision you made in that story, one of the really powerful things that psychologists recommend when you’re thinking back to negative events in your past that still influence and affect your life is to try to focus on a detail that doesn’t have to do with something emotional. Something like, “A window was open in the room and the sun was shining in.” The part of that story that we remember, that we have such an emotional connection with, is the negativity, but what was really going on in the world in that moment was so many different things. Yes, we were in that room with a parent yelling at us or abusing us in some way, but there was also a window open. It was day time, the sun was out and shining through, and maybe we heard birds singing who were bouncing around in the trees outside. It’s not about trying to make that situation okay, but it helps us realize that life is so much more than our own experiences, and in some way, that makes us feel more powerful.

Teaching Empathy

• 54:09 This question is from Charla: “What are your favorite ways to help kids get past thinking solely about their own comfort?” I hear that pets are a really great way, because when you have a pet as a child, it activates your empathy, especially certain pets. Dogs are very emotionally expressive animals. Kids get to see how the dogs react. When we go visit Rachel’s parents, they have a lot of dogs, and I see how the boys interact with the animals there. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they treat each other any better, but it does build some of that empathy.

Help kids think beyond their own comfort by serving other people who don’t have the same comforts we experience on a daily basis.

• 55:36 You could go on something like a mission trip, or go to one of your local nursing homes where there are some older folks who are lonely and don’t have anybody to come and visit with them. Go downtown and feed the homeless.
• 55:54 Rachel: The city doesn’t allow that anymore here, but we did that a few times when the kids were really young. The way that the homeless people loved kids was pretty crazy. I loved it.
• 56:13 Ben: It opens up empathy in so many different ways. We have these preconceived ideas about how a person is and how they’re going to act, so until we actually go have an experience with them in person, we really don’t know. That physical, face-to-face encounter takes away our illusions and ideas and shows us the reality. That’s a very powerful thing, seeing how they respond and how grateful they are for something really basic like our time or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
• 57:21 We went down to a place in Mission, Texas, and there were homes that were very small without air conditioning with families in them that were just as big as our family, and they were so thankful for the work that went into building and maintaining these small houses. We would complain, “They’re so small, they don’t have air conditioning, and there’s dust blowing in.” It’s the most wonderful thing in the world for these folks, and it changes you inside when you’re exposed to that kind of thing, you’re a part of providing that for somebody else, and you get to see the impact it has.