The Whole-Brain Child

While you’re reading together: “How do you think Melinda is
feeling now that her friend moved away?” Leaving the store: “That
woman wasn’t very nice to us, was she? Do you think something
might have happened to her that made her feel sad today?”
Simply by drawing your child’s attention to other people’s
emotions during everyday encounters, you can open up whole new
levels of compassion within them and exercise their upstairs brain.
Scientists are beginning more and more to think that empathy has
its roots in a complex system of what are being called mirror
neurons, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter. The more you
give your child’s upstairs brain practice at thinking of others, the
more capable he will be of having compassion.