With three children pretty much grown, a winter ski gathering in Salt Lake City seemed like a great way to spend some good time together, and it was. However as is inevitable our pretty much grown children took remnants of their childhood relationships along for the journey, which is how a pan of brownies instigated a fascinating conversation about empathy.
Without belaboring the story of who got off the couch to get the brownies (I’ll let your imaginations go wild), suffice it to say that the issue of entitlement and male privilege dominated the airspace between my husband, our son, our two daughters, and myself, in our cozy abode at 9th and 9th. Which led to my talking about a book I was reading called The Empathy Effect by Helen Riess MD, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and the acronym she’d created to explain the elements of empathy, which led my kids to spontaneously generate a game out of the elements.
Having told them the acronym (E is for eye contact; M is for muscles of facial expression;P is for posture; A is for affect; T is for tone of voice; H is for hearing the whole person; and Y is for your response), the game unexpectedly erupted. Our middle child (currently a special education teacher) titled the game “Your Area of Growth”; I just love her positive spin on labeling our weaknesses. What fascinated me about what unrolled was both how uniformly each of us saw one another’s “areas of growth” (they all called out “tone of voice” when it came to me… as in “you’re going to do WHAT?” rather than “you’re going to do what?”), and how compassionately they discussed the presence or absence of empathy in the brownie incident, and beyond. It was one of those priceless gamechanger moments, when you can feel growth happening.
The skiing at Alta and Deer Valley was fantastic; hearing the organ recital at the Mormon Tabernacle was fascinating as was the larger than life-size crèche depicting the scene of Jesus Christ’s birth; coffees and conversation in local cafes were just how I like to start my days, and dinners were varied and punctuated the end of days well lived. But the highlight of our week together was “playing” Your Area of Growth. Building bridges, and creating understandings where misunderstandings had once resided is an opportunity not to be missed.
The Empathy Effect adds a terrific lens and explanation for ways we can transform how we interact with one another, and “Your Area of Growth” creates an environment for acting out the lessons learned.
One week in Salt Lake City, light years of growth.
