Lesson 2 - Perspective Taking

Welcome back to Week Two of the Coping Power Caregivers video series!

This week, your child is learning all about perspective taking, and that people can see the same situation or problem very differently. We’re discussing how important this can be for exploring where misunderstandings between people might come from, or why someone else might react differently than us in a particular situation.

We know our thoughts affect how we think, feel, and react to one another. Your child learned all about this in last week’s lesson. This week, we’ve built on that by having your child consider the thoughts, feelings, and actions of another person.

If we don’t think of different possibilities for the behaviors of others, we might wrongly assume they are trying to be mean or cause problems in our lives. Instead, they might just have a different perspective on the situation. Your child will practice thinking through what another person’s perspective and goals might be, and how that impacts their actions. This doesn’t mean your child has to agree with the other person or change their own opinions to match that person’s opinions, but it will help your child to work through tricky situations with their classmates more easily.

The goal is for your child to stop and think before reacting to a situation, or to someone else’s behavior. They’ll ask themselves questions like, “why did this happen?” which will help them to consider the intentions of others before jumping to conclusions. For example, they might be able to recognize that while a friend hurt their feelings, it was an accident or a misunderstanding.

For this week’s power practice, we encourage you to talk with your child about a real-life misunderstanding that has happened to you, or to your child. You could even pick a misunderstanding that occurred between the two of you! Together, try to identify the problem from the perspective of each individual involved, as well as their intentions in the situation.

We hope this power practice conversation goes well, and we’ll see you next week!