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Developing...building an idea to a finished product....that's the way my husband defined this..

When my daughter was 18 months old I can recall I tripped in the house and fell. Not hard, didn't hurt, but I did go down. She was busy playing, but her head shot up and I will never forget the look of concern in those big brown eyes. She dropped that toy she was holding, rushed over, threw her arms around me and started patting my back and cooing "wellll baby, wellll baby, it Otay ,you awight?" I was amazed at the genuine compassion.

Later I would see that look on the face of all my grandchildren from time to time.
Especially Billy.

It was so adorable, I'm ashamed to say the next few falls were intentional to get another glimpse of that precious compassion.

I realized then that genuine compassion is in a child at a very young age and one must nurture it, like every aspect of raising a child.
Children need to know that while their parents are strong and dependable and there for them, that yes they have feelings too and sometimes they hurt. They don't have to be let in on all the problems, etc.. just be allowed to glimpse all the feelings. If they grow up knowing "my mama felt like that sometimes", then it's understood why
someone else might. "Tear jerker movies and songs" are great help aids in teaching compassion. let those tears flow, explain why and it's not too close to home to set off any alarm.

My grandchildren came up understanding quite a bit, with their Mom emotionally challenged as she was. They learned very early that "sometimes mommy's head gets all tangled up inside and we have to love her back to health"
Tori was a fireball, the oldest and very bossy, very protective of her younger brothers and while her compassion for them loomed large, it would easily fall short if she thought someone had slighted one of them. That took a lot of developing.
It had to be handled very delicately, while praising her compassion for her brothers, discouraging the over protectiveness, and encouraging her to spread the compassion around to others " share the love".

I can remember once when Tori was especially irritable one night refusing to listen to anything. My husband said to me, I believe Tori is asking for a spanking." I was video taping Tori's little temper tantrum to play for her when she was calmer. The youngest child Seth, popped up and said "yea, spank her!" The middle child, Billy said, "Seth, God wouldn't like that, God would not like it that you want Tori to get a spanking."

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