Empathy

     I may have the most empathetic 2yr old ever born.  Today, I took Josiah to stay at his cousin Anna's house while I went to get my hair cut.  Okay...I actually did not get my hair cut because I had the day written down wrong...but that's really not important.  When I picked him up, Anna's mom told me that Anna got in trouble because she kept putting her feet on the table even after being instructed not to.  When Anna began to cry after being punished, Josiah also began to cry.  He has the most heart-breaking sad face you have seen on any child.  He doesn't like to see other children cry and he is often brought to tears when they do.  So, I was thinking this is super sweet and I have a very lovely little man for a son.  But, no big deal.  I have seen him do this before. 
     Then, after nap time today, he really surprised me.  His auntie Lala gave him a new little "Monster Faces" Sesame Street board book as a birthday gift this weekend that has Sesame Street characters making different faces to represent different feelings.  When he woke up and I came into his room, he was looking at his new book, so I sat down and looked at a few pages with him.  The first page we looked at has Elmo making a surprised face as brightly colored worms fly out of a can.  After that, he moved on to the next page which has some big furry blue monster, with horns and a beard, making a "sorry face" because he is holding a toy car in one hand and the axle of the toy car in the other hand.  Josiah looked puzzled, so I said, "he's feeling sorry because he broke his car."  Josiah just sat there a bit staring at the blue monster with a sad look on his face.  So, I said it again.  "He feels sad because he broke his toy car."  This time when I looked at Josiah, he was making the heart-breaking sad face that he often makes.  "Broke, car" he repeated in his little voice.  And his eyes began to well up.  I was curious about what would happen next, so I said, "he feels sad about breaking his car."  Josiah continued to make the terrible face and a tear slipped from his eye.  I decided I better comfort him at this point and told him, "It's okay buddy, he didn't mean to."  With two big tears rolling down, he repeated "din mean to."  At this point, totally touched by my son's ability to empathize with others, I told him it's okay and asked if he wanted to get out of his bed.  He replied with his adorable whispery "yeah."  So we got up and for the next twenty minutes as he woke up, he kept that book with him and every now and then, continued to flip back to the page with the blue monster and the broken car as though he needed to know the end of the story.  What a great illustration of showing concern and caring for others when they are hurting!