How Do You Teach Children Perspective?

Being a person in this mad and mixed up world is hard, and being a kid trying to navigate your emotional needs along with everyone else’s is even harder!

This season, we celebrate the unique nature of every child while giving them the tools to connect to others with our central theme: PERSPECTIVE.

Why is perspective important?

Perspective defines everything, from the way we empathize with others to the way we understand our place in the world.

Perspective is About EMPATHY

Being an empathetic human is about looking at the WHOLE person. When we see things from another person’s perspective, we understand people’s personalities and relate to each other better.

Perspective is About Self Awareness

How we view the world around us depends on our OWN experiences, knowledge, culture, society, and background. Understanding that our experiences might not have been the same as others, helps us celebrate our individuality and teaches us what it means to be human.

Walk A Mile In My Shoes

Larger-than-life, imperfect characters take the main stage this year, whether learning life lessons through our Fairy Tales Around the World program or while taking a deep dive (literally) in our brand new interactive performance: Tall Tales: Ursula’s Story.

We’re also expanding to 4 game show styles, leveraging our challenges, trivia, and interactive elements to demonstrate what it might feel like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Here are 5 lessons from our curriculum that you can use to teach children perspective:

1. We live in an interconnected world, where not being able to see things with perspective can cause misunderstandings, hurt feelings or put others in danger.
2. Until we see things from another person’s perspective, we will never understand why things happen the way they do.
3. It’s really easy to just focus on ourselves and make preconceived notions about others, this can lead to frustrating altercations.
4. Sometimes in life, something that may feel like a big disaster on a personal scale may actually not be a catastrophic deal when we look at the bigger picture (and vice versa).
5. Choosing to see from another’s perspective helps you to understand things in a different light and opens up the path for a whole lot more understanding and tolerance.

Perhaps most importantly, perspective is about recognizing and coping with the flaws in our own human nature. We’re complex beings, drawn to stories of good-natured people with honest intentions who are often motivated by our own desires. It’s gritty, it’s engaging, and it’s real.

As Sondheim put it so eloquently in Into the Woods:

“People make mistakes
Holding to their own
Thinking they're alone
Honor their mistakes
Fight for their mistakes
Everybody makes
One another's terrible mistakes
Witches can be right
Giants can be good
You decide what's right
You decide what's good
Just remember
Just remember
Someone is on your side”