Mirror Neurons

So we had an introductory taste of Conscious Discipline training on Presidents' Day and the concept of mirror neurons totally intrigued me. Do you know about these? Think of it like this: Someone smiles at you and you mirror it back (You've heard it said that someone has an infectious smile!) or someone nods his head and you find yourself nodding back. Your child cuts herself and YOU feel it, like the time I almost passed out when they were removing Kaitlyn's stitches it hurt so bad. It's sounding SO much like empathy that I wanted to know more, so I started to look more deeply into this so-called system in our brain.

Reflecting on our feelings and our charACTer.

Turns out it's kind of controversial because scientists still don't know enough about this mirror neuron, but what we do know fascinates me. The short You Tube video that our trainer showed us makes a compelling case for mirror neurons. This cool clip speaks volumes about the ability of someone SO young to mirror back a feelings face SO perfectly; equally impressive is that he's SO engaged in mirroring that he doesn't even care about his ice cream cone.


What are the implications of mirror neurons on our role as character educators?  Will we approach anything differently as we learn more?  What, if anything, would you need to adjust? I'm so eager to learn more and I promise keep you posted on my research.