The Mermaid Switch

My 5-year-old niece ran up to me with one hand behind her back, and one hand out in front of her.

In her exposed hand she held a plastic mermaid action figure, about 4” tall.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Okay!” I said, choosing to roll with it.

“One, two, THREE!”

On ‘three’ she quickly and decisively switched hands, so the 4” plastic mermaid was now behind her back, and the other hand was in front. She was now waving a 10” tall Barbie mermaid in front of my face.

It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk about why.

Theory of Mind

Psychologists use the term “theory of mind” to describe when a person realizes other people have minds different from their own. In other words, it’s the recognition that your wants, desires, and needs may be different from mine. Simply put, it’s what allows for emotional perspective.

There’s a famous experiment called the “Sally-Ann Test” often used to determine whether someone has developed a theory of mind or not. It goes like this:

Two dollhouses are present, and in each there is a doll. We are told this doll is Sally, and that doll is Ann. Ann leaves her house to go to the store (the doll is removed). Sally decides to play a trick on Ann. She goes into Ann’s house, takes one of her things, and brings it back to her own house (this is demonstrated with props). Ann now returns from the store and notices her thing is missing.

Question to the participant: Where should Ann look for her missing thing?

Of course, Ann should look in Ann’s house for the missing thing. But children who have not yet developed a theory of mind and adults with cognitive impairment will say Ann should look in Sally’s house, because they are incapable of distinguishing between their own perspective, knowing where the thing actually is, and Ann’s perspective, of having gone to the store and come back, unaware Sally played a trick on her.

Kids tend to develop a theory of mind around age 7 or 8, which is why when I ran magic camps, I used to suggest that age to parents as the ideal time to begin learning magic. Creating magic is all about seeing the trick from a different point of view. You have to understand that what you, as the magician, are seeing, thinking, and feeling during a magic trick is not only different but often the opposite of what your audience is seeing, thinking, and feeling during the trick.

So when my niece, at just 5 years old, intentionally switched the small and tall mermaids for my benefit, she did so with an unusually clear understanding of the difference between what she was doing and what she wanted me to experience.

It was wonderful.

We Lost Our Way

As kids grow and develop into teens and eventually young adults, they build on that theory of mind and learn that there are perspectives vastly different from their own. This is especially true if they head off to college and encounter students from varied cultures and belief systems.

College students are the most liberal and open demographic of people precisely because they collide with outside perspectives and new ideas on a daily basis.

How do we get from that to being a hardened adult, set in our ways, more conservative and closed-off with age?

How do we get from that to half of the population unwilling to make even a small sacrifice for the greater good of their community?

How do we get from that to racism, judging people on stereotypes, and making selfish decisions at the exclusion of and to the detriment of those around us?

We stop playing. We stop exploring. We stop learning.

The older we get the more likely we are to settle into routines. Life is hard and stressful, and routines make it easier to cope with our daily task of pushing a boulder up a hill. But routines also trick us into believing everybody thinks, feels, and acts the same way.

As George Carlin once remarked, anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

One More Trick Up Her Sleeve

Later that evening after a long family get-together, I found my niece cozied up on a sofa watching cartoons.

“Mind if I join you?”

She gave me a smile and pointed to a spot where I was allowed to sit. After a few minutes she took out a brush and started going through her hair.

“You have beautiful, long hair,” I said, looking for any line of dialogue that might connect with a 5-year-old girl.

“Thank you,” she said. “Boys don’t usually-” She cut herself off abruptly. “Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

She shook her head.

“Were you going to say boys don’t usually have long hair?”

“Yeah,” she grinned sheepishly.

“You’re right, they don’t. But mine’s glorious!” I took out my hair tie and whipped my shoulder-length hair all around like a bad model.

She belly-laughed and rolled around the sofa, about the best response you could ask for from a 5-year-old audience.

This, again, blew my mind. Here we have a child whose emotional perspective is so well tuned she stopped herself saying something that might have hurt my feelings. She processed her question’s possible implications from my point-of-view, and decided against it.

I’m not naive. The world of adults isn’t so cut and dry. But I wonder what it would be like if we all tried just a little harder to practice even half the thoughtfulness she displayed.