Empathy is what sets us apart from machines enabling us to relate to other people and their experiences. It helps us understand people while yielding kindness. People with empathy have stronger personal connections and more meaningful and supportive relationships. It also instills another great personal trait in children – courage. For example, a study conducted on 900 children with higher levels of empathy were shown that these children were able to stand up to bullying. It can also be the key to professional success when empathetic children grow into strong, confident, and resilient adults.
Empathy is not innate, but rather a learnt characteristic and the best teachers of empathy are the adults around young children. Young children who possess empathy have the skills to understand and manage emotions, set, and achieve positive goals, establish and maintain positive interactions and relationships with others that is integral to their social and emotional wellbeing and make responsible decisions.
Children with empathy can become socially and emotionally:
- Confident
- Moral
- Interdependent
- Responsible
- Happy
Positive role modelling
- Keep in mind the power of modelling and your reaction to an opportunity to reflect empathy whether in the house among adults, outside on the playground, with other family members etc. during conversations and day to day routines and activities.
- Focus on the behaviour and not the child – avoid using “you hit me, so I am sad” but instead “I am sad because my arm hurts from being hit”.
- Acknowledge considerate behaviour. Let children know when they do things that you approve of or that you want to see more of. Shift attention to “good choices” as opposed to “bad choices” and use these terms at home so your child can understand the difference.
Strategies to use at home
Play
- Playing with dolls and puppets: By allowing them to simulate dressing, feeding, calming and caring for babies, they learn to have compassion for their dolls (and ultimately others) from a young age. Puppets are also a fun, interactive way to form dialogue around empathetic relationships.
- Imaginative play helps kids to self-regulate and manage emotions.
- Reading, especially reading together with families for young children, can also be a powerful way to learn empathy. ‘When we open a book, and share our voice and imagination with a child, that child learns to see the world through someone else’s eyes’, says author Anne Dewdney. Reading with your child and pausing to ask questions about the plot and characters helps young kids to empathise with unfamiliar experiences and emotions.
Sources
Why We Need Empathy, and How We Teach it to Children (melbournechildpsychology.com.au)
QA5_Supporting children to manage their own behaviour.pdf (acecqa.gov.au)