Teaching Empathy
Date :
Thursday, December 29 2011
Source:
Autourina Mains
Teaching empathy (compassion, sympathy, and understanding) is an important social/emotional skill. Till the age of nine years old (third grade) children are not really able to understand empathy but helping them learn about it can put them on the road to becoming an understanding and caring adult. Bullying has been a growing problem in schools for children as young as first graders but if we spent some time teaching little ones empathy, chances are instances of bullying will decrease. Here are some tips on ways to teach the children empathy;
· Reward empathetic behavior. For instance, when a child shares something that is special to him like his favorite toy, stickers or food with another person, then praise the child specifically for what he did by saying, “It was very nice of you to share the swing with the new child on the playground.”
· Label emotions. Children don’t often know the words for empathic behavior such as kindness, compassion, understanding, sympathy. When a child does a kind act then let him/her know what he/she did was kind by saying, “It was kind of you to make friends with the new child in your school because she probably felt alone.”
· Encourage the child to talk about her feelings and help them label them by saying, “You are feeling angry, grumpy, frustrated, etc.” Then share your feelings with the child and let them know that it is ok to be angry or frustrated at a person but how we deal with the feeling is most important. For instance you can tell the child “I get angry and frustrated with my friends sometimes, but I still care for them”.
· Involve them in charitable work. I always have involved my children in giving activities and even at our Center we do a fundraiser once a year to help a charitable project in our own community. Children need to be involved in charitable activities so that they learn to be sympathetic to other’s needs, feelings.
Teaching children to be selfless and to give of themselves is perhaps the most important gift we can give them. Sometimes society promotes being selfish and self-centered, but teaching a child to be empathetic is one way to change the world one child at a time.