One of the biggest myths about children is the idea that they lack empathy by nature. In reality, though children can be self-focused and lack knowledge and perspective, they’re hard-wired to feel empathy for others. How much this quality develops, however, is largely dependent on how a child is raised. Empathy is, after all, part instinct and part learned skill. If we want our children to leverage this powerful ability, we must first teach them how.
Before we begin, it’s important to understand what empathy actually is. Empathy is not sympathy, though the latter often arises from the former. Instead, empathy is the ability to sense and interpret what others are feeling. Unlike sympathy, empathy doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with the other person’s position. It simply means understanding why the other individual holds that position and being able to see the situation from his perspective. This ability leads to enhanced communication skills and forms the backbone of what we term “emotional intelligence.”
Why Empathy Matters
In addition to helping to build a kinder and more rational society, empathy skills are often an excellent predictor of personal success. In fact, many experts now believe that emotional intelligence is more important to overall happiness and prosperity than academic intelligence. Empathy has been shown to make kids more resilient and less prone to “problem behaviours” like bullying. Empathetic kids tend to develop stronger friendships, too.
Setting Realistic Expectations for Your Child
Empathy takes many years to develop and refine. It’s absolutely essential to keep this in mind when you’re dealing with a child, especially a very young child. Your child will probably appear thoughtless, careless, and even unfeeling at times—but this doesn’t mean he (or she) is abnormally low on empathy.
When any of us, child or adult, are pushed into a reactive state (i.e., when we feel threatened or overloaded), we tend to enter “fight or flight” mode. In this state of mind, we can appear selfish because the rational parts of our brain (the parts needed to process another’s experience) have been temporarily co-opted by our instincts. If you have ever snapped at your partner when he or she asked an innocent question because you were having a terrible day, then you’ve experienced this firsthand. Naturally, then, no one can be expected to be empathetic all of the time, particularly when they’re still developing. Children are especially prone to entering a reactive state. Because they don’t have an adult’s knowledge and perspective, even small things often feel “big” to them.
Furthermore, children under the age of four have brains that are busy developing their basic sense of individuality. As such, young children aren’t yet able to consider things from another’s perspective all on their own. They tend to need alternate viewpoints explained to them in simple terms. Likewise, because they are so utterly dependent on the adults around them, they must necessarily focus on their own needs. Only when your child reaches the age of five or six will he truly begin to understand that other people have thoughts and feelings wholly separate from his own. He will therefore begin to understand things that he didn’t just a few years prior, such as the need to share and take turns.
While your child must, to some extent, develop empathy at his own pace, there’s a lot you can do to activate the parts of his brain that are responsible for creating empathy. By starting this process while your child is still young, you can strengthen the networks of mirror neurons that allow him to quite literally feel what others are feeling. Some strategies for honing empathy skills are outlined below:
1. Know that empathy and the imagination are intertwined.
While empathy may start with instinct, a vivid imagination is required to properly interpret the feelings of others. After all, to empathize, your child needs to imagine what it’s like to inhabit the other person’s mind.
To help your child hone this ability, encourage him to imagine what the characters in his favourite books, TV shows, movies, etc. might be feeling as they progress through their story arcs. Tell your child to look closely at facial expressions and gestures to pick up subtle cues about the characters’ emotions. Because a lot of “real life” communication is nonverbal, this will provide excellent communication training for your child.
2. Model emotional acknowledgement skills.
The more you acknowledge others’ emotions (especially your child’s emotions), the more your child will try to emulate you and do similar. Making simple statements like, “You look sad; did everything go okay at school today?” is sufficient to show your child how empathy is expressed. Just make sure your facial expression and tone of voice convey sincere caring. These remarks are less effective if made in an offhand or rushed manner. Taking the time to speak to your child face to face will also help him learn to interpret facial expressions properly.
3. Work empathy into playtime.
If your child struggles to pick up on the cues described above, you can make emotional mirroring into a game in order to help him practice. Try making facial expressions, then asking your child to mimic them and name the emotion he thinks they represent. If this doesn’t appeal to your child, participating in “pretend play” with him is another great way to spur his imagination into action. Every time your child acts out a character, he experiments with seeing the world from a different point of view.
4. Teach your child to stay with his emotions.
Learning to accept and stay with our own feelings—even difficult feelings like anger and sadness—gives us the basic abilities we need to stay present with the feelings of others. Teach your child not to rush through his feelings or try to push them away. (Reminding him that it’s okay to be sad or angry, as long as he’s not being malicious toward anyone else, can help him learn patience.) Ideally, your child should do his best to recognize his emotions, avoid judging them, and then take a deep breath and let them go gradually. (This will, of course, take a lot of practice to perfect.)
It’s important that you learn to stay with your emotions, too. Show your child that it’s okay to be angry or sad by allowing yourself to have negative feelings without delivering self-judgment. Get into the habit of taking “time outs” when you need them and practice good self-care when you’re having a bad day.
5. Teach your child that every person has a story.
Each one of us has a past that has made us who we are today. This body of experience shapes how we feel, how we think, and how we react to others. Tell your child that just like each of his favourite fictional characters have backstories, so do his friends, relatives, and teachers.
If we can discover the unique story that’s behind each person we interact with, we become much more able to empathize with them. This has to be done carefully, of course, in order to avoid coming across as nosy. It’s often best to begin by sharing your own story; most people will naturally want to open up in like kind.
Finally, tell your child to focus on the similarities in people’s stories, rather than the differences. Otherwise, it’s easy to get hung up on what divides us from one another, rather than what unites us… Especially when one is a child and dealing with a competitive social environment wherein everyone wants to “fit in.”
Even if your child’s experiences differ from someone else’s, there have probably been times when he felt the same way as the other person remembers feeling. By focusing on feelings rather than matching details, your child can forge connections with people from very different backgrounds than his own.
6. Remind your child that sometimes it’s enough to just be present with another’s feelings.
We can’t always understand why another person is feeling the way they are, and we can’t always find the right thing to say. It’s essential that your child is aware of this; otherwise, he might become frustrated the first time he fails to “get” someone else. Tell your child that it’s often enough to just be there for others, to sit with them quietly and tune into their feelings as best we can. This can give comfort even when words are inadequate.
7. Show your child the value of “stepping out” when he’s upset.
One of the best ways to avoid the reactive and often harmful “fight or flight” state mentioned previously is to try what’s known as “stepping out.” When we step out, we mentally remove ourselves from the interpersonal situation that’s distressing us and look at it objectively. Tell your child to imagine that he’s watching a movie: If he and the other person were characters in a film, how does he think each one of them would be feeling? How would he describe the situation to someone else? Answering these kind of questions will help reengage the analytical parts of your child’s brain, thereby suppressing the instinctual parts and allowing him to empathize properly.
8. Make sure your child knows it’s okay to make mistakes and not know all the answers.
Everyone behaves selfishly sometimes... But if we wallow in guilt rather than learning from such moments, we remain self-focused and limit our growth. As such, your child needs to learn how to forgive himself when he makes mistakes and accidentally hurts others.
Likewise, your child should be taught that we don’t always need to be in “problem solving mode.” Indeed, we usually don’t need to know how to fix situations at all in order to make a real difference in others’ lives. Just talking to another person in a caring, engaged way will often help him calm down, review the situation, and come up with his own answers—which is ultimately far more empowering for him.
9. Don’t hesitate to apply positive labels to your child.
A lot is said about the harm of labeling children negatively (e.g., “You’re selfish,” “You’re lazy,” and so on), but there’s an upside to the way kids take such things literally: Positive labels stick, too, if you use them similarly. Rather than telling your child that what he’s doing is helpful or good, tell him that he is helpful and good. It seems like a subtle change, but research has shown that it can make a big difference. The more your child believes that he is inherently a kind and empathetic person, the more he will endeavour to act that way.
10. Give your child a vast repertoire of “feeling words.”
Kids struggle to describe feelings in part because their vocabularies are still limited. Ergo, by focusing on emotional vocabulary-building early on, you can greatly expand your child’s ability to describe both his feelings and the feelings of others. Give your child different words for each emotion; e.g., “morose,” “despairing,” and “sorrowful” in addition to just “sad.” You should also teach him about the subtle ways in which each of these nuances of feeling differ from their “root feeling.”
11. Put caring first and achievement second.
We all want to see our children reach their full potential in life. However, when we focus so much on achievement that our kids feel like we care more about it than them, we actually reduce their level of motivation.
When we speak to our kids about goals, we need to put them first. Rather than just telling your child that you want him to get good grades, for example, start by saying that you want him to be happy. You can then explain why you feel that working hard and doing well at school can increase one’s personal happiness.
By helping your child develop excellent empathy skills, you set him up to be more than kind—you’re also putting him on the path to becoming a visionary. Empathy is, after all, the defining quality of many of history’s great change-makers. Empathy is a key to developing effective compromises, dissolving needless boundaries, and making our world run more smoothly. When you raise an empathetic child, you’re sowing the seeds of leadership.
