Raising Empathetic Children

When our children attend school, our goal as a parent should be to see them develop holistically. Yes, we want our children to succeed academically but if they do not develop skills to connect with people then we are not providing them with the essential skills needed to succeed in life.

Over the past few years, our children have faced many challenges. In such a short period of time, the predictable and safe physical classroom environment that children knew and were comfortable with became a virtual classroom environment, a hybrid classroom environment and now a physical classroom environment again. Due to this global pandemic, educators, parents and children had no other option than to adapt to new modes of learning so that the children could continue on their learning journey. Let us honour how resilient our children have been over the past few years.

We have all heard of the very important 21st Century Skills that our children need to be successful global citizens: creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration. We need to be aware that they will not develop into confident communicators or be strong collaborators if they do not have Emotional Intelligence. Research has proven that students with high Emotional Intelligence are more successful in life.

Having a high Emotional Intelligence means that you are able to recognise, understand and manage your own emotions whilst having a higher awareness of the emotions of those around you. If individuals are emotionally intelligent, they are able to display empathy and effectively communicate with those around them.

This skill of empathy is a vital skill. It is a way of connecting with those around us that shows them that we understand that what they are experiencing is meaningful to them. If we have empathy, we try to put ourselves into another person’s shoes to understand how they feel and to understand how best we can support them. We must be very clear that sympathy is very different to empathy. Sympathy is the act of feeling sorry for someone.

The great news is that empathy is a teachable skill that we can teach to our children. It is a skill that we teach our students at Lorna Whiston Schools in our English Enrichment and Speech and Drama departments.

Here are four important qualities of empathy:

• Honouring that someone’s perspective is his/her own truth

• Avoiding any forms of judgement

• Recognising emotions in other people either via actions or words

• Communicating an emotion
  

If our children develop empathy at a young age this will help them to:

• Create connections with others by validating their feelings and supporting them through it

• Improve their social skills as those around them know that they genuinely care

• Develop as active listeners as they will be asking questions to help them understand and honour what someone is experiencing

How can we cultivate empathy in our children?

• Empathise with our child - 

  If we want our child to display empathy to others then we must model it. This can be done by simply letting our child know that we want to understand how a situation feels to them so that they know that they are not alone.

• Demonstrate empathy for others –

  If a family member is having a difficult time, a random act of kindness can go a long way. Involve our child in writing a note or doing a kind deed for that family member.

•  Have a consistent message for our child –

  Instead of saying ‘The important thing is that you score good results and get into a good school so that you can get a good job’ consider reframing it to ‘The important thing is that you are a kind person who studies hard so that you can achieve your goals’.

• Focus on how caring our child is –

  During parent teacher conferences or when communicating with our child’s coach, focus on whether our child is a caring student or a caring member of the team.

• Discuss ethical dilemmas as a family –

  When we are faced with a challenging situation such as only being allowed to invite five people to our house for our birthday celebration, we can involve our child in our problem solving. “Shall I invite my cousin and her husband or my cousin and my best friend? How will my cousin’s husband feel if I don’t invite him?”

Empathy is at the heart of what it means to be human and is a fundamental skill to have to succeed. Let us all model this for our children so that our future leaders lead with empathy.