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I ran across this editorial about using the holiday season as a way to facilitate teaching kids the value of giving to those in need. I thought it was interesting that the most effective way to teach compassion and generosity is by example, but so many parents reported not actively modeling this in a way their kids can observe. It made me wonder how everyone teaches their children about compassion, empathy and generosity in every day life, not necessarily via volunteering/donating but through daily interactions as well.
One of my favorite organizations dedicated to research and teaching children about empathy is Root of Empathy, out in Seattle. IMO, they do good work in helping kids learn to co-exist in a kind way. http://www.rootsofempathy.org/
I forget the developmental stages. In the younger years, they are incapable because they only think of themselves. I forget what age they start being able to comprehend "others." I think it's like age 4 or something like that, doubtful sooner. Someone needs to look it up! LOL
My children are very empathetic, compassionate and generous. I am to a fault. It's my best and worst personality trait. Obviously they learned it in part by my being an example. But I remember hubby and I sometimes having the "how would you feel? conversations. It's all about helping them learn how to imagine being in someone elses shoes. Those learning experiences come up often in everyday situations. If they hit someone, take a toy away from someone, are rude to a friend, exclude someone from playing, etc. That's how often these opportunities exist! By constantly being asked or reminded to think about how the other person would feel via how they would feel in a situation, empathy, compassion and generosity follow naturally IMO.
I don't think parents need to be dragging their children to soup kitchens to teach this. That just teaches them that sometimes they can do for others. Soup kitchens aren't their everyday life. Compassion and empathy can be in everyday life. And should be.
I forget the developmental stages. In the younger years, they are incapable because they only think of themselves. I forget what age they start being able to comprehend "others." I think it's like age 4 or something like that, doubtful sooner. Someone needs to look it up! LOL
My children are very empathetic, compassionate and generous. I am to a fault. It's my best and worst personality trait. Obviously they learned it in part by my being an example. But I remember hubby and I sometimes having the "how would you feel? conversations. It's all about helping them learn how to imagine being in someone elses shoes. Those learning experiences come up often in everyday situations. If they hit someone, take a toy away from someone, are rude to a friend, exclude someone from playing, etc. That's how often these opportunities exist. By constantly being asked or reminded to think about how the other person would feel via how they would feel in a situation, empathy, compassion and generosity follow naturally IMO.
I don't think parents need to be dragging their children to soup kitchens to teach this. That just teaches them that sometimes they can do for others. Soup kitchens aren't their everyday life. Compassion and empathy can be in everyday life. And should be.
Empathy is an emergent behavior as young as three years old (when I was in grad school, I worked on a preschool temperament study where this was assessed because it is notable when it does occur at that age; I'd have to look up the citation, though!), but age four is right on the money for most kids.
I agree totally with your last paragraph. While "sometimes" activities are valuable in their own right, I believe empathy and compassion can (and IMO, should) be part of everyday life, as well. One of the things I like about Roots of Empathy is that they teach parents how to sow the early seeds of empathy, even before the behavior emerges, by teaching emotion recognition and teaching kids to ask themselves how other people feel, even if they don't truly "get it" yet. My little ones are still very little, but we are trying to model this and explicitly talk about "how X makes Y person feel" in books, movies, and in real life situations, in the hopes of having this generalize to real life.
I think modeling is critical. I live in an area where many people participate in charitable pursuits, but more often than not due to peer pressure, not for altruistic reasons. Children, being the smart cookies they are, pick up on such sentiments.
Without a stitch of scientific basis, I believe a certain amount of empathy and compassion is personality based, for example my daughter is innately much more compassionate than my son. He is a sweet, caring child, but for him it appears more learned and modeled than it does for her.
How does one teach children? I think modeling is definitely top of the list. Children watch how their parents treat people. Nearly as important s talking to kids. We are a talk, talk family.
We do volunteer at the food bank together, but although we talk about the service, the kids don't actually see what/why/where/who.
OK, it irritates me NO END to read about "empathy" and how and why people "should" have it.
I not only didn't teach my children empathy, I refused to. Why?
THIS is the definition of Empathy:
The ability to co-experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experience of another without them being communicated directly by the individual. Identifying with or experiencing vicariously another's thought, feeling, or attitude.
While this is the definition of Sympathy:
The ability to understand and to support the emotional situation or experience of another being with compassion and sensitivity. Feel sorry for; Feel pity for; Feel bad for.
To be an empath or an empathetic person means not that you can be sensitive to, care about, or be able to help another human being, but that you actually try to experience what they are feeling on a deep and personal level. Basically, empathy is an intrusive, emotional response, an attempt at forcing an intimate bond, and assumes the aspects of grief or pain or whatever the empath's "victim" is feeling.
Sympathy is understanding - without trying to feel or experience - someone else's pain, and trying to help resolve it in a meaningful way. A sympathetic person will care, and actively try to help or protect, not try to "feel your pain".
Really, truly, does anyone arrogantly believe that they can truly feel what someone else feels at any given point in time?
Empathy is passive, Sympathy is active.
No, thanks. I raised my children to be sympathetic but NOT to be caught up in the whole "empathetic" routine. An empath doesn't help others; s/he seeks to make others feel that s/he understands their pain and shares it. It is a totally self-aggrandizing, mindlessly-altruistic, self-promoting mechanism. I would rather my children learn to listen to others, and help them talk things out, or discuss actions for solving their problems or accepting and learning from their grief or pain, than to be mindlessly "empathetic". Fortunately, they did. Which means that rather than breaking down and crying with someone who has a broken arm, they help them splint it and take them to the doctor; rather than trying to share someone's broken heart, they help them try to get over it, learn from it, and live better. I'd rather have my children (all now completely responsible and kind, thoughtful adults) work to employ, feed, and house a homeless man, than cry because he's homeless while they have the audacity to think that they "share his pain". Fortunately, they all will.
OK, it irritates me NO END to read about "empathy" and how and why people "should" have it.
I not only didn't teach my children empathy, I refused to. Why?
THIS is the definition of Empathy:
The ability to co-experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experience of another without them being communicated directly by the individual. Identifying with or experiencing vicariously another's thought, feeling, or attitude.
While this is the definition of Sympathy:
The ability to understand and to support the emotional situation or experience of another being with compassion and sensitivity. Feel sorry for; Feel pity for; Feel bad for.
To be an empath or an empathetic person means not that you can be sensitive to, care about, or be able to help another human being, but that you actually try to experience what they are feeling on a deep and personal level. Basically, empathy is an intrusive, emotional response, an attempt at forcing an intimate bond, and assumes the aspects of grief or pain or whatever the empath's "victim" is feeling.
Sympathy is understanding - without trying to feel or experience - someone else's pain, and trying to help resolve it in a meaningful way. A sympathetic person will care, and actively try to help or protect, not try to "feel your pain".
Really, truly, does anyone arrogantly believe that they can truly feel what someone else feels at any given point in time?
Empathy is passive, Sympathy is active.
No, thanks. I raised my children to be sympathetic but NOT to be caught up in the whole "empathetic" routine. An empath doesn't help others; s/he seeks to make others feel that s/he understands their pain and shares it. It is a totally self-aggrandizing, mindlessly-altruistic, self-promoting mechanism. I would rather my children learn to listen to others, and help them talk things out, or discuss actions for solving their problems or accepting and learning from their grief or pain, than to be mindlessly "empathetic". Fortunately, they did. Which means that rather than breaking down and crying with someone who has a broken arm, they help them splint it and take them to the doctor; rather than trying to share someone's broken heart, they help them try to get over it, learn from it, and live better. I'd rather have my children (all now completely responsible and kind, thoughtful adults) work to employ, feed, and house a homeless man, than cry because he's homeless while they have the audacity to think that they "share his pain". Fortunately, they all will.
Rant over.
Yes, those are the dictionary definitions of sympathy and empathy. They are not the functional definitions used in any type of social science research, however.
I'm rather taken aback by some of your assumptions about "the whole empathetic routine." Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes does not preclude action. I'm not sure why you would assume that? part of the functional difference between empathy and sympathy is that sympathy involves feeling sorry for, feeling pity for. If we want to get technical about semantics, that is actually very judgmental. But functionally, what you describe teaching your kids is pretty much the same thing the thread is talking about.
And FWIW, neither of the links provided has anything to do self-aggrandizement or wallowing in someone else's pain. Do people do those things? Sure. But that's not empathy, it's narcissism.
Sigh. I guess there's no such thing as a non-contentious topic here. Just don't take my last can of Who Hash, ok??
Last edited by eastwesteastagain; 12-23-2011 at 12:58 PM..
Reason: Lighten the tone of the post
I'm rather taken aback by some of your assumptions about "the whole empathetic routine." Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes does not preclude action. I'm not sure why you would assume that?
For ME, one of the things that makes me feel most loved and cared for is when I feel truly UNDERSTOOD. Not that they feel the same thing that I do but can see my feeling point of view so to speak. Not pity. I don't need poor me. I am one tough sumbitch.
But when light dawn's in my husband's eyes, and he really begins to understand what I am feeling is like LLLLLAAAAAAA!
For me the difference is
I wonder what it is like to be homeless. What do you experience? How would that make me feel?
vs
That poor SOB, let's give him a sandwich.
I see a great deal of value in the first. (And the second of course).
I don't know if I have done an accurate job of describing empathy though. That is what I THOUGHT the word meant.
For ME, one of the things that makes me feel most loved and cared for is when I feel truly UNDERSTOOD. Not that they feel the same thing that I do but can see my feeling point of view so to speak. Not pity. I don't need poor me. I am one tough sumbitch.
But when light dawn's in my husband's eyes, and he really begins to understand what I am feeling is like LLLLLAAAAAAA!
For me the difference is
I wonder what it is like to be homeless. What do you experience? How would that make me feel?
vs
That poor SOB, let's give him a sandwich.
I see a great deal of value in the first. (And the second of course).
I don't know if I have done an accurate job of describing empathy though. That is what I THOUGHT the word meant.
Thanks, somebody new - you described what I was trying to say in my last post much more articulately than I did!
No, thanks. I raised my children to be sympathetic but NOT to be caught up in the whole "empathetic" routine. An empath doesn't help others; s/he seeks to make others feel that s/he understands their pain and shares it. It is a totally self-aggrandizing, mindlessly-altruistic, self-promoting mechanism. I would rather my children learn to listen to others, and help them talk things out, or discuss actions for solving their problems or accepting and learning from their grief or pain, than to be mindlessly "empathetic". Fortunately, they did. Which means that rather than breaking down and crying with someone who has a broken arm, they help them splint it and take them to the doctor; rather than trying to share someone's broken heart, they help them try to get over it, learn from it, and live better. I'd rather have my children (all now completely responsible and kind, thoughtful adults) work to employ, feed, and house a homeless man, than cry because he's homeless while they have the audacity to think that they "share his pain". Fortunately, they all will.
Rant over.
I am not sure why you think a person with empathy would not try to help someone. It is not mindless at all. The problem with sympathy is that it too often becomes pity.
While empathy in the definitions includes sharing the person's pain to an extent, that is not all it means. It means walking in the other person's shoes and helping them in ways that *they* want you to help in rather than helping from your own perspective. It also involves sharing other people's joy, btw, not just their pain.
The golden rule says do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The empath, however, says do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
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Warning - Grinch Alert!
part of the functional difference between empathy and sympathy is that sympathy involves feeling sorry for, feeling pity for. If we want to get technical about semantics, that is actually very judgmental. But functionally, what you describe teaching your kids is pretty much the same thing the thread is talking about.
