Teaching Young Children Empathy

Children learn by watching and copying their caregivers’ patterns and one way you can teach your children empathy and kindness is to demonstrate those characteristics yourself.  As your children watch how you handle and react to situations they will copy your behavior.

Here are some easy tips on how to teach your young children empathy:

• Be helpful to others.  Look for ways to demonstrate being helpful to others and let your young one witness your actions.  Also explain to them what you are doing and why.    “I am baking cookies for your friend Susie to take to school for her birthday because Susie’s mom broke her arm and it’s difficult to bake cookies this time”.  So simple and yet so relative to your child’s life.   Other  simple things, like putting spare change in a donation, letting someone go ahead of you in line, sending a note to an elderly friend or relative or running an errand for someone all teach your children kindness.

• Set up a family Kindness Project.  Things might include going through outgrown clothes and donating them to a local charity, collecting canned food items and turning them into a charity, sending a note to an elderly person or phoning a sick person to cheer them up.  Each time you do this, explain to your child what you are doing and why.  These all demonstrate simple ways you can help another person and enjoy doing so.

• Prepare for the Unexpected.  Your children will learn a great deal by watching how you react to the unexpected happenings in your life.  Teach your children how to react to the unexpected in a calm and kind manner.  Nothing tragic is going to happen if you stop to take care of a person who dropped their groceries and needs help picking them up.   Yes, you may be a few minutes late to get home for dinner and you may be inconvenienced but that’s ok.  We need to help this person now.  This teaches children that kindness is easy and takes little out of your day even if it unexpected.  Talk to them about what you are doing and why

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• And finally the most important item on the list.  Practice what you preach.  Don’t talk kindness and charity without following through.  Your children learn more by watching you than by listening to you.  If you say you are going to do something for someone –do it.  Practice what you preach especially when it comes to kindness and empathy.

Empathy and sharing go hand in hand and learning to share is an important skill for your child to master.  Here are some stages of sharing to help guide you in teaching the skill.

Reference Material: Baby Hearts: A Guide to Giving Your CHild an Emotional Head Start by L. Acredolo