Empathy is something that teachers experience constantly in their roles of working with children. Parents and caregivers experience this and model empathy with their children daily. We are all modeling this without even thinking about it.
Your children build empathy as we tell them stories of people around the world, in our country, in our community, and within our classrooms. They begin to imagine different realities and experiences.
Emotional intelligence begins with knowing and naming emotions. In our elementary classrooms, many of us use something called a Mood Meter to help students identify how they are feeling and expand their vocabulary.
Children notice when their peers are upset as well as when they are excited. They quickly comfort or congratulate a friend. The adults around them model what to do when someone doesn’t respond or isn’t aware that someone is hurt. We support children during conflict resolution and guide them until they are able to have productive repair conversations themselves.
Empathy is an emotional and cognitive experience. The emotional part of empathy is the first to emerge. Babies reflect the emotional states and expressions of their caregivers thanks to mirror neurons. Children who feel safe, secure, and loved are eventually more sensitive to others' emotional needs.
The cognitive part of empathy begins to emerge during Primary. Children become more aware that other people have separate bodies, feelings, and experiences. They begin to consider other perspectives, which helps them put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
Around the time of Elementary, children begin to take another’s perspective and offer solutions. Children in elementary school are increasingly able to manage their own emotions, which allows more space to support others. All of this practice supports children in understanding the complex social issue of inequality.
Empathetic responses emerge over time through caring relationships, modeling, storytelling, communication, play, emotion coaching, and a lot of patience.
Activities that can help build empathy are:
- Acting out different emotions together
- Offering supportive words and encouragement when things don’t go as planned
- writing caring messages/well wishes to others
- Giving/showing compassionate action ideas when someone or a group is suffering in some way
- Sharing stories of people showing empathy
- Having your child describe what is happening in a picture