Viva Vitality: Empathy skills lead to happy and successful children

By Medicine Hat News on April 27, 2018.

Empathy is not simply an innate trait, it is something that can (and should) be taught. Evidence shows that kids who have greater skills in empathy are more successful and happy. Cultivating empathy in our children, “affects our kids’ future health, wealth, authentic happiness, relationship satisfaction, and ability to bounce back from adversity. It promotes kindness, prosocial behaviours, and moral courage, and it is an effective antidote to bullying, aggression, prejudice and racism.

Empathy is also a “positive predictor of children’s reading and math test scores” (Borba, 2016, p. xiv). In her latest book, “UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World,” Michele Borba details evidence-based tools and techniques that teachers and parents can use to cultivate empathy in our young people. Through teaching the nine skills detailed below, children will have what she dubs the “Empathy Advantage,” allowing them to reap the benefits mentioned earlier.

– Emotional Literacy: The ability to recognize and understand the feelings and needs of oneself and others.

Try this:

– Make feeling flash cards and play charades

– Build a feeling vocabulary

– Read books about feelings

– Moral Identity: They will adopt caring values that guide their integrity and activate empathy to help others.

Try this:

– Create a motto that describes your classroom/family

– Identify your core classroom/family values

– Create personal mantras for your students/children

– Perspective Taking: They can step into other’s shoes to understand another person’s feelings, thoughts and views.

Try this:

– Play “I wonder what so-and-so feels”

– Use real events, books and news, to try to see others’ perspectives

– Use books like “Paper Bag Princess,” “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs,” “The Bedspread,” “The Pain and the Great One,” “Through Grandpa’s Eyes.”

– Moral Imagination: They can use literature, films, and emotionally-charged images as a source of inspiration to feel with others.

Try this:

– Reading is the most valuable way to build moral imagination. Read to your students/children and ask these types of questions:

– What if?” Questions (i.e What if you were that character?)

– How would you feel?” Questions (i.e. Look at the character’s face, how do you think she feels? Have you ever had that same experience?)

– Switch the focus from “me” to “you” (ie.Pretend you’re the character. How do you think she feels right now? What does she need to feel better?)

– Self-regulation: This will help children learn to manage strong emotions and reduce personal distress so they can help others.

Try this:

– Model calmness

– Make a stress box or calm down box

– Rate the feeling on a scale of 1-10

– Practising Kindness: This will increase children’s concern about the welfare and feelings of others.

Try this:

– Make a kindness wall

– Teach bucket filling with the book “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?”

– Choose a caring cause

– Collaboration: This will help them in working with others to achieve shared goals for the benefit of all.

Try this:

– Use diverse literature (check out http://www.amightygirl.com for good diverse literature options for all)

– Learn one new thing about friends, family, schoolmates per day

– Stress encouraging others

– Moral Courage: Gives them the strength to speak out, step in, and help others.

Try this:

– Offer up heroes for the students to learn from (i.e. Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Matilda, Huck Finn, Dorothy Gale, Aunt Harriet)

– Dispel the Superman Myth by sharing stories of greats who changed the world with their quite, nonphysical courageous acts.

– Read children’s books about upstanders (i.e. “Hooway for Wodnes Wat,” “Nobody Knew What to Do, The Juice Box Bully,” “The Bully Blockers Club,” “Number the Stars,” “Stand Up for Yourself and Your Friends”)

– Altruistic Leadership Abilities: Motivates them to make a difference for others, no matter how small it may be.

Try this:

– Find your child’s/classroom’s passion

– Start with one small local act

– Utilize positive social media

For more tips and tools you can watch Dr. Borba’s short TED Talk or read the book!

Desirea Agar is a health promotion coordinator at Medicine Hat Community Health Services and can be reached at 403-502-1418 or desirea.agar@ahs.ca