5 Ways to Teach Your Kids Empathy

Schools are open again, and our children are back in the classrooms. It’s been a long time in some cases since they’ve been around so many other kids at once, and many are having to learn all over again how to act and react around one another (just as many of us have had to do as adults).

To some extent, this will be a natural social process. Kids adapt quickly, and the hope is certainly that those whose education has been disrupted by COVID-19 will “catch up” quickly. That said, this challenging time also highlights the importance of kids developing empathy –– something that Forbes correctly points out is largely parents’ responsibility. With that in mind, we want to look at five specific ways that you can help your kids in this regard.

1. Draw & Talk

One great idea is to have your child make drawings and share what the drawings are about. Of course, since you are the teacher in this scenario, you should be sure to ask your child questions that will lead them to talk about the significance of each element in a given drawing. Encourage your child to speak about the feelings they have, or how each person (or perhaps animal) in the drawing feels. You could ask, “What makes this group feel happy?” or “What would make this person feel sad?” Teaching a child to label feelings makes them become aware of the importance of considering everyone’s feelings in the real world. In the process, you can also help to convey some sources of happiness and good feelings –– like connections with friends and family.

2. Treat Kids Respectfully

Children learn the most from watching their parents, and this is without a doubt true when it comes to general behaviours. To this point, our previous article titled "How to Bring Out the Best in Your Kids" discusses some key points like communicating respectfully with your little ones. Simply put, if you treat your kid with respect, it will teach them that it feels better to be treated with respect –– and they will in turn be more likely to treat others that way. It’s an example of how you can use your own behaviour to teach empathy (and other things!).

3. Story Time

Reading a story and talking about the characters is a great way to bond and teach empathy to your children. An article at SymptomFind suggests using pictures from a book to test whether or not kids can identify the emotions of each character (similar to what we discussed above with regard to drawing). Parents can then carry the conversation further by asking their children what they think of the characters and why these characters feel a certain way. This teaches the kids to put themselves into the characters’ shoes and associate feelings with actions and situations –– which encourages the practice (and hopefully the ingrained inclination, in time) of understanding other people’s feelings in the real world.

4. Volunteer to Help People

An article from EDC’s "Prevent Bullying" campaign points out that acts of kindness teach children that helping others is a good thing. Kids can begin to understand that they can do something to ease another person’s pains or problems. To encourage this understanding in young kids, you can set them up to help out with volunteering efforts. Often enough, kids will actually get into the idea of helping out (they like to be involved!) and you can talk to them afterward about how what they experienced was useful, and which people they helped. Convey how the people they helped might feel as a result of your kids’ efforts, and they’ll begin to understand the value of doing things for other people.

5. Role Play Situations

Roleplaying is another very effective way to get kids to see situations from different perspectives. As a parent, you might pick a story from a book, movie, or any hypothetical situation and ask your child to pretend to be a certain character. You could use questions like, “What would you do if you were in that situation?” or “How would you feel if you were that person?” This will teach your child to see things from different angles and understand why people feel the way they do when certain things happen –– thus nurturing empathy.

Most children do not fully understand their own feelings, let alone those of other people. But they do recognize having emotions, and parents are the best teachers when it comes to fine-tuning that recognition and deepening understanding. Try the ideas and exercises above, and you may find that your child quickly develops a better understanding of what causes feelings, and why the feelings of other people matter, too. You’ll be well on your way to raising an empathetic and caring young person.