 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
In her book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting, Dr. Markham describes how to stop the power struggles and help children want to cooperate. Defiance is not a discipline problem that can be solved with punishments, consequences, or threats. Defiance is a relationship problem. Your child is showing you they desperately need your help with their emotions and they don’t trust that you’re on their side to give them that help. You can change that, with empathy and connection.
Meaningful family Rituals, helpful Routines, and Empathetic Limits can turn a chaotic or a repressive home into a stable place of solace for everyone.
“Educators will tell you that a classroom full of empathetic kids simply runs more smoothly than one filled with even the happiest group of self-serving children. Similarly, family life is more harmonious when siblings are able feel for each other and put the needs of others ahead of individual happiness. If a classroom or a family full of caring children makes for a more peaceful and cooperative learning environment, just imagine what we could accomplish in a world populated by such children.”
– Jessica Lahey, “Teaching Children Empathy,” The New York Times
"Empathy is something we foster for other humans, but also this planet we live on. We will all be better citizens and stewards of this earth with more developed empathy. It lives inside us at all ages, I am certain. Give it space to develop and make a difference." Building empathy with - Pets
- Sibling and Home Care
- Community Service
- Family Night and Circle Time
- Interactions with Different Generations of Friends
November 2, 2021 by Christina Sophia #EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.empathycircle.com
#EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.empathycircle.com How do teens learn the important skill of empathy, which researchers say is vital for building a more compassionate society?
Writing for The Conversation, Jessica Stern, a postdoctoral research fellow in psychology at the University of Virginia, describes the results of a newly published study she and colleagues conducted in the lab of Joseph P. Allen, Hugh Kelly Professor of Psychology at UVA. The researchers followed a group of adolescents from their early teens into adulthood and looked for four types of empathetic behaviors: showing understanding, helping friends solve their problems, providing emotional validation and actively engaging in conversations.
Here’s what Stern had to say in The Conversation.
These are troubled times. There is a raging virus that has wreaked havoc in the world, affecting nearly every country and people of all age groups, even children. A large number of children are under severe mental stress due to long periods of isolation, lack of any academic or even sporting activity, and strict protocols. #EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.empathycircle.com
Now, their latest results -- based on nearly 100 young adults -- show that the maternal contact received all those years ago had a measurable impact on social brain functioning decades later, and the ability to empathize and relate to others.
"What proximity to the mother's body did was enabling mother and infants to be more in tune, more in sync with one another throughout the 20 years of their development. That synchrony in turn sensitized the brain to be better able to empathize with the emotions of others," said study author Ruth Feldman. She is a professor of developmental social neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel with a joint appointment at Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn.
So how might you make every-day empathy your everyday reality?
Practice live listening
How often do you find yourself listening, but not really taking note of what the other person is saying? Your body may have been in the same room, but your attention is elsewhere. Use your whole being in this process to ensure your body language shows that you are leaning in and interested, your eye contact remains focused and your attention is towards the speaker.
Young children are by nature egocentric and must first see the world from their own point of view. Teens can also revert back to that “Me First” mentality. Thinking and feeling as though the world revolves around you makes it difficult to see someone else’s point of view. That’s why Daniel Goleman reminds us: “Self-absorption kills empathy.” But empathy can be cultivated; children can learn perspective taking skills.
Repeated experiences of listening to the views of others is one way to help children develop empathy and appreciate differences.
How can dads improve their empathy?
There are whole books written on the topic of empathy, so I won’t attempt to make this an exhaustive list. But to help you get started, here are three cool ideas I’ve come across that can help us develop our empathy.
1. Practice reading and imitating faces
Can you identify the emotions on each of these faces?
Being empathetic in today’s times is a virtue only a few have. But it’s the most important quality that one should carry to make the world a better place to live in.
It's pertinent that we understand what empathy is since many people mix it with sympathy. ‘Empathy’ is the ability to put oneself in the same situation as another and feel the emotions that the person would perhaps be going through. This capability is the very basis that can help build sustainable relationships. It leads to building happy and content bonds between friends and family.
Scientists are studying if babies are born with empathy and altruism and their research may help us create a blueprint for solving today's partisan tribalism and civil cold wars. One of the funniest things you’ll ever see is little kids learning martial arts. Obviously, when you try to get small children to learn kicks, punches, and combinations, you’re definitely not going to turn them into killing machines. Basic physics dictates that they lack the speed and mass to do any real damage until they’ve at least started puberty. You teach them martial arts to give them a taste of discipline and help them improve their coordination. And when those little kids spar, they often just think of it as entertaining roughhousing with a few rules they might not even bother to take seriously. Observe these kids long enough and you might walk away with the impression that they all just want to play and be friends.
What did you do in school today?"
"Nothing."
Parents often ask what they can say to get their child talking. The secret isn't about what you say. It's about how you listen.
The most important skill in talking with anyone, including children, is listening. Not answering, not teaching, not lecturing, not fixing things or offering solutions. Not only do your kids not want that from you, but it would get in the way of them coming up with their own solutions. What your child needs from you is your full attention and empathy. That’s what deep listening is. Here's how to become a brilliant listener.
6. Non-empathetic and neglectful parents
A child raised by controlling parents has no idea about the virtues of empathy, care, affection, and warmth.
Controlling parents fail to meet the emotional requirements of the child, like their need to be cared for, loved, considered and understood, even though they are often successful in providing the child with financial, academic and materialistic support.
|
They have issues with sharing, being very overexcited and turn-taking. They’re quite advanced in numbers and letters for their age because they’ve been at home with adults, or they’ve been playing a lot on tablets, but they are very behind socially, the empathy isn’t there.
- Read Books: Great books are an incredible way to step outside our own experience and have compassion for others. Then, turn the books into games!
- Play "Emotion I Spy": Helping kids name and identify feelings is a powerful gateway into feeling for others. The idea is that you simply sit on a park bench and observe people’s emotions like you would in "I Spy" and the guess who you are observing. This will help your child process their own feelings and also strengthens their empathetic muscles.
- Theater Games: Play theater games like Emotion Charades, Emotion Freeze Dance, Emotion Sculpture. Learn how to play these games.
- Practice Perspective Taking: Play "A Day in the Life," a game where you go deep into a character so much that you imagine the nuances of their day, dreams, family, etc.
Jocelyn Greene
#EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.EmpathyCircle.com #EmpathyTraining: https://j.mp/ECCOURSE
Schools that embrace the development of relationship-building skills will best prepare young people for future success, says Frank Rumboll, Executive Head at Curro Rivonia. Called 'Foundational Learning', which starts at Grade R and concludes in Grade 4, these formative years set the groundwork for all future learning, experiences in life and the world of work. A focus on empathy, leadership and communication is already of interest to employers – and will continue to be in the future. Being taught relationship-building skills will also help young people learn the following skills: - Interpersonal skills
- Verbal and non-verbal communication skills
- Listening skills
- Emotional intelligence and empathy
- Networking skills
- Team-building skills.
#EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.empathycircle.com
#EmpathyCircles: The best #Empathy building practice. http://www.EmpathyCircle.com Join an Empathy Circle: https://lnkd.in/g-WCQYK
Teenagers who have close, secure relationships with their families are more likely to extend empathy to their peers, according to a new study.
More specifically, when teens feel safe, supported by and connected to parents or other adult caregivers, they are better equipped to pass the empathy they receive on to others.
"I don't think teens in particular like being told what to do, and I don't think it's going to work to tell teens they should empathize with other people," said Jessica Stern, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. "But what does work is showing them empathy, and they can pay it forward to the people in their lives."
Stern's work revolves around how having secure relationships contributes to prosocial behavior, or behavior driven by the intent to benefit others.
Study Link
https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cdev.13630 By Sarah Molano, CNN
Empathy Circles: The best #empathy building practice. http://www.empathycircle.com/
"Given that we are experiencing a decline in empathy, what can we do to strengthen our own empathy muscles and teach empathy to our children? Here are a few suggestions:
Pay more attention to other people's emotions. Notice people and what's going on with them. This requires you to be observant and get out of your own head and problems. It means putting the phones down and interacting with real people. Now, that we are coming out of a distanced and quarantined year, it's time to reconnect and pay more attention to the people around us." By Kim Giles,
Parenting behavior is deeply linked to the ability to empathize with one's children. Thus, to better understand why certain parents react to certain situations in a certain way, it is crucial to gain insight into how empathy is shaped. Scientists have now shed light on the interconnectedness among the oxytocin gene, brain structure, and maternal empathy.
Our ability to feel and understand the emotions of others, or “empathy,” is at the core of our prosocial behaviors such as cooperation and caregiving.
Scientists have recognized two types of empathy: cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person’s emotions on an intellectual level, taking into consideration someone’s situation and how they would react (for example, “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”). Affective empathy, on the other hand, is a kind of emotional contagion, where you feel someone’s emotion instinctively after observing their expression or other mood indicators.
Weil (1992) defines empathic care as:
“the capacity of the caregiver to experience pleasure in response to the infant’s pleasure and to experience tender unpleasure (sadness, concern) in response to the infant’s unpleasure. Conversely, the central core of an infant’s emerging empathic reactivity will be defined as the capacity of the infant to experience pleasure in response to the caregiver’s pleasure and to experience unpleasure in response to the caregiver’s unpleasure” (pp. 19-20).
The power of empathy
Our children are building new capacity and adaptability as they explore academic concepts and ways to access these ideas from home. This may change how we teach and learn forever, even after our children reenter the classroom. We are finding so many positive attributes of this experience. As parents, it’s up to us to engineer new solutions.
How can parents cultivate empathy in children during these times, especially when there are so many competing priorities? And how can they balance, and guide their children in balancing, self-care and care for others? The following are five guideposts based on research and the wisdom of practitioners.
1. Empathize with your child, and model empathy for others
Why?
At its simplest, empathy is the awareness of the feelings and emotions of other people. It goes beyond sympathy, which is often thought of as feeling for someone, and instead, is feeling with that person.
advertisement - learn more
When we are empathetic toward someone else, we think before we speak or act, and instead, find a way to make them feel supported, loved, cared for, or even just simply understood. Practicing empathy can be as deep and as challenging as being there for someone during rough times, or as surface as making an effort to be kind to the people and things we come across in our own little worlds each and every day. This mindset entails the basic necessity of respect and the knowledge that we must treat others as we want to be treated ourselves.
Empathy is a key part of our social fabric. Numerous studies have tied empathetic behavior to success in the classroom and in life. Here are some ways area schools are focusing on empathy in their classrooms and school communities.
Encompassing both kinds of empathy
Lila Jokanovic, executive director at Council Oak Montessori School in Blue Island, explains that there is emotional empathy and cognitive empathy, and the school emphasizes the need for both.
“We place equal emphasis on being kind, which is emotional empathy, and being able to walk in the shoes of another and taking the perspective of another, which is cognitive empathy. This allows our students to develop into adults who are more likely to show compassion and lead as adults motivated to help others,” she says.
|
