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.

Researchers believe empathy helps children unlock other skills they need for future success, such as critical thinking, effective collaboration, and problem solving. Learn more!

Empathy, according to author and psychologist, Thom Markham, is more than merely liking someone or being kind because you’re a good person. Empathy is the ability to “understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions.”

To be truly empathetic requires that we are clear about our own motives, fears, and desires, we have the resilience and courage to feel negative emotions — our own and someone else’s, and we have had enough honest, authentic experiences to be able to relate to others. One of the most important things parents can do for children is help them develop empathy.

Empathy is declining in our children. Recently, researchers surveyed 10,000 middle- and high-school students—eighty per cent reported personal achievement was more important to them than caring for other people.

It’s neurologically impossible to be both stressed out, and really loving and kind at the same time.

What’s at the heart of this crisis in compassion? Too much screen time, for one. Stress is another factor. The hormone oxytocin, responsible for connecting and bonding us to our kids, giving us that warm, fuzzy feeling during caregiving—that hormone works on the same receptors in the brain as cortisol, the stress hormone. And therein lies the tension: It’s neurologically impossible to be both stressed out, and really loving and kind at the same time.

Overview of topics:
Why is empathy important?
Tip 1: Many interactions
Tip 2: Imitate babies
Tip 3: Explain the feelings of other people
Tip 4: Full power at school age
Tip 5: Talk about feelings
Tip 6: Demonstrate unprejudiced interest
Tip 7: Taking time consciously
Tip 8: Tell stories

Here are 5 Ways You Can Teach Empathy To Your Kids

1. Be Empathic To Them

One of the best ways to teach them empathy is to portray how you feel about them. If they are having hard times, give your attention and show them how you feel their pain. Parents usually tend to shove off the emotional aspect and address the issue from a third person’s point of view.

But in-order to raise an empath, you have to see things from their perspective and address their emotional state. Here, being empathic to them is as important as solving the issue, if not more. In this way, the child will notice how people are being empathic with them in their distress and will develop a compassion to show empathy to other people as they grow up.

2. Give Them The Opportunity To Be Empathic

Here are 5 Ways You Can Teach Empathy To Your Kids
1. Be Empathic To Them

2. Give Them The Opportunity To Be Empathic

3. Make Them Relate To Other People’s Pain

4. Spend More Time With Them

5. Encourage Them To Look To The Bright Side

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.

Mother and Child  -Mary Cassatt

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.


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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.

There are many good reasons to become a more empathic human being. First of all, consider your health: empathy can help you reduce stress. As reported by Andy Winder on goals.com, people who can empathize more easily have less “secondhand stress”—that is, less stress that is triggered by the behavior of others.

Morin indicates that empathy helps you forge social connections, and thus supports healthy relationships; it also helps you resolve conflicts by allowing a better understanding of the opposing party’s state of mind.

And it also provides information about the strength of your own feelings relative to those of the other people in your life, which may help you regulate your emotions by lending you some valuable perspective.

Because—as reported by Elizabeth Segal on Psychology Today—strong interpersonal relationships can enhance one’s sense of general well-being and increase life satisfaction, the relationship-supporting qualities of empathy play a role in promoting this general sense of wellness, too.

Loren Soeiro, Ph.D

No matter how naturally empathetic your child is—and some children can appear quite impervious to others’ suffering—they can learn to see another’s perspective, and to respond appropriately to others’ emotions and behaviours.

Here are some ways you can help your child learn to be more empathetic:

1. Model how to value feelings. Show warmth, respect, and empathy towards your child and others. Acknowledge and value people’s feelings in your child’s presence (and elsewhere!). Be understanding and sympathetic when someone is sad, upset, distressed, or frustrated. Speak about others with kindness and respect, even when you think your child isn’t listening.
2. Express your feelings openly....
3. Support your child’s self-regulation skills....
4. Acknowledge your child’s feelings. ...
5. Encourage open dialogue....
6. Point out the feelings of others. ...
7. Connect feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. ...
8. At the end of each day, ask your child about acts of kindness....
9. Create a climate of empathy at home...
10. Teach your child what happens when empathy fails. ...
11. Expand your circle of concern...

Parents open up about how they're raising caring and empathetic children.

“Having empathy for others is definitely a learned behavior. I started introducing it when my two children were both very young. They are one year apart and I knew I wanted to foster a lifelong friendship beyond brother and sister. Sharing toys: I would show them how happy it made the other one when they gave the toy to them. Understanding and verbally acknowledging feelings and talking about them. On the other hand, we learned boundaries and how to stop tickling each other when someone says stop.”
― Lindsay Brimmerman

When it comes to raising empathetic children, the advice to parents typically has to do with talking to them about the feelings of others, encouraging them to imagine how another person feels, and praising them when they display empathetic behavior.
 
But there’s one simple tool that gets left out of the conversation. I used it with my own kids, and, though I have yet to see this advice in any article about developing empathy, it lines up with current research and what we know about how humans interact with one another.

 Why would it matter if infants displayed empathy? “Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the emotion of others, and share in those emotions, while maintaining a self-other distinction,” Florina Uzefovsky, of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told us.']

“As can be understood from the definition, empathy is basic and central in all social communication. This ability allows us to interact with others, to better understand their motives and actions, and to engage in meaningful social relationships.”

Empathy is something easily taken for granted. Not everyone possesses or exhibits empathy and few actually exhibit the right amount of empathy. Empathy is a skill that is learned over time.

There are ways to help even the youngest children display greater empathy toward other children as well as adults. As their parent, you can:

Be an example. It’s easy to get caught up in this “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, but that doesn’t work well in creating empathy. Lead by example.
Be mindful of your child’s emotions. If we don’t respect our children’s emotions, how can we teach them to respect others?