Here are some comments I have heard recently from children:
“It’s her fault that she had Covid. She took too long to have lunch without a mask.
“Who cares if I take a flight with Covid? I am already sick.
Such comments are usually not malicious, but they do show a failure to care about another person and take their point of view – two key elements of empathy.
That’s why, as a speech therapist and mother of two school-aged children, I think it’s time to focus much more on empathy education, in our schools and homes – especially with the rise of the omicron variant and so many other children likely to be diagnosed with Covid.
By now, children are aware enough of the virus to know who is sick and who is not. There’s a lot of blame, shame and superstition about it, in a way that can destroy relationships.
Empathizing can be especially difficult for children because their emotional understanding is still developing. Especially in times of stress and upheaval, they may withdraw to focus more on themselves – like us adults.
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During the winter holidays, many parents, grandparents and caregivers were much closer to our children. Now, as we return to work and handle new workloads, many of us are also dealing with grief or trauma and struggling to model empathy due to compassion fatigue.
But we have daily opportunities to help children develop empathy skills, based on the conversations we have with them. It starts with understanding what empathy really is.
Empathy does not develop suddenly and does not emerge from a vacuum. Skill develops in spurts and bursts over time. Even many 1-year-olds are able to notice the feelings of others, and many 2-year-olds are able to take basic steps to help others feel better.
We have daily opportunities to help develop children’s empathy skills, based on the conversations we have with them. It starts with understanding what empathy really is.
As psychologists Paul Ekman and Daniel Goleman argue, empathy has three parts: cognitive empathy, or perspective taking; emotional empathy, or deeply sharing another person’s pain or happiness, almost as if the emotions were our own; and compassionate empathy, or take action as a result of such sharing.
Our conversations with children can help them develop each of these three elements.
For example, to foster cognitive empathy or perspective taking, encourage children to move from one perspective to another. If a teenager asks why he can’t travel despite testing positive for Covid and says “I don’t see the problem”, ask him to take the point of view of an older woman on a plane, sitting next to a teenager who knows he has Covid. At the time of air travel, no one is more aware; the woman does not know and the teenager says nothing. But the teenager knows he can cause the woman to catch the virus and suffer from it in the weeks and months to come. You can then practice “reversing” the perspective, in this case taking the perspective of a pilot who has a family at home and has to fly daily with many potentially infected people.
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Quality conversations can also help children understand the emotional side of empathy. Say your middle school kid has a friend who has been diagnosed with Covid and needs to quarantine for 5-10 days at home. Even if the friend is asymptomatic and feeling well, she still has to miss school and social events, and she may feel very lonely and isolated.
Helping your child understand her friend’s feelings can help her instant interactions over the phone or computer, as well as her longer-term relationships.
Your conversations can also help your child develop compassionate empathy – feeling compelled to do what’s helpful for the person in front of them. Of course, your child can’t visit her friend in person while she’s in quarantine, but she can still try to ease her loneliness. Maybe they can play an online game together, or maybe your child can send an e-card.
The most important thing is not to assume what others need and want in general, but to think about each person in particular. If your child isn’t sure, encourage them to ask the question.
At the same time, it’s hard to teach empathy when you’re struggling as a parent. In the act of teaching empathy to others, the most important element is self-compassion. At a time when we face a long winter with Covid spikes and potential lockdowns, there is no “perfect” parenting.
There never was. Recognizing that we are all in the same boat is essential. In the words of writer John Steinbeck, “You can’t understand people unless you feel them within yourself.”
Rebecca Rolland is a speech-language pathologist and author of “The Art of Talking with Children,” to be published in March by HarperOne. She is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Medical School.
This story on empathy education was produced by The Hechinger Report, an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register for Hechinger’s newsletter.
