LESSON 1: IS EMPATHY IMPORTANT?
What is empathy and why does it matter to ME?
What comes to mind when you think of the word, empathy? In this lesson we will learn the difference between sympathy and empathy and take a closer look at how we interact on an emotional level with our children. As we journey through the following lessons together, you will gain the knowledge and skills needed to make a positive change in your life and the life of others.
REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS
Below, we’ve listed several questions to keep in mind as you navigate your way through the lesson. These questions are designed to help get those synapses firing and assist you in delving a little deeper into your beliefs about empathy toward your children.
Do I become upset with my child when they cry, scream or yell?
What is my initial reaction when they do?
Do I understand why they are upset?
Do I genuinely care how they feel?
Do I try to place myself in my child’s shoes before I make a comment?
Do I listen, respond or try to understand?
When I am upset, does it feel good when I am told that I should not feel that way?
Does it alleviate or aggravate my stress when my feelings are made to feel invalid?
What do I communicate to my child when I dismiss their feelings or react angrily at their experiences?
Do I cause them to feel shame, self hate, embarrassment or confusion?
Do I express that I love them unconditionally?
How will this affect how they treat others and communicate with their spouses in the future?
Do I want my child to be able to understand their feelings?
Do I want them to have a healthy emotional and physical development?
Do I want them to have healthy relationships with themselves and others in life?
THE PROM DRESS, A MAGIC AUNT AND EMPATHY: A PERSONAL STORY
It was Spring during my senior year of high school, and I was already looking at Prom dresses even though I had not been asked yet. I mean, how many times in your life do you get to wear a gown? After searching online for days, I found one that I thought was perfect! When I showed my mom, she was hesitant, reminding me that I should try those kinds of things on, and that it was pretty expensive. I convinced her to buy it by reminding her she would be avoiding a stressful shopping trip with a moody teenager if we bought it online now. It worked and I could not wait until it arrived.
When it came it looked nothing like the picture online, but I was hopeful that a seamstress could work some magic. The seamstress pinned, pulled and tucked all over. The dress started to look better and I held on to hope. A few days before prom I picked up the dress. To my devastation, the dress still looked awful. I asked her why she did not take the very large sleeves in for me like we had planned, and she told me that she did not want to ruin the applique that was on them.
I was in tears! I didn’t know what else to do. My extended family was in the kitchen eating and laughing. I called my mom into my room and told her how much I hated the dress. When she tried reassuring me that I looked beautiful, I yelled at her. She left the room and came back with my aunt. Immediately after seeing my devastation my aunt reassured me that we could fix it. She found my moms dusty sewing machine and that night the three of us worked on the dress for hours.
I will never forget listening to all the other adults joking and laughing from the kitchen while my aunt sewed away in my room. She did not owe me anything. This was her vacation after all, and I was not even her daughter. And my mother, who could have easily lectured me about buying things online, or spending so much money, or yelling at her, decided to care about my feelings instead. To this day I feel so loved and valued because of that experience. Instead of trying to teach me how to behave, they taught me how to love.
3 TYPES OF EMPATHY
When we see a child crying and feel the urge to comfort them and understand what they are feeling, that is empathy. David Hume, philosopher of the age of the Enlightenment described empathy as when “the minds of men are mirrors to one another,” (Belzung, 2014, p.178). When we have empathy, we can place ourselves in the situation of another and experience their emotional state as if we were in the situation ourselves. This involves more than just listening to another person and waiting for our turn to speak--which can be difficult not to do! When we are empathetic, our goal is to understand and feel with the other person, not to give our opinion or try and fix their problem.Empathy can be broken down into three different categories: Emotional contagion, sympathy, and cognitive empathy.
EMOTIONAL CONTAGION
The first, which is referred to as “emotional contagion” happens spontaneously. We’ve all had the experience when someone yawns, then we have the sudden urge to yawn--annoying, right? There’s a word for this phenomenon--emotional contagion. It can also be seen in a daycare, when one baby starts to cry, then everyone bursts into tears, including the teacher. Similarly, a sad person may find themselves smiling or even laughing when others in the group are happy. In a 1998 study conducted by Dr. Ulf Dimberg, electrodes were placed on the face of volunteers in order to record their muscle activity while watching people on a screen. In this experiment the subjects activated the same muscles as the people they were watching. When seeing an angry expression, the volunteers unconsciously, and within a matter of seconds, changed their own facial expressions to mirror those of the person on the screen (Belzung, 2014, p.179). This type of empathy is deeply embedded into our human nature.
SYMPATHY
The second type of empathy is what we refer to as sympathy. Sympathy requires the first level of empathy, emotional cognition but lacks the third, cognitive empathy, or the ability to enter into the other person’s world. Confused yet? Watch the following video clip and think about the motivation behind each character’s actions. Are they truly concerned, or are they just going through the motions?
In the clip Joy tries comforting Bing Bong by saying, “Hey, it’s going to be ok. We can fix this!” She may be comforting him in self-interest--because the emotional contagion gives her a negative emotion, sadness, which she tries to get rid of by distracting Bing Bong from his feelings. Sadness senses his emotions and empathizes with him by saying, “I’m sorry they took your rocket,” and acknowledged Bing Bong’s feelings while allowing him to cry and reconcile his emotions. As a parent, we may want to react similarly to Joy and protect our child from their “negative” emotions by distracting them or giving them reassurances. We may also want them to stop crying, because it’s having a negative impact on our own emotions (Belzung, 2014, p.180).
Although sympathy is not always connected to self-interest, it still does not allow us to truly understand those we are with.
COGNITIVE EMPATHY
The last form of empathy is cognitive empathy, or true empathy. When we have cognitive empathy, we not only worry about the other person, understand their emotions, and comfort them, but we put ourselves “in their shoes”, in order to understand their intentions and desires. It can be described as “capacity to enter in the other, even if his own mental universe is different of mine” (Belzung, 2014, p.181).
For example, imagine a business man late for work, stopping to help a disabled person cross the street. The disabled person is not posing any immediate discomfort to the man, or asking for help. The business man is not handicap himself, so he does not necessarily understand what it is like to be disabled, but he puts himself in the man’s shoes. He thinks, “Wow! It must be so hard to live like that!” and is then moved to help him.
SYMPATHY OR EMPATHY? WHICH IS IT?
Notice the differences between empathy and sympathy in the following video.
EMPATHY IN PARENTING
When we teach our children empathy, we help them develop important life skills such as, self-expression, self-control, quality communication, conflict resolution, personal responsibility, conscience and self-acceptance (Ioannidou & Konstantikaki, 2008). When we are empathetic to our children, we show them unconditional love and acceptance. We communicate to them that they are important to us and that we care about them more than anything else. You already know this, but do they? Child life educator Alfie Kohn (2006) explained, “How we feel about our kids isn’t as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them” (p. 20).
Statements to Avoid:
(“Sympathy vs. Empathy,” 2018)
Don’t get angry
Don’t think like that
Don’t stress
Don’t be so negative
Empathetic Statements:
(“Sympathy vs. Empathy,” 2018)
If I had been in that situation, I would be upset too
You have every right to be mad
I can see that you’re hurting
Attempting to convince our children not to have a certain emotion may only end up making them feel alone. Showing empathy will help them feel validated in their emotions, strengthen the trust between you and allow them to know they can confide in you in the future.
HOW WE TREAT OUR CHILDREN
How often do you send your child away when they have a problem, or disregard their feelings because you believe that they are misbehaving? Kohn (2006) has taught “when you send a child away, what’s really being switched off or withdrawn is your presence, your attention, your love. You may not have thought of it that way. Indeed, you may insist that your love for your child is undiminished by his behaviors. But, as we’ve seen, what matters is how things look to the child” (p. 27).
Will your children feel like your devotion, love and affection are conditional? Kohn (2006) exemplified ways in which we may be teaching our children that our love is conditional, by saying that parents often “write off their kid’s requests, dismiss their feelings of anger, or trivialize their fears. They interrupt their kids in a way they wouldn’t dream of doing to another adult, yet they become incensed when their kids interrupt them. And they may also talk about their children in a belittling way: ‘oh, she’s just being a prima donna,’ ‘just ignore him when he gets like that’” (p. 124).
He also suggests we don’t spend our energy trying to get our children to be well behaved and polite, but that we try to help them become genuinely compassionate and caring individuals. Don’t worry! We will discuss this further in Lesson Four: Let’s Focus!
A SERVING OF EMPATHY
A father shares an experience he had with his child when he chose to be empathetic rather than reactive (Ginott, Ginott, & Goddard, 2004, p. 139):
“Recently, I have decided to behave like a wise man rather than a clever one. Instead of blaming when my children get in trouble, I offer help, as I did recently. My son, Paul, age ten, likes to prepare his own breakfast. One morning I heard him whimpering in the kitchen. He was poaching two eggs, and one of them splattered on the floor. Instead of screaming ‘look what you’ve done! What a mess! Why can’t you be more careful?’ I said, ‘You got up quietly, you made such beautiful eggs for yourself, and one fell down just like that,’”
Paul (meekly): Yes.
Father: And you are hungry.
Paul (looking brighter): But there’s one egg left on the plate.
Father: While you’re eating one egg, I’ll poach you another one.
Even though it is natural, easy and maybe even impulsive to exclaim “Seriously?” “What are you doing?!” “Great!” when we see a child spill or break something, it only makes them feel more guilty, embarrassed, ashamed and misunderstood. Every time they mess up in the future, it will be accompanied by fear or guilt, maybe even a feeling that they are not worthy of love. How can you show empathy next time your child makes a mistake?
WEEKLY CHALLENGE & COMMITMENT
This week’s Challenge is to take what you’ve learned about empathy and use it in at least ONE interaction with a child or adult.
COMMITMENT
You can DO IT!
At the end of each lesson we will present you with some options to further your learning! Commit to doing just one or ALL of the options below to make sure what you’ve read in this lesson becomes a part of your continued learning.
OPTION 1
It's Pop Quiz Time!
Practice using empathy in some scenarios and see what you have learned so far!
Follow this link to take a short "quiz". Read the scenarios and pick the answer that best shows an empathic response.
Good Luck!
Take the Pop Quiz here
OPTION 2
Inside Out
Sit down and watch the animated Disney/Pixar movie, “Inside Out” alone (with a bowl of popcorn, of course). As you watch the movie keep your laptop or phone handy to fact check some of the “science” of the movie. Ask questions such as, “How are memories stored in the brain? Are they connected to an emotion?” and “Do emotions organize or disrupt the way we deal with situations?” or “Why does Disgust seem so sassy?”
KIDS CORNER
It’s important for children to be active participants in their own learning! Take a moment to sit with your child and talk to them about what you’ve learned. Use the resources below to help get them engaged!
OPTION 1: INSIDE OUT--FAMILY STYLE!
Watch the animated Disney/Pixar movie, “Inside Out” with your family (replace popcorn with celery sticks) keeping in mind the information you learned in this lesson. If you’re feeling really ambitious incorporate one of the items below:
Have a family discussion about feelings using an online lesson. Just do a search for “Inside Out family lesson plans” and pick the one that’s right for your family!
After watching the movie, put on a play using the characters from the movie. The script could be based on a happy, sad or anxious memory from someone in the family. How would each emotion from the movie react to the incident? Act it out together!
OPTION TWO: EMPATHY, A PUPPET & MARK RUFFALO
The following Sesame Street video is perfect for starting the conversation about empathy! It gives a couple of examples to ensure kids understand the concept. After watching the video ask your child to give you an example of empathy.
LESSON 1 REFERENCES
If you're interested in seeing a list of references for our lesson, please visit this page.