Empathy

What is Empathy? Empathy is the ability to understand someone's experience, situation, or feelings. I thinks it's also the effort you put into trying to understand as well. If children are not taught to look at things through someones else's eyes, they will only think about their own feelings, and disregard any pain that they might cause. No parent wants their kid growing up and leaving a string of emotional causalities behind them, because all that child cares about is themselves. If the world is to become a better place, we need to instill empathy in our children. I remember in school being taught "The Golden Rule", treat people the way you want to be treated. I think we should go above and beyond that as parents. I try to use situations to sit down with my kids and really explain why its not ok to be hurtful, or mean towards other people. For example the other day my two sons got in a fight over a toy, and one ended up biting the other. Along with my son getting a punishment for that, I explained to him that people are much more important than toys. Hurting someone is not the right thing to do, and if he doesn't like his brother hurting him than he should not hurt his brother. As my children get older I will continue this dialogue whenever something comes up that allows me to talk to them about it. 

I do often wonder with me teaching my children empathy, how I will protect them from kids that have never been taught the concept. I think the only thing I can really do is make my children aware that some kids will be mean and will never learn. Fortunately, there are also kids that they can be a positive influence on. You never know how you can touch someones life when you care enough to treat them with respect and kindness. Everyone in life goes through hard times and its often the feeling that you're not alone that can get you through to the other side.

Lastly, I think that adults need to practice what they preach as well. There's no greater way to teach a lesson than leading by example. When your child see's you sympathizing with other people's situations and circumstances, it becomes a less foreign concept. So let's all practice empathy and make the world a little bit of a better place.