Cultivating Empathy

Empathy is both an important trait and a skill that can be cultivated.  Growing up as a little girl in North Carolina, I was often told that I needed to be nice. Let me be honest, that didn’t always come easy for me. Now as a parent and staff for the CSU Routt County 4-H Program, I reflect on those social encouragements and think about the traits I hope to instill in my own children and my community’s youth. Rather than being nice, I seek to encourage kindness through empathy.

Empathy vs. Sympathy

Empathy is often confused with sympathy.  Being empathetic  means you can relate to other’s people’s emotions by mentally imagining their situation and understanding their emotional response. This is basically the concept of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes based on their experiences and emotions not your own.  A quick example of empathy is accurately detecting when your child is afraid and needs encouragement. Sympathy is something you feel for someone who has recently lost a loved one.

Children often begin to show signs of empathy in infancy and the trait continues to develop steadily through childhood and adolescence.

Encourage Empathy

1. Create opportunities to form bonds with individuals from different backgrounds from your own family. Interdependence and exposure to others encourages empathy. If you depend on someone you are more motivated to understand what that person is feeling and vice versa. When people share similar interests or experiences they are more likely to feel empathy. Empathy towards our inner circle of family and friends can limit our capacity to empathize with people outside our immediate circles. This is why it is important to build relationships outside of your immediate circle.
2. Encourage empathic behaviors on a small scale. Even toddlers can develop empathy while sharing, apologizing, and helping others. In early childhood, kids start to imagine how others feel. In conversations with your child, ask questions about others’ experiences and ask how they think their actions impact others.
3. Finally, practice what you preach. It is often easy for those in power to be less empathic. As a parent or a mentor be aware of this power dynamic. Seek opportunities to consider the emotional response of the youth you are engaging. This can be a great opportunity to practice active listening.

Let’s talk

When you talk to your child about events at school, on the playground, or in the news, help them practice empathy by taking the perspective of others. Ask how did their classmate feel in a particular situation? Encourage them to talk about how they are feeling, and model sharing your own emotions and having empathy for others in your life. For example, when talking about something that happened at work or with your extended family explain how the different actions made you feel and why others might have responded the way they did.