I would like to return to a series of articles we have written in recent months about bullying, and specifically I want to respond to my commitment to write about empathy in children. When we talked about “avoiding school violence through conflict resolution”, I told you that I would broaden this vision a little more with two posts about empathy and decision making.
When we are able to feel or perceive the same as other people, we are manifesting our empathy, it has cognitive, behavioral and emotional components. It is an innate factor in our species, although it needs to be encouraged and educated, to improve our social relationships.
Children easily perceive simple emotions since they are babies, but not everything is as simple as expressing pain, joy or sadness, because people also know how to show our gratitude or concern. So it takes a few more years to understand more complex feelings, by 10 years children are already capable of this.
The benefits of paying attention from home to the development of empathy are quite obvious: Children who are educated to accept their own emotions and recognize those of others tend to have more self-esteem and also positive social behaviors. From the age of six or seven, the cognitive factor of empathy has already developed and at this time the child can understand others and act accordingly, but it is not until the end of preteen when they are able to extend this capacity to people who don't even know.
It seems complicated to develop this quality in an individualized society, but after all while living together with others we need to know that we are surrounded by people like us. Children can learn that it costs nothing to understand their peers and behave accordingly, an example of this is to phone a friend who is sad because his grandfather has died or make a farewell postcard to the desolate companion because he moves to another city and should look for new companies
How can we encourage the development of empathy from home?
Reading helps identify different feelings and we can take the opportunity to talk about "how the child perceives them". We can also take advantage of scenes from a movie in which the characters show their feelings.
Being able to access different emotions with perspective is something we can do talking about known situations in which the protagonists are friends, neighbors, etc. If we also educate children by reasoning with them, in addition to helping to develop their empathy, we will favor a critical spirit and an ability to fully understand their surroundings.
We can talk to them in general about the possible consequences that our behavior has on others. We will talk about the pride or guilt that we have felt on other occasions and putting ourselves as an example.
We will never hide our emotions and allow ourselves to externalize them. Remember that they also learn by seeing how we act.
When children get used to analyzing emotions perceived as "positive" or "negative", they usually have self-control over their actions and are perceived as stabilizing elements by their peer group.
