One of the most important ways we can promote empathy is by modelling empathy in our daily interactions with children, others, and ourselves.

Be Empathetic with Children

Our actions speak louder than words. Children learn about the world and how to behave from watching and imitating others. This starts early in life — even as early as infancy! If children receive empathy and compassion, they are more likely to treat others with empathy and compassion.

​Using kind, loving language and actions that help children feel understood, accepted, and validated support our positive attachment relationships with children and provide them with a roadmap of instructions for how they can support and show kindness towards others.

Be Empathetic with Others

Beyond showing empathy to children, we can be an empathic role model in our inter-actions with different people, including our family members, friends, and even strangers at the store, school, or workplace. Children are constantly watching and learning from the everyday interactions they witness. Sometimes the most effective way to promote empathy is through our own actions.

​Modelling the behaviour you would like to see in your child is more likely to result in children imitating these behaviours. For example, saying thank you to someone when you receive help will increase your child’s likelihood of doing so.

Be Empathetic with Yourself

If children learn from observing, this means they also notice how we treat ourselves when we make a mistake. If we can model self-kindness and growth in these moments, this is good for our own well-being and has added benefits of supporting children’s empathy. Let’s face it: despite our best efforts, we’re not perfect, and we’re all going to make mistakes sometimes. It’s a natural part of life and it’s actually a huge part of learning.

​Being gentle with ourselves in these moments lets children know that it’s okay to not be perfect all the time. It also lets them know that it’s safe for them to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes in a constructive way, without feelings of shame. There are no bad children, only bad actions. Children can start to learn this by noticing how we behave towards ourselves when we make a mistake. (Malti, 2020a, 2020b)

Another way to promote children’s empathy is by creating opportunities for children to take the perspectives of others. This might look a bit different at different ages.

​For example, with young children, you might read books with different characters and help children identify how those characters are feeling and why they are feeling that way.

​You might also role play with stuffed animals to help children understand others’ perspectives. For example, if your child recently faced a difficult situation where they stole their friend’s toy, you might use stuffed animals to recreate a similar event and talk through the feelings of the stuffed animals in this scenario.

​In different scenarios, you might even consider reversing the roles, with you playing the child and your child playing the adult! Children love to take charge and make decisions. Putting your child in the driver’s seat creates a fun opportunity for learning.

​As children get older, you can engage in more complex conversations about the causes of emotions in yourself and in others. These conversations might occur after a real-life event or when discussing current events in the news, in a TV show, or in a story from a book. Before you discuss emotions and their reasons, remember to wait for your child to calm down if they are feeling heightened levels of emotions. Prioritize helping them manage their emotions. You will have plenty of time to bring up that topic and discuss emotions later. Also remember to be open and accepting of children in these conversations and make sure you allow them to safely express and explore their feelings without criticizing them. Children are still developing and learning new things every day, so it’s important to be understanding if they are struggling to take the perspective of others.

The capacity to understand and manage our own emotions is integral to being in tune with others and their emotions. It’s harder for us to display compassion for another person when we are dealing with our own strong emotions. Helping children understand their own emotions, including the signs and causes of their emotions and how they can manage their emotions can equip children with the internal resources they need to empathize and display compassion for others.

There are several techniques we can use to help children understand their own and others’ emotions. Try these four steps, which spell out L.O.V.E.

​First, when a child is feeling an emotion, we can Label that emotion for them or encourage them to label their emotion. For example, if a child is scared of a bee, we might say: “Are you scared of the bee?”

​We can also view emotions (all emotions!) as an Opportunity to grow closer. We might do this by getting down on the child’s level or viewing the emotion as an opportunity to work together to come to a solution. We might say, “What should we do?” Or “How can I help?”

​We can also Validate the emotion by letting the child know that their feeling is okay to feel. We might say “Yes, bees can be scary, especially when they fly too close to your face. It’s okay to feel scared.”

​Finally, we can promote children’s under-standing of emotions by Elaborating on the emotion. We might ask, “When I’m scared, my heart starts beating really fast and it feels harder to breathe. How does it feel in your body when you feel scared?” Asking open-ended questions and following children’s lead helps children connect their emotions to their experiences and helps them learn complex problem-solving skills.

We can also practice the steps of L.O.V.E. when our child witnesses someone else feeling a big emotion.

We can promote children’s empathy for others by noticing and noting when they engage in small and large empathic activities.

​Acts of empathy don’t have to be large and extravagant to be effective. It can be as small as a child holding their toy out for another to play with, giving a hug, or holding the door for someone.

​In addition to noticing these behaviours, we can actively praise children and their character in these moments. For example, we might say: “I noticed you playing so nicely with your friend today when he came to the park feeling a bit blue. You are so kind. I’m so proud of you!”

​Children love to feel that they have an active role to play in helping others as well. Try creating opportunities for children to suggest acts of kindness. For example, if you notice that the child’s classmate is having a bad day, you can work with the child to brainstorm ideas that might cheer the classmate up, such as drawing them a picture or playing a game with them.

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention to the present (including noticing our breath, our body, and the sounds around us) and observing our thoughts and feelings without judging them to be good or bad. Mindfulness is linked with lower anxiety, depression, and stress, and improved emotion understanding and kind behaviours in children and adults. Supporting children in some deep, mindful breathing can help support their well-being and propensity for empathy.

​Children often learn best when they are playing, so turning mindfulness into something playful and creative is a great way to coach them in mindful breathing in a simple, fun, and memorable way.

​For example, you could teach your child deep breathing by having your child imagine that they have a hot cup of cocoa in front of them. Have them hold their hands around their imaginary hot chocolate and take in a deep breath. Then, have them let their breath out very slowly, like they are breathing their “out“ breath through a straw or like they are slowly cooling down the hot chocolate in front of them.

When we change the rhythm of our breathing so that our “out” breath is longer than our “in” breath, this activates our parasympathetic system, which helps us calm down. If the child isn’t a fan of hot chocolate, you can switch this exercise up to something like hot pizza or hot chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, or blowing bubbles.

How we respond to children’s behaviour can influence how they learn from that behaviour and why they might or might not engage in that behaviour again. For example, if we respond to behaviour we don’t like with immediate harsh punishment or by criticizing who the child is as a person, although this may stop the behaviour in the moment, it is more likely to result in children displaying positive behaviours merely to avoid punishment. It is also more likely to instill shame into children (instead of thinking the behaviour was bad, they think they themselves are bad ). In this way, external factors (fear of punishment from an authority figure and fear of shame) become the main motivators for engaging in positive behaviours.

​We can maintain behavioural boundaries while still showing empathy and kindness when children make mistakes by focusing on the current actions instead of children’s character. For example, instead of saying “You are a bad friend for knocking down your friend’s tower” we might say, “Your friend is crying. It’s because you knocked down their tower”. This language helps children link their actions (knocking down the tower) to consequences (their friend crying) and gives them an opportunity to learn from this event.

In this way, kindness can become more internally motivated and is more likely to be displayed even in the absence of an authority figure.

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