Parent Handout

www.familycenter-pirc.org

 

 

 

A program sponsored by The Family Center of Utah Valley

 

Empathy

 

Empathy comes from deep respect for human feeling. It is the ability to listen, understand, and be sensitive, to feel the feeling of others, and to communicate back to them. Empathy builds a foundation for your child’s sound emotional development. It plants seeds for a healthy family and sets the cornerstone for a happy, loving life. When you empathize with your children, they realize that you care about their feelings and ideas. Your empathetic response to your child’s emotions helps them feel validated and gain insights into themselves. True empathy demands that you listen to your child’s feelings and thoughts without needing to change them.

 

When you empathize, you teach your children the following:

• self-awareness

• self-control

• recognition and acceptance of emotions

• the knowledge that emotions can be expressed to others

• the ability to label feelings with appropriate words

• the understanding that feelings influence behavior

• the realization that relationships are based on mutual esteem and communication.

 

There is a direct connection between how kids feel and how they behave. When kids feel right, they’ll behave right.  We help them to feel right by accepting their feelings. Parents don’t usually accept their children’s feelings but rather try to control them. For example:

 

“You don’t really feel that way.”

“There’s no reason to be so upset.”

“How can you feel hot. It’s cold in here.”

“Why are you angry?”

 

When we respond to our children in this way we are telling them not to trust their own perceptions, but to rely on ours instead. Children have a right to all their feelings. Feelings serve us as our core system for discerning right from wrong. Feelings are our moral navigators. We do not need to stop having them. We need to express them appropriately.

 

To understand the emotions of another person, you must first accept and acknowledge your own. It is impossible to teach children skills we have not mastered ourselves. Therefore, we must learn to feel our feelings and to express them in acceptable ways. Until you feel your feelings, you will not allow your children to experience theirs.

 

To empathize with children, you must first offer yourself empathy and compassion. Accept your feelings instead of denying them. Out loud, tell yourself, “I feel frustrated and it’s okay.” If you don’t verbalize your feelings you will act them out like children.

 

Of all the languages in the world, the most difficult language in which to communicate is the language of feelings.

 

The more skilled you become at reading your own feelings and those of others, the more caring you will be.

When your child is upset, offer empathy. Your task is to act as a mirror to her feelings and experience. Reflect back to her your best guess as to what you believe she is experiencing. Offer a clear description of her feelings and perceptions. Your observations will help your child to “see herself” and become aware of her situation. When your child achieves an awareness of her feelings, she has taken the first step toward managing these feelings.

 

How you respond to your child’s upset teaches them how to respond to the upset of others.

 

To empathize with an upset child, use these three types of statements to let her know you understand.

• Reflect back what you see. “You came in stomping your feet, your face looked strained, and you threw your jacket on the floor. Something must have happened.”

• Reflect back what you feel. “You seem angry.”

• Reflect back what you hear. “You wanted macaroni for lunch today instead of peanut butter.” With a non-verbal child, summarize the expressions of her body. “You face is telling me that you wanted to do that by yourself.”

Empathy is not a tool to eliminate children’s feelings. It is a process that helps children recognize and understand their feelings and themselves. Feelings do not need to be fixed. They are not wrong or dangerous. Feelings are a part of our humanity, helping us grow and learn. Without them, life is empty.

The more a child receives empathy the more “whole” they become and the more efficient is their brain organization.

Before you can empathize, you must stop equating disobedience with disrespect. If our attitude is not one of compassion, then whatever we say will be experienced by the child as phony or manipulative. It is when our words are infused with our real feelings of empathy that they speak directly to a child’s heart.

Sometimes just having someone understand how much you want something makes it easier to bear.