Teaching the Virtues: Empathy

Teaching the Virtues: Empathy
Empathy in Children

The boys at scouts usually play with each other nicely and everyone has fun. One of the boys wasn't playing dodge ball and was asked why he wasn't playing. He replied that he has ash ma and his dad won't let him run around so, much. So one of the best players got hit and was out and went over and asked him to work on his cub scout book with him.

Usually boys at this age are all about them self's and what they want. When I saw this it dawned on me very seldom do we see empathy used at this age level.

In this society, it is valuable to relate to what another person is feeling. The only way we can grow into nurturing, caring, and self-aware adults is to learn the virtue of empathy – the understanding of how others feel and the ability to react with compassion to another’s situation.

Start with labeling feelings. With a large ball put all the feeling that we experience. Happy, Sad, Tired, Surprise, Anger etc... play catch and have the kids tell something about themselves and that feeling. Or have feeling of the week put a pitchers and have the children draw a pitcher of that feeling then develop them into more complicated feelings such as Nervousness, Frustrating, Jealously.

Start these lessons as young as kindergarten they will have a more developed understanding by the age of 6-8