Teaching your child empathy and compassion

It is your responsibility as a parent to teach your child empathy and compassion for others. This will go a long way to help them  care and understand others throughout life.

Empathy starts with understanding other people’s emotions and feelings.   Kids have to get in touch with their emotions first.For older kids, you have to interact with them face to face  to help them understand how people feel. Encourage them to talk about their emotions and feeling with you. Talk to them about the compassionate thing to do for others .

How to can teach your child compassion and empathy

• We also need to model good behavior so that kids will emulate. Kids learn a lot from what they see. It will be easy for them to be compassionate to people if they see  that people around them are dong it.
• Praise empathetic behavior. If your child performs an act of kindness, let them know what they did was right and praise them.
• Teach the child basic rules of politeness . Good manners such as thank you and please are a great way to show caring and politeness to others.
• Give your child jobs: Research indicates that children who learn responsibility also learn to be selfless and caring. Give your child a job such as feeding the dog and cleaning the dinner table. You have the praise the child for a job well done.
• Encourage your child to think about others : You need to remind your child to think about how someone else might feel. One way you can do this is for example if you go to the grocery store and  your child asks for ice cream, you can ask her if she thinks her little sister will also like you to bring her ice cream.
• You can also encourage your child to get involved with community service. Involve your child is selfless activities. Doing community service with  children helps them know how other people are feeling. Empower your child to make changes in the world by doing something about it  . You can get them involve in activities  such as food drive, diaper drive, and clothing drive . This will help them learn how to help others.
• Getting kids books to read is also an amazing way of teaching kids empathy. This include choosing books about race, gender and bullying .