Pancakes With...Empathy

School can be a wonderful place, full of friends, academic successes, and fun!  It can also be a place where some children experience their most memorable difficulties and challenges.  They spend  13+ years in required attendance whether they are having a good or  bad day.  This is very similar to adult life.  What do your children know about reacting to others, and their feelings?  Have you discussed the term empathy?

As daily academic and recreational pressures, as well as the constant influx of technology and media continue to come into their lives, kids tend to be overwhelmingly stimulated and far less relaxed.  This can lead to emotional feelings that are hard to understand, relay, and communicate in socially acceptable ways.  Teaching children what it means to show understanding, and kindness toward one another at young ages is critical to creating a caring, kind, and accepting community.  Empathy can be defined as being aware of and sharing another person's feelings, experiences, and emotions.

Sometimes I see students, and parents, wanting to isolate and exclude a child who is having a difficult time expressing his/her emotions in acceptable ways.  However, when I see students who acknowledge and share another's feelings, as pictured above, healing begins immediately.  With a cooperative learning environment, mixed with empathetic classmates and understanding adults, transformations in behavior can occur with very positive outcomes for all.

Empathy is:  seeing with the eyes of another
                       listening with the ears of another
                       and feeling with the heart of another.

Please watch the video below with your children...empathy is key.  Kids need to be kind to one another and work on understanding and accepting one another.  It's a simple way for them to begin to grasp the concept, and you, as parent, can take it from there.

Keep it simple...and think of others.  ♥D