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What are specific ways that you can help your child develop sympathy and empathy?

Parents play a central role in teaching children about feelings and emotions, both their own and other people's. Therefore, parents have an enormous impact on developing children's empathy and sympathy. There are many things parents can do to help children become more empathic and sympathetic.

• Be empathic yourself. Pay attention to your child's feelings. Acknowledge your child's emotions, listen to the situations that cause them, and respond with care. Be sure not to dismiss emotions by saying, "that's nothing to get upset about."


• Talk about feelings. Children mimic what they see and hear. Parents who talk about feelings-both their own and others'-openly and regularly will influence their children to do the same. Take opportunities to point out your own feelings, the feelings of others, and how children can choose to respond in different ways.


• Ask questions about feelings. This will help your child think about her own emotions as well as the way other people feel. For example, if your child has a bad dream, ask her to tell you how it made her feel, or if she says something mean to a friend or classmate, ask her to think how she would have felt if she had been treated this way.


• Label emotions. This not only validates the emotion, but it helps your child develop a vocabulary for expressing feelings. This will help your child recognize emotions in herself and in others, and she will be able to name them. Saying things like "I'm happy because the sun is out", "I'm sad that Grandma is sick", and "I get frustrated when you cry but won't tell me what is wrong" are all ways to teach children to identify and express emotions with words.


• Read nonverbal cues. Reading body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice is important, too. Point these out to your child.

• Say the "Feeling ABCs." Ask your child to come up with feeling words for different letters of the alphabet and to describe a situation where someone might feel this way. (See Dr. Michelle Borba's web site, http://www.moralintelligence.com/Pages/ArtBMI09.htm, for a list of feeling words.)


• On a regular basis, pick a feeling and ask each family member to discuss it. For example, each person could talk about a happiest moment, or an embarrassing one, or a surprising one.
• Make feelings flash cards or a photo album. Starting with the more common or basic emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear), help your child make home-made flashcards or a photo album using index cards and pictures from magazines. For each emotion, discuss the word, act it out with your child, and discuss situations in which someone would feel this way (or in which your child felt this way).
• Include feelings in play-time. Use puppets to act out situations, sing songs about feelings, make drawings or hats for different emotions, or point out expressions in books and magazines.
• Play feelings charades. Write the words for various feelings on cards and have friends or family members act them out without using words until others have correctly guessed the word. This is especially good for learning to read nonverbal expressions.
• Use your voice. When you read a favorite book to your child, try to express different emotions (bored, angry, excited) with your voice alone-and see whether your child can guess which one is right.
• Watch the silent screen. Turn off the sound on your TV or VCR and watch with your child. Try to guess what people are feeling just from their body language.
• Observe people. When you and your child have an opportunity to observe people at the store, at the playground, or someplace else, try to guess how people are feeling even when you cannot hear what they are saying.