By Sarah Chana Radcliffe
Your child hit his brother and doesn't even care that the little guy is crying.....
Can you teach empathy? You can certainly help encourage this trait. By responding empathically to your children you provide a model of how it's done. By describing your feelings and naming your loved ones' feelings, you build the "feeling vocabulary" that forms the basis of empathy. What does NOT work to develop empathy is lecturing, criticizing, punishing.
Saving your child from pain now may cause her greater pain later....
When your child goes through something hard - doing poorly on a test, experiencing rejection, enduring a loss or going through any other painful experience - know that she is building muscles that will strengthen her for all of life's tests. Avoiding hardship leaves a child weak and unprepared for the inevitable struggles that life brings. Facing hardship while being supported through it, helps her discover that she can survive, pain ends, happiness and success return, life is manageable. Don't smooth every bump in your child's road; just hold her hand steady while she climbs over it.
