Roots of Empathy. Mary Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ is our deepest connection with one another. Roots of Empathy stretches children to find points of intersection. In their discussions about being sad, children may give reasons for sadness that are different—“My parents fight a lot” or “Kids make fun of me because I have two moms instead of a mom and a dad”—but there is understanding about the feeling itself, and that shared understanding creates channels of connection and belonging that lead to empathy.

      Babies and toddlers will spontaneously respond to the sadness or happiness of their mother or other significant people in their lives. They are attuned to nuances of harmony or discordance. This capacity for empathy grows as the child develops a sense of self, separate from other people. The more aware the child becomes of his own emotions and their effect on him, the more he is capable of recognizing emotional states in people around him and aware of the effects created by different emotions. An eighteen-month-old will respond to the distress of another child by giving him a toy or bringing an adult over to help.³ This is the beginning of developing a moral sense and a capacity for pro-social behaviour. These stages in the development of empathy—awareness of self, understanding of emotions, ability to attribute emotions to others and take the perspective of the other person—are critical for positive socialization.⁴

      From the outset, parents are the single most important influence on how a child’s innate capacity for empathy grows and develops. It is this first relationship that affirms the power and efficacy of human connection: Baby is hungry and starts to cry, Mommy listens and cues into Baby’s hunger, Mommy picks Baby up, comforts him and feeds him. Daddy smiles, sings Baby’s name, lifts her in the air; Baby has an answering smile, gurgles, spreads out her fingers to touch Daddy’s face. Circles of communication, understanding and connection are completed. These and similar circles are repeated throughout the first years of life. The give-and-take of reading cues and responding to cues lays the foundation for the emotional learning that allows empathy to take root and flourish.

      Home is where the start is; it is where children become themselves; it is where, before the age of six, their values and attitudes are formed. The roots of empathy, laid down in the home, give children the foundation, the confidence, the strong sense of self to build relationships in the bigger world outside the home. The familiar patterns they have learned form the template for reading and responding to the behaviours and emotional expression of other children and adults. The approach to communication, caring and sorting out problems that is built into the emotional ebb and flow of family life can lead to understanding the benefits of sharing and forming friendships in the sandbox, in the schoolhouse and in the boardroom. What more valuable support can we as a society provide to children and their parents than to ensure that this early social and emotional learning, so critical to successful relationships in life is a part of our childcare and education structures? What would add more to our progress as a global society than to place at least as much value on the development of positive, fully realized human relationships as we place on the acquisition of academic skills? What greater contribution could we make to our sustainable future than to promote a development of the heart that runs parallel to the development of the mind?

       Why Empathy Matters

      One of the parents of a child in a Roots of Empathy class called the teacher and said, “I don’t know what you are doing in that class, but Cody has completely changed the way he treats his baby brother. He is gentle, protective and very loving.” Cody has taken to heart what he has been learning about empathy and the needs of babies in the context of the classroom and transferred it to his home situation. This parent’s story is, happily, very common.

      We also frequently see the healing power of empathy. Liam, who was expressing a lot of anger and frustration in his class at the beginning of the program, gradually responded to the smiles and overt u res the baby frequently directed at him and formed a strong, positive connection with her. Over the course of a few visits, the baby seemed to actively favour connection with Liam, slowly drawing him to her, and the instructor felt Liam turned a corner the day he looked at the baby and the baby smiled at him. At the end of that session, Liam touched the baby’s feet to say goodbye. This was an “opening up” that led to the child, for the first time that year, establishing eye contact with others and beginning to interact positively with his classmates. I have observed this “wise b a by syndrome” in countless classes. The baby has an intuitive sense of who needs her, an uncanny knack of zeroing in on the child who is unpopular, carrying a burden of pain, uncommunicative, struggling in some way. The baby sees the child, this other human being, purely and without judgment. The child sees his best true self reflected back by the baby’s response and, with it, the opportunity to reinvent himself.

      These are just two examples of the power of empathy to reshape relationships. Understanding how other people feel is the first step to building caring relationships in the classroom, in the community and in the world at large. In our program the babies teach this lesson for us, because they express their feelings in such a clear, open way. The baby who is happy is happy with every cell of his body. The baby who is frightened is the epitome of fear, and this is easy for children to recognize. The observation of emotions in the baby is the gateway that leads the children to identify and label their own emotions and is a curriculum bridge to learning to recognize emotions in others. In one of the exercises in class the students look at illustrations of children their own age and talk about how the people in the pictures are feeling. The concrete experience with the baby stimulates a thoughtful range of responses. Talking about what they are learning from the baby’s cues gives children the language and experience of talking out loud about feelings; it gives them permission to have a public discourse about emotions and the process of talking fine-tunes their thinking.

      Social skills are built on empathy and emotional intelligence: when you understand your own feelings and can recognize those of others, you are able to reach out and make connections. That means giving comfort and solace to those who are hurt, and celebrating with those who are happy. If we could be more present and responsive to each other, we wouldn’t have so many people running on empty. In the Roots of Empathy classroom we encourage the building of friendships, giving children the experience of making connections through shared feelings. When we do the classroom activity in which children look at a picture of a sad girl and talk not only about why she might be sad but also about how they could help her, they often attribute her sadness to loneliness and a lack of friends. The solutions invariably include taking steps to b ring the girl into their circle of friends. While they may not often articulate it, children intuitively know that friendship mitigates pain and bolsters us against the emotional landmines of growing up. Through this building of empathy and emotional awareness we have an opportunity to improve the interactions of children today and affect the quality of human interaction in the next generation.

      When I talk about some of my experiences with Roots of Empathy classes, and describe some of the touching incidents when children demonstrate their courage and compassion, people in the audience are often moved to tears. Many are embarrassed by this—I see them trying to wipe their eyes discreetly with tissues concealed in their hands. Why should we be embarrassed? Those tears are proof that we are human—that we feel.

      We need to make a healthy place for emotions in the way we perceive ourselves and in the way we deal with each other, regardless of gender or how old we are.

       Empathy, Literacy of the Emotions

      In our program, we give all the children the words to describe their feelings. Focusing on the core emotions, we ask them to tell us about times when they felt sad, scared, angry or happy. Listening to the other children and sharing their own story enlarges their vocabulary and sparks the recognition that is an essential part of emotional intelligence: “I hear how you are feeling, and I know I have felt the same way. We are alike.” When we have given shape to the solidarity of humankind it will no longer be possible for us to hive off a group and dehumanize them.

      Studies tell us that when girls have a problem, СКАЧАТЬ