Empathy is "feeling with" someone through use of imagination.
Have you noticed how our kiddos seem to completely (or almost completely) lack an imagination? They often don't play imaginary games, think of the future, or plan crazy adventure. This is due to the trauma they experienced that inhibited their brain development and also blocked their brains from thinking too much about the future because it was just too scary.
Now that our kiddos are in a safe and stable environment and the old survival habits have become maladaptive, we need to help them build imagination to foster empathy.
We have to be able to imagine scenarios that we have never personally experienced in order to be able to empathize with another person.
Building imagination
-Play. Play pirate ships and digging for treasure, play play dough bakery, play Tim Horton's drive thru, play pioneers, play space travelers. Use dress up clothes, props, or imagine everything.
-Build. Build Lego creations (no instructions), build block towers and cities, build snow forts and tree forts, build sand castles and motes, build mouse houses out of grass and twigs, build pillow forts, build car ramps with a stack of books.
-"Imagine if..." Take turns with your child, or as a whole family, to come up with imaginary scenarios - the sillier the better! "Imagine if... we had ice cream and chocolate sauce for breakfast!" "Imagine if... we could teleport to Alaska!" Imagine if... we had a robot that cleaned the whole house for us everyday!"
And most importantly - play with your child and model imagination and fun.
Fostering empathy
-Be an example. Empathize with your child when they make poor choices, have a hard time, or don't feel great. Empathize with other people, situations, circumstances, and even animals that you see or hear about.
-Model & role play. Make a list of situations or happenings (or Google one - I'm sure there's one available somewhere!) and read them with your child. Model how you would use empathy in that scenario and then have them role play what you did and then how they could do it a different way.
