elementary empathy

In our world empathy is everything. We could not have the happy family we enjoy without it. Our blood pressure would be sky high without it. Our girls would be crabby and mean without it. But what is it?

Definition:

Empathy is the capability to share another being’s emotions and feelings.

Not to be confused with sympathy: Sympathy is the feeling of compassion, concern and/or pity for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. (For more of my thoughts on empathy versus sympathy, see here.)

But what does empathy actually look like? Here are some scenarios. The actual empathy will be set in italics.

Scenario 1: Echo (3) crash lands in the grass, starts to cry.

Me: Oh gosh! Are you hurt?

Echo: Yeah! I fell!!

Me: Yeah, you did. What’s hurting?

Echo: My leg! Waaah!

Me: Oh ouch.

Echo: My leg got all bent up, and it hurts.

Me: Owie. You didn’t like landing like that.

Echo: No.

Scenario 2: Xi (7) comes to me after an argument with Bella.

Me: Hi honey. Are you sad? You look sad. What happened?

Xi: Bella and I got in a fight.

Me: Oh darn.

Xi: I didn’t want to give her this shell because I already gave her two shells. And then she kicked me.

Me: Oh. Pretty scary huh?

Xi: Yeah.

Me: You don’t like it when Bella is mad at you do you.

Xi: No. And she kicked me right in the back and I ran away.

Me: Oh man. Ouch. Is it still hurting?

Xi: No, not really.

Me: Are you still sad about it? (Rubbing her back)

Xi: Yeah.

Me: Shoot.

Scenario 3: The lego robots that Bella (9) has been working on fall to the carpet and break.

Bella: GRRRRRRRR! (Throws herself on the floor, thrashes about)

Me: Oh man! They fell huh?

Bella: Yes. (Through gritted teeth)

Me: You’re mad.

Bella: Yes. (Crying)

Me: Oh, REALLY mad. You worked really hard on those.

Bella: Yeah. I worked on them all morning and now they’re worthless.

Me: Yeah, I saw you working really hard. And now you’re really frustrated, it feels like all that work for nothing huh?

Bella: Yeah.

Me: That’s not how you wanted it to end up. Shit. ( Back rubbing, hair petting, hugs)

This is what the words look like, but they only work, meaning they only feel like empathy, when you actually feel them, feel the feelings of the kids. In fact empathy doesn’t require words, it can also happen with body postures and facial expressions.

Something to note as well is that the scenarios above do not involve fixing. In order for empathy to have an effect it is best delivered as a pure substance. Moving too quickly to a solution ( a bandaid, or help rebuilding the robots) dilutes the power of empathy, even rendering it useless. Children might want help with their situation, but that comes in time, rushing through their emotions straight to the fix it job is usually extremely frustrating, and often increases the strength of the existing feelings. Only when they feel completely heard, (felt, really), are children even ready to move on.

Sometimes, waiting for the child to be ready to move on takes a long time. A really long time. Self-empathy, when you’re tired of holding and rubbing backs, and ready to go back to blogging, or making dinner, or knitting, is essential. For this scenario:

Oh man. I’m tired of this. I’m ready to go back to what I was doing.

A little dose of self-empathy goes a long way in being able to continue offering empathy to your children.