One of the parenting courses I teach places great emphasis on the power of empathy to help children develop self regulation. When parents empathize with their children and name the emotion they suspect the child is feeling, children will be given the first tool necessary to give them some control over the expression of their emotions - language. They will also experience and feel empathy, a necessary condition for developing empathy themselves.
Emotions in themselves aren't wrong (they mostly happen without thought). It's recognizing them and thinking about them that gives us capacity to control them and express them in a healthy and Godly way. The Three Choices parenting course proposes that it is empathy from the parent that will best enable a child to recognize and name their feelings and to develop empathy.
Writing in the Huffington Post about her program known as Roots of Empathy, Mary Gordon says:
Empathy is correctly thought of as the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to feel what they feel. There is both a cognitive and an emotional aspect to empathy. We need the cognitive side to take the perspective of another, and emotional knowledge to understand how that person would feel given their perspective. Once you feel empathy for someone else, it changes you, and often it changes your behavior. Empathy is the basis for all prosocial behavior—traits such as sharing, caring, cooperating, standing up to injustice, and being inclusive.
These are big claims to make, but they surely must strike a chord with Christians. Empathy should be a big part of our character. Empathy for the effects in others of the fallen state of humankind. Empathy for the struggles and pitfalls facing people. An awareness that 'there but for the grace of God go I.’
However, as usual, a good idea or a new movement can claim too much for itself. Mary goes on to claim that:
And here is where we have a tremendous opportunity as a society. If we want to change societal levels of empathy, the best place to start is with children. We can impact civilization in profound and monumental ways by supporting the development of empathy in all children. Just imagine: an entire generation of children, with their capacity for empathy fully nurtured, growing up to become the parents, citizens, and world leaders of tomorrow.
Whilst I agree that children can benefit greatly from the experience of empathy in their earliest relationships with their parents, clearly from a Christian perspective there are limits to what the development of empathy can achieve on a world wide scale.
It is not the panacea for the ills of human kind, but promoting its development in our children is a step in the right direction surely. What do you think?
