This summer I travelled to Haiti on a three day mission with Jewish Federations of North America. I came home distressed and depressed, seeing how deep and multi-faceted the challenges there are. The combination of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of infrastructure and utter destruction caused by the earthquake made it hard to see the light. While I continued to think about Haiti over the past few months, I must confess, many days I did not dwell on their suffering. And then this week, the arrival of cholera in Haiti has drawn me back in. As I see the photos on the front pages of the New York Times, my heart is heavy, imagining the threat this disease poses to the people whom I saw in those camps, those tents, those rubble-filled streets of Port-Au-Prince.
As I notice my own strong reaction to this tragedy I am gripped by the story and concurrently ashamed of my lack of response to the many other tragedies that fill our newspaper each day. We care about what we know. This is not to portray myself as a heartless person when it comes to everything else, but I am struck and am uncomfortable by the difference in my reaction. Certainly we have limited time and attention but this disparity has led to me to think about what makes one have an empathic response and does having an experience with one tragedy or group raise one’s consciousness and attention for others? What calls us to action? And what can we do to raise our children to care about their world?
Here at the school we spend a lot of time thinking about how to strengthen children’s sense of empathy. It is not easy to imagine what it feels like to be in someone else’s shoes. The dictionary definition of empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.” So, I wonder, how do we help children to develop this capacity – to vicariously experience the feelings of another?
While I certainly do not have all of the answers, there are a few important ingredients for increasing children’s capacity for empathy. First, we need to create environments where children are explicitly introduced to the feelings of others. We want to take the time to have children process their own feelings as well as the feelings of their friends and family. When a child takes a toy from his sister and causes her to cry, this is a teachable moment to experience empathy. When a child sees a character in a story feeling scared of the dark, this is a moment to ask our children, “How do you think she might be feeling?” “What do you think he is thinking there?” “How would you feel?”
Additionally, we need to expand children’s “feelings vocabulary.” Children have many more feelings than just mad, happy and sad. Children feel frustrated, irritated, shy, anxious, impatient, giddy, and so much more. Use these words to describe your own experiences, as well as those around you. When your child looks upset, help your child find the appropriate word for how they might be feeling. If we can name it, we can often feel more in control and comfortable with the feeling.
And finally, a primary ingredient for building empathy is exposure. When we know something, we care about it. By exposing children to people who are different from them – whether it be people from different backgrounds, different family structures, people with special needs, or anything else – we are less afraid and more connected. It is not always comfortable when we are exposed to the “other” and sometimes it requires the strengthening of emotional muscles to really listen and understand other perspectives or ways of life. But I do believe that children are capable of understanding the grays in our world and do not need to be presented with everything in black and white terms. Children can learn to understand that different people learn differently, that some children have one mommy, some have two, and others have a mom and a dad. Children can understand that some people have members within their family that celebrate Christmas and others who celebrate Chanukah. Life is complicated but if children are exposed to life’s complexity within a safe environment, they will be better equipped to handle the real world in which they live.
While a trip to Haiti may have energized me, I know that it is not always possible or practical to have exposure to every problem. There are so many things competing for our attention. But I remain hopeful that our children are being raised in a more authentic, honest culture where differences are celebrated and they will grow to truly be citizens of the world. Additionally, my hope is that while not every article will grip my attention, that having seen this suffering first hand, I will be better equipped to appreciate devastation elsewhere. And finally, while I did not feel hopeful about the short-term future of Haiti, I certainly felt an increased sense of gratitude for my own life. Not only for my friends, family and community, but also for being an American and a New Yorker. We have so much and I hope that we will raise children who can also appreciate this and want to do their part to repair our world.
So, inspire me! I welcome your stories and strategies. What have you done to support your children’s capacity for empathy? And when have you seen evidence of their deep care for the world? I am sure we all have these stories!
Shabbat Shalom.
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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