As a former middle school teacher, I have spent hours in the classroom.  Those hours have all been leading the class.  I have taught fourth, fifth, and sixth grade.  I have substituted for seventh and eighth grades.  I love this middle school age group of eleven-to-thirteen.  (As a teacher, I mean.  As a parent, I find working with my own boys much more challenging!)  Read more »

The recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, with its images of people and bodies being pulled from the rubble, has spurred a lot of hard (and good) conversations in our family about what we can do to help. My middle son, who’s impulsive and outgoing, wanted to rush there to rescue people “right away,” and has been scouring the house for change to bring to his school to add to their fundraising pot. My 7-year-old daughter, who is the first one ready in the morning and is organized to a fault, is helping her class to raise money for specific supplies. (And my teenager isn’t really involved in helping, because, let’s face it, he’s a teenager and not the most empathetic person on the planet right now! Still, we’ve had some good conversations about what it means to go through a natural disaster and have no food or shelter.)

The whole experience, while difficult and sad, has been important for my kids because it brings home the necessity of empathy in a child’s life—the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and really ask the question, “How would I feel? What would I want people to do for me in the same situation?”

In my mind, empathy is probably the most difficult, yet the most vital quality a child can possess. While no one can always be kind and empathic, I think it’s important to teach your child that empathy is a trait that your family values from an early age.

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I think one of the most important things to introduce to our kids is the idea of empathy. Empathy says you should visit people when they’re sick in hospitals. Empathy says that we should want to feed the hungry. Certainly over the last 15 or 20 years, for a vast majority of the population, this quality has been lost or clouded over by other things. I think over the next couple of years, with the sharing of the pain that we’re going to feel nationally, you’re also going to see an elevated sense of empathy.  People are going to know what it’s like for the people who have nothing, because now many are going to have less.

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It wasn’t until my son came home from middle school one day with a story about witnessing some kids bullying a boy with disabilities that I was forced to take a long, hard look about what I was teaching my kids about empathy. Sure, I was aware of the importance of empathy: the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, promoting kindness, teaching tolerance. But this situation had me wondering: How exactly am I promoting empathy at home so that my kids can then do the same at school or in social situations?

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