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Candidates for President, preachers, educators and radio psychologists all decry the importance of teaching values. Caring for others is a worthy value but can it be taught? Yes and it starts with relationship.
Empathy, the capacity to feel what another feels, depends upon adequate attachments throughout life but especially in the first few years. Because of this, connecting with your children from the time they are born is crucial. When empathy is modeled, that is when you seek to feel what your child feels, they learn to do that with others.
By age two or three it is helpful to explain how your child’s behavior affects others. Look for the natural opportunities to talk about how one person’s actions may produce feelings in the other. This allows children to practice deciphering other people’s feelings. It also teaches them that a causal link exists between their actions and the feelings of others. By age three or four it is a good idea to introduce the Golden Rule. This code of conduct is a foundation of many world religions and can be memorized through song or repetition.
Beware that children don’t become so pre-occupied with the feelings that they lose the ability to attend to their own. Phrases like “I feel sad…” rather than “You made me sad…” go along way in helping children to see the link between their actions and others feelings without blurring boundaries. In the early stages of moral development the parent’s approval (or avoidance of disapproval) serves as a powerful motivator for acceptable behavior. However, in time, all parents hope their children will incorporate those expectations without having to be told. When you ask your child to consider what the other person is feeling you are implying that this inner determination will one day substitute for your approval (or disapproval.)
Videos and books like “The Book of Virtues” series by William Bennett’s are a useful tool that is neutral. Tell your children stories about acts of caring and compassion you witness. And provide children with the opportunity to care for living things. Teach your child to care for a plant. Let them see that forgetting to water it causes it to droop and watering can restore it. Later teach them to care for a pet. These can be precious opportunities for learning to care.
If you live close to family let your children see you caring for others in your family. If you do not live close to family help your young children write letters to relatives and put pictures of family around the house. Encourage your children to participate in choosing gifts for their parent’s birthday or for family at Christmas. Remember caring for others depends upon the establishing and maintaining relationships. Make certain they know who they are related to and what this means.
The habits we cultivate in childhood stay with us. So try to make serving others a habit. Set aside time as a family to serve at a soup kitchen, bring them with you when you donate clothes or used things to charity. When they are older encourage them to do some sort of service work in your community and consider rolling up your sleeves to join them. You can tell a great deal about what people really value by how they spend their time and money. Provide your children good examples of how you spend both.
Sustained attention, appropriate to a child’s stage of development allows a caring attitude to unfold naturally. And those who develop a capacity to care may find themselves as adults among the ones most cared for by others.
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