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Empathy
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and experiencing the same feelings as that person
Take it further
Emotions matter. Emotions influence our decision making and color our relationships. Research shows that children who develop emotional intelligence skills are kinder, happier, healthier, and more successful. Help your child develop emotional intelligence by playing another round of our feeling words game.
Conversation starters:
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Ask your child if they have ever experienced empathy — that is, if they’ve felt the same way someone else feels even though they aren’t having the same experience.
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Ask your child to imagine how the world would look and feel if people overall were more empathetic of one another. What would be different in your classroom? Your school? Your home? Your neighborhood and community? The world?
Activities:
Both you and your child think about a time when they did something very different because of feeling empathy for someone in the family. Each jot down the feeling you felt, then trade papers. See if you can guess what the situation was based on the feelings you wrote down.
Ask your child think of about one person they know right now who may be a little sad or feeling isolated from others. If they were feeling empathic with that person, what would they do for them or say so that person felt understood?
Someone is designing an “Empathy Museum!” What kinds of exhibits and activities would you include in that museum, if you were the designer, to increase empathy in human relationships?
Book lists:
Explore stories about empathy in our feeling word book lists:
Watch more Do you feel me? videos and learn more about emotions.
Read more about the Feeling Words Curriculum.
Have some fun with feeling words with our Mad-Sad-Glad Libs.
Read more about the Feeling Words Curriculum.
Have some fun with feeling words with our Mad-Sad-Glad Libs.
