Today’s Lesson, Empathy

Today in class the kids were playing tag outside. One of the boys went to tag one of the girls he was chasing and out of excitement tagged her a bit to hard causing her to plunge face forward. Needless to say, the fall was followed by an extremely loud scream that turned into a weeping cry. All the kids in the class came running toward the girl who had fallen.

Now the boy who tagged her, who is one of the kindest kids, put his head down with shame. His intention was not to cause her to fall, it was to tag her out. He walked away and covered his face and started to cry. None of the kids saw this, they only saw the child who was physically hurt but not the one who was mentally hurt. The one who was feeling the same pain on the inside. My heart went out to both kids. Neither one did anything wrong, sometimes when we play we get hurt….. This is a hard lesson to teach and even harder for little ones to understand.

I went over and took the hand of the boy who was crying and walked him toward the girl who had fallen. I told the boy how proud I was of him for having tears, he looked at me like I was crazy. I told him that his tears showed me he cared and that his heart was showing feelings. We talked about empathy, feeling emotions when another person is sad. I told him he could have run off and played and not cared the girl fell, but because he had a strong heart he cared.

Can we teach empathy? Or can we help our kids recognize it when their heart is feeling different emotions?

We need to remind our children to be in touch with all types of feelings. Not only their own but the feelings of others. Yes, it was wonderful the kids ran to make sure the girl who fell was ok, but the boy who was also crying needed a friend too.