Emotional Coaching Parenting and Empathy

For my Parenting class, I've been reading out of John Gottman's book "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child." It's a great book and I recommend to everyone- even if you are not a parent. It's good. Anyway, it focuses a great deal on expressing empathy towards you child. Empathy is different than sympathy because with sympathy, you are just feeling sorry for that person. With empathy, you are taking it a step further and trying to understand that person and share the feelings that the other person is having. When interacting with others and showing empathy rather than sympathy, they are more likely to feel connected to you. When we think of empathy, we think of only using it in a sad or difficult situation. However, we need to learn to use it in all situations. An example in the book talked about how a child’s day at school was. If parents try to dismiss conflict and less than ideal situations, the child will learn not to talk about their problems because Mom and Dad don’t want to deal with it. This is wrong. Parents need to share in their child’s joys and problems. Families will always have conflict. We need to listen to those conflicts and offer advice, especially when the child is young. If the child grows up not feeling comfortable talking about their problems, how can we expect our children to be able to talk about their problems with their parents when they’re older or even more importantly, their spouse? Asking how your child’s day at school was and only getting a simple response of “fine” is not good enough. Encourage your child to elaborate and feel comfortable telling how they felt at school. It’s important to teach your child that having sad feelings, or feelings of any kind for that matter, are okay. It is okay to have bad days. If you, as a parent, just dismiss their feelings, it will teach a child that having feelings is bad; feeling upset about something is bad. Again, this is not good for children to grow up believing. Showing empathy to your child allows the child to see you as an ally. Never dismiss a child’s feelings. They are unique and you must embrace that.

I just barely started reading the book but it is great so far. Hopefully I can remember this when I am a parent!