Empathy Podcast 040323

In this Fireside Chat on the Young Mind, Alexandra Dutton and Liz Nolasco discuss the importance of teaching empathy to young children. They challenge the belief that young children are too egocentric to be empathetic and highlight the benefits of empathy for building relationships and considering the needs of others. They reference the Handbook of Moral Development, which emphasizes the role of social interactions in empathy development. They also discuss the stages of moral development in young children, starting with understanding caring in the first six months and progressing to understanding the impact of their actions on others' welfare. They acknowledge that toddler behaviors like hitting and toy taking are part of the learning process and suggest a constructivist approach to teach empathy. Hello everyone and welcome to Fireside Chat on the Young Mind brought to you by Old Firehouse School. My name is Alexandra Dutton and I am going to talk to Liz Nolasco today about empathy and the necessity and importance of teaching empathy with our youngest children. Now, I remember going to school, all those many years ago, and we learned about how children that are really young can't be empathetic, that they are too egocentric, they are too focused on their own perspective. So it just was something that was not necessary or possible to teach because they just couldn't do it. And we know that now to be wrong. And Liz is going to talk a lot about what empathy development looks like in really young children and we'll talk also about how to help children develop empathy. And the reason, of course, that this is important is because when someone can take the perspective of another feeling or point of view, they are going to have better relationships in the future. They will have better interactions with people just in general. And also, this needs to be a foundational piece of our democracy and how we are able to consider the needs of many, not just what's good for us, which clearly some people who are in their adult years still need to work on, right, Liz? It's certainly an ongoing emergence. Yes. Just a few moments ago, Liz was sharing with me this new book that talks about empathy development. Liz, tell me about it. Yes. So the Handbook of Moral Development was one that I leaned heavily on. My own master's work was really focused on how children develop compassion for others. And that was Crest Species. My work itself was actually focused on what's called humane education, which is children learning how to care for animals and through that developing empathy and compassion for all living things, basically. In the newest Handbook of Moral Development, which actually just came out last year, they added a whole new section, which is on the early years, which it didn't previously focus on. It was previously school age through adulthood, because moral development is an ongoing process. So usually when we think about very young children, the word morality doesn't really come to mind. And I'm sure that between all of the ways we see toddlers not always able to act with the community in mind, that is possibly why it's not studied as much. Exactly. And to quote the late, great Dan Hodgins, we need to be cautious of making a moral issue out of a developmental one, which I think was really the heart of this one article that I'm going to rely really heavily on, called Four Phases of Construction through Social Interactions in Early Moral Development, which is a really long title. And Alex, I can drop the link to the book for the notes afterwards also. But there is, like you said, this assumption, this understanding that young children can only really think about and understand themselves, and they don't really get how their actions impact other people. And I think we're really selling them short when we assume that that's the case. I think that there's a lot of things that toddlers or young children do that look like, OK, clearly, if that child grabbed that other kid's toy, there's this assumption that, like, well, they didn't see why that was not the right thing to do. And again, it's going back to the idea that because kids are egocentric, like, I wanted the toy, so I took the toy, but that doesn't mean we can't teach why they shouldn't do that or that there are other ways or that it's, yeah, like you said, it's just developmental. And that is some of how they do learn about empathy development. I think that was a fascinating piece is a lot of the behaviors that we don't always enjoy from younger children are actually necessary because otherwise, they're not going to learn why sharing is important or how their actions impact others. That's where the social constructors perspective becomes really important. I know that's how we work at old fire hospitals, just teaching children jointly, right? It's through our interactions with those children that they learn the most. And so understanding that this interplay between what they can comprehend, their desire to be empathetic, their desire to care about other people, and also their level of executive functioning, specifically that impulse control, really interacts. And I think that impulse control piece is where, exactly like you said, right, we find it hard to see what their grander intentions can be when they can't not take the truck that's right there because they want the truck that's right there. Like old firehouse school, this all really starts with those attachment relationships, the warm, caring relationships with their parents, with their caregivers, with everyone who interacts with them from the time they are born, just understanding that they will get their needs met. And that's what people do. People meet the needs of other people. People are warm, people are responsive, people are caring, and people notice what other people need. And just starting off with that framework from our very little babies is really important in setting them up to be empathetic people as they get older. So as both of us have clearly written our master's theses on emotion development and empathy and compassion, because I did something similar to you, though I did it before this handbook came out, I really want to hear about what the stages are in the preschool year. Developmentally, what's going to be things that we are going to see and how is that moving them towards empathy or moral development? So the first observable piece of moral development is within those first six months, children just begin to understand the concept of caring, right? Children internalize the way they're tended to. They understand, oh, if I cry, hopefully someone will come get me. They understand being treated gently versus being treated roughly. They understand being spoken to and being interacted with in the times that they want to and at times they don't want to. Right. They understand being tickled when they don't want to be tickled or being interacted with in rough ways as well. And they're just sorting out how to be treated and laying the framework for how they will later treat other people. So that just sounds like attachment and attunement, especially where the children are learning from the adults that are taking care of them. And hopefully the adults can also attune to the child's needs in order to help the child learn to read cues, I guess, or even to be able to receive care. Exactly. And I thought what was interesting in this chapter was the authors talk about by around one or two months, children show distress, which they call a precursor of anger. So they have that capacity to really respond to other people. And because they can show that distress, it also seems to indicate that they can read that in other people, that frustration, that anger. And also, I should throw in here that 30 percent figure, because I know as a parent, I look at this and I go, oh, my God, am I always attuned to my child? Secure attachment only needs those warm, appropriate, exactly spot on responses 30 percent of the time. You're probably doing great. That's such a relief, the 30 percent, I love that. OK, so that's in the first six months. And so what happens next? So after that, they move from the caring stage into affecting, acting in ways that will impact others' welfare. So this is toddler-ish. So starting six-ish, 18-ish months, this is when they start to understand that their actions impact others on an emotional level or on a moral level. If you're speaking or thinking on a very basic, I take that person's lunch, they don't have lunch anymore kind of thing. But really, they're learning how to interact socially and they're experimenting. A lot of this stage is those toddler behaviors that we think of and kind of cringe. It's the hitting, it's the toy taking, it's the pulling hair and biting because they're learning and experimenting and figuring out, huh, what does this do? Right, Alex, you and I were talking before and you said, OK, well, she cries when I pull her hair. Will he cry when I pull his hair? And just that toddler is scientist's perspective on how do I impact the world around me? What happens when I do this? What happens when I smile at you and I ask for something instead of stomping my foot and screaming for it, you know? And I think that what we were talking about, too, was it's not just like the one time they pull somebody's hair and that child screams that they're going to be like, oh, I have learned something and now I am done. Like, nope, I wonder if it's going to happen tomorrow with that same person or I wonder if it's going to happen with a different person three days from now. And so it it can be really frustrating. But if we look at it as this child just trying to understand how to interact with others and how they affect others, it helps teachers, parents, any adults interacting with these young children. They're not trying to cause harm. They're actually just trying to understand how what they do has this reaction or this effect on somebody else. And it's not that we have to just let them go ahead and do everything, but that's how they're going to learn, like, oh, I shouldn't pull someone's hair or I shouldn't keep throwing my food on the floor, whatever it is. Right. And this is where that constructivist approach helps, right? We still approach the child who's hitting or throwing or whatever with care and with empathy and demonstrating still how we treat other people and moving towards, oh, that hurt when you pulled her hair when you wanted to touch it, let's practice touching it gently and just working on finding ways to meet those needs or interests of the child right without punishing, without giving it this oversized reaction that's going to guarantee it keeps happening. They're learning a different lesson, which is, oh, adults are really interesting when I hit. Yeah, that is a good, good point, too, because you definitely see that when a child, whether they fall down or they throw a toy or something like they will look, they will reference the adult in the room is like, so what do you what do you think about what just happened? And some of the time we're redirecting that child to you pulled his hair and now he's crying. And so I don't want you to look at me. I want you to look at this child. And so those are ways that we're helping them see and learn, in addition to teaching them hopefully other ways to get these needs met of learning their impact on others. Exactly. And just keeping it at that factual level without adding shame to it, because they are instinctually going to feel a little bit of guilt, a little bit of shame when they realize that they've done something to hurt somebody else. I think this is where we are also introducing a lot of emotional words to children. We're both helping them see like, oh, she's sad because you bumped her with your bike or because you took her blankie away. We're giving them words to these emotions, but also for yourself of like, oh, you were frustrated because he took your lovey away or because she is sitting where you want to sit. We're trying to name so many things for them so that they can start to feel and understand what it is that they're feeling and hopefully start to recognize it in others as well. Exactly. When they can name and maintain it right, so they can understand what they're feeling. And it's not that pure impulse anymore. They can start to have that metacognition of I'm really angry and I can do something else about it. Yes. Yes. Or she's really angry and I don't like when she's really angry. That makes me feel nervous, makes me feel sad, makes me feel whatever. And so I want to stop doing that because I don't like how I feel when I see somebody else feeling another emotion that is uncomfortable for me. This is all stuff that they're kind of doing before two years old and also obviously through the two years old year. So the two year old year and lower, they're doing a lot of experimenting and seeing how they're impacting others. So what's the next step? Yes. So after that, they start to go into what's called promoting others' welfare. So that's actually when they conscientiously begin to help other people make them feel better. So the broccoli goldfish experiment was something that was done by Dr. Allison Gopnik in UC Berkeley. And I think it was with three year old where he was testing to figure out at what point do children understand perspective? And she would have a bunch of broccoli and a bunch of goldfish. And the investigator or the experimenter would be with the child and eat the broccoli and go, I love broccoli so much. Yummy, yummy, yummy. And then later the child would be asked, OK, she's hungry. What do you want to give her? And depending on the age of the child, if it was a child that was like one or maybe 18 months, they would give you the goldfish because they like goldfish. And so you must also like goldfish. And it didn't matter necessarily what you saw about the person really liking broccoli. But when they got to about two and a half, three is when they could make that thing of like, well, I like goldfish, but she likes broccoli. So I'm going to give her the broccoli. Exactly. I think if I remember, it was 14 months they couldn't. And I think actually 18 months, the majority of the children were able to pick out the broccoli instead of the goldfish. Oh, wow. OK, well, I think you're more up to date with that than I am, because I clearly forgot the ages. But that's amazing. So like even younger, they're able to understand the perspective. Exactly. And they want to make other people happy. I think that's another important thing that kind of gets missed sometimes. We're in the thick of spending time with those toddlers who can push every button that we have, remembering that they actually want to make people happy. They want to do the thing that we want them to do, except for when it interferes with a more immediate desire sometimes. But they really want to make people happy. And so this is kind of where you can start to see that change from empathy development to moral development. It's not purely moral at this point. So it's really just understanding what other people want. But the general sense in this time that children can come away with is all things be equal doesn't make me any worse off. It's definitely better to make other people happy than unhappy. Kind of successful completion of the promoting stage. And then once they kind of understand that, so now they're like preschool age, they're three-ish, four-ish years old. And so once they're in that preschool age, three and a half, four, this is when they start to decide on their own that everyone should worry about other people. Everyone should make everybody else feel better. Right. This is where we start to see some of that real genuine generosity in a lot of ways. And the caring about other people and making a conscientious decision, because they also have that executive function, because hopefully they've had those warm responses, caregivers this whole time, to really be able to understand what another person wants or needs and want to give it to them. And also at the same time, they also see some judgment of, well, you should have been nicer to her or you should have done that for him. This makes me think of how in the four-year-old year is when we have so many projects that sometimes focus on helping the community, where we've had projects when there was like a big fire up in Sonoma or up in Northern California and we raised money for the firefighters. Or when there was, I remember the earthquake in Haiti, we collected shoes for Haitian children and a lot of it was led by the children's need to make things feel fair for other people. And so that's like the lovely side of it, of the fairness and compassion for others. And then the flip side is it also means that everyone's tattling on each other because they're like, oh, she's not sitting where she's supposed to sit or he didn't give the toy when I asked him nicely. And it's like, well, I'm glad that we're all working to make things more fair. And sometimes, again, there's that flip side of understanding why this is happening can maybe help with the ways that we as adults are going to feel about how it looks with different children. Right. And this is also where adding some nuance to the good guy, bad guy narrative is really important. You can't just say, oh, well, bad guys do that because, well, then that kind of calls into question, wait, am I just a bad guy? Do I lack the capacity to be good? So bringing in that nuance, even when kids are really little, is important to helping them understand, oh, you know, that person made a bad decision. I made a bad decision just now. I can fix it. I can make it better. I'm not bad. That decision I made just now wasn't great. That's so important for children to learn that people can change or they can change even if they did something wrong, that there is this restorative justice aspect to how we help children talk about what can you do to help him feel better? What can we do? So this doesn't happen again, really helping the children understand like you made a bad choice, whether it was on purpose or a mistake is not really what we're looking for. But just you made a bad choice. Let's make it better. Let's help get things back on track and and let's try to learn from this experience. And they do start to really parrot those words about this age where they automatically understand I have to make this better. And if you've been with teachers at Oldsbury House School or other schools or families that really understand this, that sometimes just saying sorry doesn't cut it, but helping the children see when you did this, this had this impact. So now you need to figure out how to fix it can help the children go deeper than just the surface. I'm sorry. And what does that mean? And it's not that I'm sorry is bad, but is a child able to do something about the situation rather than just say, I'm sorry, and then move on? And so that's, I think, a little bit of where we're having to teach that empathy and that moral development aspect more than just saying the words. Exactly. When you give the I'm sorry, it's kind of a get out of examining your actions free card. It really impairs the children. It keeps them from being able to really think about their impact on the world and keeps them from being able to think about when they're upset with somebody. It just reinforces that black and white thinking in a way. It prevents them from empathizing with someone who might have hurt them intentionally or unintentionally as well. Yeah. Well, this was really fascinating. And the other thing that you said that I thought was so important was that a lot of these goals or stages of moral development actually align with the goals of anti-bias education. Exactly. When we're looking at sending our preschoolers off into the world as not just future kindergartners, but citizens participating in the world, we want to really keep encouraging that development through our anti-bias activities, through these anti-bias goals that align really beautifully with this development of empathy just on a macro scale. So to get to some practical or specific things of developing empathy, again, going back a little bit to when people thought children couldn't develop empathy, that was before people were really able to see and look that children are able to develop empathy, especially and most importantly, when they're in relationships with others. Like Liz said, children want to please. They want to make people happy. They prefer that. And so if they have a connection with a primary caregiver, with a parent, with a teacher, then they will start learning how to think about what other people need. And we've all seen it in the classroom. One of the things that I had written about in my paper when I was working on empathy with 18-month-olds was that the child who saw a friend who was upset knew to bring the friend's teddy bear to that child rather than their own teddy bear, which was kind of the assumption that the child who was trying to help would bring, here's what makes me feel better, and it's going to make you feel better too. And we've all seen really sweet stories, I'm sure, where toddlers are trying to hand their parents who are upset or tired their own teddy bears, but also children can get past that and go beyond that. But that initial want is there to try to make someone feel better and try to connect with them. And then as they get older, they can think even more long-term about how to make people feel happy. We have this really sweet story where one of our teachers was sharing with the children how excited she was because her son is engaged. And one of our preschoolers went home and had a ring that she got from some dress-up thing. And she, the next day, brought the ring back to give to that teacher and say, here you go, you can use this for your son's wedding. That was really like a multi-hour day process and how she was thinking about that. So when children have a connection and that relationship with someone, and they can learn how to extend that feeling to just people in their classroom, people in their community, that's when they are developing this feeling of compassion and empathy and this moral development is so important. Yeah. And when we take that restorative justice angle, when a child hurts another, we can have these really powerful moments. I remember at one time I had a group of mostly three-year-olds and one of them smacked another one to take a toy that the other child had. And the child who was hit started crying and I first focused on the child crying, but oh, man, what do you think the child who hit you was trying to tell you? And the child said, I think he's telling me he doesn't love me. And the first child went, what? He absolutely, face-up, he totally goes, I just wanted the truck. And pretty, the child never hit again because he just had this moment of, wait a minute, I thought I was trying to say it all. I just wanted this toy. What do you mean I don't love you? And just allowing children that opportunity to connect with each other in that way and kind of opening the door for this conversation between them to really get their intentions across and the way it impacted another person. Obviously, three and four-year-olds are able to communicate like that much more easily than one and two-year-olds, but just setting the stage for those conversations to take place and modeling for those younger children. Oh, wow, you really wanted the ball, but you hurt her when you were trying to get the ball. Making sure she has that and finding something different just lays the groundwork for those conversations and for children to be able to understand how they impact others. And you don't have to wait until a moment happens to teach this. Hopefully, you're reading books or you're watching a show or you're doing something where you can also point out, oh, look at her face. What happened when she lost her Nuffle Bunny? What happened to her? How did she feel about that? There's so many different ways that we as adults can decide we're going to help children learn about emotions, help learn how emotions can be changed and shifted over time through sometimes the impact of others, and help that child just start to see in the world this happens all the time, that people feel good, people don't feel good. It can be impacted by me, by another person, and just pointing that out. Different teachers have done things like even just having a kindness jar in the classroom or families might have a kindness tree around the holidays of whenever you do nice things, we'll write it up and we'll put it on there. And even if it's not something that I did, I'm still learning about how to treat others through watching and talking about the actions of others. So that will all build up into hopefully children understanding their emotions, how their emotions impact others, how their actions impact others, and to also feel that other people have perspectives that I might not have, and I can try to understand or try to be compassionate with them and understand that it's not just all about what I want. I have to also consider the needs of others around me. And also feeling free to challenge books and TV shows or any other media that you're consuming with children that paint a character as a one-dimensional bully or mean person, offering that perspective, again, of nobody's black and white. Nobody is all mean to other people. Trying to figure out, practicing taking that other person's perspective. Oh, I wonder what they want when they're doing this, instead of just sticking with that easy black and white label. Oh, yeah, that's a fascinating thing. And I think that as children, of course, get older, a little bit after preschool, they start to encounter characters in books and shows that will already challenge that. If you can start that conversation with them when they're younger, but when they get older, it is so much more fascinating for them to see and understand how characters are not one-dimensional. Everybody has a motivation. And whether you're a fictional character or the other child in the class that has a hard time listening to the teacher, children can start to see, like, oh, well, I know it's because this, or because he's still learning how to do this, or she's still learning how to do that. And then you're hopefully able to take these lessons and be more compassionate and empathetic to others. Exactly, yeah. Well, I think this was a lot for people to think about. And I'm so glad that you even helped me learn new things about empathy. This was really fun, Liz. Thanks so much for sharing all of this with us. And empathy is so important because we want our children to grow up to think about other people and help our world be a better, safer, happier place. So it starts when they're this young. And that's one of the things that we focus on at our school. We hope you can do that and join us in helping create a better world for our future children. Thanks, Liz, for being here. Thank you, Alex. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts. You can follow us on basically all the socials, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.