As a recovering people pleaser and empathetic person, this is something that I’ve been thinking about lately. How do I teach my own boys and help my students to begin to have empathy for others, while also staying true to themselves?
When I was pregnant with each of my boys, I would pray (and still do now), that they would be kind, empathetic, helpful, loving, quietly confident, and know their worth. And also…that they wouldn’t let anyone take advantage or push them around.
When I think about a lot of the general practices out there about for helping kids understand the consequences of their actions, oftentimes the conversations revolve around shaming the offender for hurting someone’s feelings, rather than on listening to all sides and helping everyone to understand how each person feels. You see, when we condition kids to learn that hurting someone’s feelings is wrong or bad, rather than focusing on understanding another person’s point of view, we are laying the foundation to generalize that idea, which in my opinion, helps them grow up to be people pleasers.
I don’t want my boys to grow up thinking that they have to comply with every direction from every adult or never hurt another person’s feelings because sometimes other people won’t have their best interest at heart. Sometimes doing what’s right for yourself means another person’s feelings get hurt in the process. I also don’t want them to be disrespectful, either. It’s like my Papa used to say “You aren’t better than anyone else, but no one else is better than you, either.” It’s definitely a slippery slope, but here’s how we’re trying to navigate it here at home:
1) We don’t force our boys to share. No one has to give something up to someone else until they are ready. We remind our boys to ask “Can I have a turn when you are done?”, which helps them to learn to advocate for what they want and also learn how to be in charge of when they decide they are ready.
2) We try to respond to arguments with “I can see you are both (or sometimes all if it involves all three of them) upset. How can I help?” This way no one feels defensive or is made out to be the one who is wrong.
3) We try to catch the moments when they are being empathetic and kind in order to point those out. We also point out when they advocate for themself and praise them for that, too.
We certainly don’t have it all figured out, but we are definitely trying to help them learn the balance as they grow.
The Purposeful Classroom 