Essay On Empathy

Empathy is a recognized concept to a majority of people, but how does empathy relate to children? What should parents know about empathy to enhance their children’s development? How does a better sense of empathy guide our children to be more productive members of society? Empathy is denoted as having the capacities to represent, understand, and share another’s feelings. The term is often used interchangeably with sympathy and compassion, but it should be known that there are nuances in the words. Sympathy involves sharing a distressed feeling, like sorrow or worry, with another who is in anguish. Compassion, in a way, personifies empathy, as it involves the desire to relieve someone’s suffering. Parents generally promote all three of these

Even without knowledge of the precise definition of prosocial behavior, these charitable deeds are classically praised and rewarded in infants and children. This conditioning makes it difficult to trace prosocial behavior to an evolutionary (innate) or a learned/conditioned behavior promoted by adult caretakers. Most studies have seen the first traces of prosocial behavior in the second year of life with the actions of helping, sharing, etc. (Decety and Jackson 2004). Several theories propose answers to why prosocial behavior happens. The egoistic hypothesis suggests that helping behavior is motivated by self-benefits such as the reduction of negative emotions aroused by witnessing others in distress, avoiding punishment, or cultural acceptance and approval. An opposing thought, the empathy-altruism hypothesis, theorizes that empathetic concern felt for the person in need elicits altruistic behavior to help finalize a task. A child’s altruistic behavior is not easily explained. For example, a toddler assisting in household chores could be purely other-focused with an intention to help accomplish a task or could be a practice of role-taking in society where the child is focused on mastering a task thought to be valued in society (Davidov et. al. 2016). To reach prosperity in our species, the evolutionary need for

Innate emotional reactivity is a measurement of temperament where infants fall within a range of activity level, distractibility, regularity, adaptability, quality of mood, among other characteristics. As an infant develops, they will express more stability and differentiation in their responses when confronted with the distress of another. Socialization is a large part of development of a child and seems to be most stressed by parents through arranged playdates and daycares. Socialization is important in preparing humans to function in social life, and the agents of socialization include but are not limited to, parents and caretakers, schools, institutions, media, and cohorts. Socialization is generally how children learn the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate in their culture or society. Finally, the cognitive development of a child enables the individual to progress in levels of sophistication and empathizing capacities. From birth to one year of age, infants can interpret facial expressions as signs of emotional states, can differentiate others from their personal self-awareness, and possess a basic understanding of the mental states of others. From two to three, the development of language skills greatly improves the ability of children to empathize and express feelings and directed actions of helping are seen. Preschool age children use language to