Evie's Creating Calm Counselling

At GGLPS my counselling focus is on supporting students and families to flourish by fostering positive mental health and wellbeing through individual, small group, and family counselling.  We provide pro-active programs which provide skills and strategies for self-care, maintaining positive relationships, positive learning behaviours, belonging, and strong connections with family and community. 

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand how another person is feeling. It is about stepping into another person’s shoes, taking on another’s perspective, and understanding what someone is feeling. Empathy is important as it enables us to understand why people behave in certain ways and to make connections with others. It fosters tolerance and acceptance of other people.

Here are some ways to develop empathy in children:

1. Help your child learn about their own emotions by identifying and expressing feelings. Talk about feelings. Try to resist the urge to categorise feelings as “good” or “bad”. When a child is experiencing uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, sadness, or jealousy, acknowledge their feelings but resist the temptation to make these feelings go away. Help them label their feeling, this will help to build their emotional vocabulary.
2. Use stories/books and television/movies to teach your child about the feelings of others. Help them to identify feelings experienced by characters. Children can become Emotion Detectives by using their eyes and ears to look for facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. There is a wide array of books that can be used – talk about what the character is feeling and the events that made them feel that way. Encourage children to think about times they were also feeling the way the character was.
3. Play is a great way for children to learn about how to take on the perspective of another. In particular, role-play helps children to construct an imaginary world that helps them to express their emotions. Whether it be dress-ups, outdoor play, painting, drawing, music, pretend play, or puppets and toys, play helps children to externalise what they are feeling and experiment with new ways of doing things.
4. Role model empathy. Share with your child your feelings in different situations and how you would deal with the situation. Children also learn from those they admire and imitate their behaviours. Talk with your child about people they admire and the different feelings they have seen these people display.

Evie Donoghue

School Counsellor