Lisa Paolino
S-R Parents Council
January 29, 2007
Are kids who learn empathy for others less likely to carry out rash, violent acts?
About a month ago, I was working out at the gym when the breaking news came on the television about the high school shooting in Tacoma. It made us all stop and listen. An older gentleman struck up a conversation about the problems with "kids today." He asked what happened to a simple fist fight. His point of view was that kids today are not taught values.
How do we teach values to our children? Unfortunately, there are no precise guidelines.
Melissa Pittz, an elementary school social worker in the Mead School District, says she sees that children are growing up in a culture of high expectations which can easily develop into a sense of entitlement (her own children included). She notices that children sometimes internalize negative values, such as winning at all costs, and strive for popularity and status. Kids have a great deal of pressure placed on them by their parents to exceed, whether academically or extracurricular.
This is why she feels that this type of behavior can be damaging. Pittz says that children who are from affluent families, who have everything given to them and who have everything done for them, learn no sense of self. These kids, she says, are those most likely to suffer from depression.
"At an elementary level, the way to counteract the sense of entitlement is to give children the opportunities to solve their own problems, with guidance, and to be exposed to others that are different than themselves and to develop empathy," she says.
She gives examples such as helping with food drives and raising money for a cause the child could get involved in.
A member of The Spokesman-Review Parents Council also agrees with teaching empathy. Dora-Faye Hendricks writes, "Having empathy for others is known for making a big difference between kids who grow up to be caring individuals. It needs to be nurtured very early in our children's lives."
An important way to learn values is by modeling. What children see every day at home will help shape their values. Parents who try to give their children everything by pushing them to be the smartest, get the best grades and excel in sports are missing the basics of simply sitting around together and talking. In her book "The Price of Privilege," author Madeline Levine writes: "While demands for outstanding academic or extracurricular performance are very high, expectations about family responsibilities are amazingly low. This kind of imbalance in expectations results in kids who regularly expect others to take up the slack, rather than learning how to prioritize tasks or how to manage time."
Pittz says that while schools are teaching values, these lessons are limited. Parents need to understand that schools are required to teach academics, she says. Yet in schools, character traits are taught throughout. For example, a teacher may be asking about stealing. Students reply that they did not steal. The teacher poses another question. But did you stop another student from stealing?
Schools are one venue to learn values, yet the ultimate responsibility falls on the parents. They should teach their children what is right and wrong, good and bad. They should provide children with opportunities to make their own decisions and to grow from those decisions. In these conditions, it is not a downfall for a parent when a child fails. The failure is not letting them try.
