Today, our children live in a world where society pounds perfection into their heads. They are expected to specialize in one sport by age eight, master chess by age 10, take every AP class they can, get into the ivy league university, and more. The pressure is too high. As an English teacher, I’ve seen it countless times – students barreling into my office in tears because they simply cannot do it all anymore. I don’t blame them. But the one superpower that our society no longer feels necessary to teach our children is the most valuable asset in the entire world. And that my friends, is empathy.
Empathy is a superpower.
It has the ability to change the hearts of others everywhere. And daily, parents are given countless opportunities to instill empathy into our children. Either we can help them exhibit it or applaud them for doing so.
Just the other evening, our son was having a bit of a fit because he had to go to bed without a snack because he didn’t listen to what we instructed him to do. We provided him a consequence, and well, he didn’t like it. But while our son was yelling down the hall in his bedroom, I noticed our daughter. She sat at the kitchen table wearing her pajamas eating her bowl of pretzels. Her lips turned upside down and she shook her head at me.
“Mom,” she said. “Can I just give him one pretzel? He’s so sad.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” I responded. “But your brother didn’t follow the rules. So, no.”
She exhaled a heavy sigh and continued to eat her snack with a worried look on her face. Empathy, that’s what she was exhibiting. So, while I didn’t let her follow through on that {and it certainly killed me not to}, I let her know that she was doing such a good job of feeling for her big brother.
“You’re showing empathy,” I told her. “You caring for others when they are sad and wanting to take that sad away is empathy—and it’s so good to do that for others.”
No, my daughter didn’t do anything life-shattering. Kids do things like this all of the time. That’s part of why they’re so great. But it’s in small moments like this when our children act with compassion that we must applaud them. They must, they absolutely must, see that caring for others is equally, if not more important, than earning good grades. We want our children to grow into adults who are not only independent and successful, but adults who care, care about others, and care about our world.
Personally, I will push and challenge my children to always give their best in school and in their extracurricular activities. But I’ll never expect perfection. However, the one thing I will be a stickler on is kindness. I will insist, daily, that they grow into adults who care about others in their world, not just themselves. It will be difficult, I’m sure. But something that I will not bend on.
After having that conversation with my daughter at the kitchen table that evening, I got up to do the dishes. She noticed that I was busy and she slid out with her bowl of pretzels. She snuck into her brother’s dark room and smuggled in a handful of pretzels for him to eat in bed. Now, who could get mad at that? Not this empathetic mom, no way. She was, after all, showing me the greatest superpower of all… empathy.
