FAML 430 Week 9

 

  1. Perron (2019) The Impact of Visual Storytelling in Nonprofit MarketingLinks to an external site.
  2. 11 Infographics About InfographicsLinks to an external site. (scan only)
  3. The 16 best infographic makers in 2021Links to an external site. (scan only)
  4. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/visual-data-communication.html

Empathy

Over the last few weeks, the topic of empathy has come up in your readings, exam responses, and many of your group discussions as we have learned about the importance of truly understanding the people that we are trying to serve in our community. Empathy is a common term used in the mental health field.  When describing this to my clients, I describe empathy as the ability to see and understand another person’s world or experience without getting lost in it.  An important step in both couples and family therapy is helping each individual to understand and express empathy when communicating. There are a variety of interventions you can use when teaching empathy depending on the individual, but my thoughts this week have turned to how we can help children and youth develop empathy.

One of the best ways we can help children develop empathy is through emotion coaching. Children do understand that they are experiencing different emotions, but they often do not have labels for what they are experiencing or know how to appropriately express what they are feeling internally.  This is why it is important that we help children find words to identify and express their emotional experience. For those of you who are interested more in this topic, I would recommend Dr. Gottman's book "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child." It will give you several ideas and interventions for helping the children in your life with their emotional awareness and expression as well as the development of empathy.  Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“I call the parents who get involved with their children’s feelings “Emotion Coaches. Much like athletic coaches, they teach their children strategies to deal with life’s ups and downs. They don’t object to their children’s displays of anger, sadness, or fear. Nor do they ignore them. Instead, they accept negative emotions as a fact of life and allow them to build closer relationships with them.  All feelings are permissible; not all behavior is permissible. It helps to remember that the goal of Emotion Coaching is to explore and understand emotions, not to suppress them. It may be easier in the short run to dismiss your child’s negativity, ignore it, and hope that it will take care of itself. In contrast, the rewards of parenting come from being attentive to our children’s feelings. It is impossible to accept and validate a child’s emotion at the same time you wish it would just go away. Acceptance and validation come instead from empathy—that is, feeling what your child is feeling in the moment.”

He goes on to share steps for emotion coaching with children that include:

  1. Become aware of the child’s emotion.
  2. Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for closeness and teaching.
  3. Validate the child’s feelings.
  4. Help the child find words to label the emotion he/she is having.
  5. Set appropriate limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand.

Lastly, as was discussed in some of your group discussions last week after looking at the data, we are seeing an increase in bullying/cyber-bullying amongst our youth. While there is no magic solution to end unkindness or bullying, by helping our children understand empathy we can certainly decrease the problem. Bullying can be a difficult subject for many individuals and the effects of bullying can last long into adulthood.  With that in mind, I thought I would share this powerful Mormon Message on bullying accompanied by the wise counsel of President Uchtdorf.  I would encourage each of you to take the time to watch or re-watch this and perhaps share it with the youth in your life.  It can be a great starting point for a discussion on empathy.

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