Empathy

Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. – Psychology Today

Empathy is key to creating a responsive, respectful, healthy home life, thriving communities, and a more peaceful world. For this reason, Family Hui will focus a series of posts on integrating empathy into family life. Everyone is wired from birth to be caring but it takes a consistent and mindful effort to make the empathetic response the parent and child’s auto-response.

Welcoming a new baby into the family is a joyful transition that can be both rewarding and challenging. Empathy for our newborns plays a crucial role in early emotional bonding between parent and child. Empathy for ourselves, and our partners, creates a more stable and nurturing environment for the whole family. Here are a few tips on how to integrate empathy into each day!

 

  • A precious time to integrate empathy is when we nurse or bottle feed our children. Gaze into your child’s eyes, notice the sounds they are making, experience the movements of their tiny hands. This presence is a gift of empathy to both parent and child. 
  • When we realize that our lives have changed drastically, with the joys and challenges of parenting, stop, breathe, and respond by giving yourself empathy. 
  • Every time we step outside of our own reactions to get behind the eyes and hearts of our children and partners we are modeling empathy and at the same time giving empathy.