Parenting: Raising Kids Who Care

The best way to teach empathy to toddlers is to practice it in the home. If you and your spouse are empathetic, your child will have a better chance of developing empathy because it becomes the environment in which they are raised. It also becomes the behavior that is modeled for them. At toddler ages, children are looking for role models and they learn by copying. If you or your spouse is a tyrant, they will learn to be a tyrant — or a victim. If you or your spouse is empathetic, they will learn to be empathetic and to expect it as normal behavior.

In addition, you can emphasize empathetic behavior in others by discussing it or simply repeating what you see that is empathetic behavior to your toddler. For instance, you can say, “It wasn’t very understanding of Jimmy to hit Suzy because he was tired and cranky. A more understanding thing to do would be to say, ‘I’m cranky,’ and walk away instead of hitting her.” That’s a way of teaching lack of empathy. Another way would be to say, “It was very generous of Britney to share her cookies with Tommy because she knows he likes cookies and she had two.”.