Gratitude & Kindness by Dr. Carla Fry Read Free Book Online Page B

online presence. They feel that parenting is different now because of the impacts of social media. They can’t fall back on parenting truths that their parents relied on. They are often fearful of the time and focus their children spend on themselves and expose or advertise themselves on their social media pages.
    Parents see their children continually updating their status, following people they want to emulate, setting up profiles and photos that are all about themselves on various sites and social media apps. They observe that their children seem to be more easily prone to texting or messaging in insensitive ways and they wonder if their online behavior is bleeding through to real life behavior, further decreasing empathy with family and friends.
    Parents are mindful of the barriers to empathy in many of our youth’s modern social connections. Unfollowing and unfriending is easy online. The personal element can be removed so easily behind a screen. The awareness of how social media can impact empathy is one step in a movement towards buffering the negative elements that can come with its use. Children need us to be involved in their social media experience. It’s parents’ responsibility to educate ourselves because it is the first generation where children’s knowledge frequently outpaces that of their parents. Remember parents, one way to increase our children’s empathy is to utilize social media to help them to reach the masses for positive change. Many youth we see use social media to raise money for their sport teams, schools and causes that are dear to them. It can also be used as a platform to do good—and pay it forward.
    Parents consistently write into our website realparentinglab.com asking if it is “normal” that their adolescent does not show any empathy on a day-to-day basis. The answer: of course it isn’t.
    Empathy —the ability to feel for and consider the experience of the other —is a vital component in social situations and a step up the compassion ladder that leads to a positive action for others. When children are low on empathy, they are self-centred—sometimes almost completely so. The risk of children lacking empathy is a factor in becoming an adult who rarely considers the needs or feelings of others.
    Empathy is a very important social trait to nurture 20 :
It makes people kinder.
It reduces prejudice and racism.
It makes for better marriages and friendships.
It reduces bullying.
It is effective in the workplace.
    On every level, it is crucial that your child learns how to be empathic. Without empathy the connections in their lives will likely be fleeting and unsatisfying.
    There are many empathy training programs available, but here are a couple of brief ideas to get you started:
    You can promote empathy in your child by:
Reading fiction and encouraging them to get into the mind or experiences of the characters.
Watching movies on mute and having each family member take turns guessing what a character is thinking or feeling.
Going out and about on field trip to watch people from a distance and guess their feelings and thoughts based on body language.
Doing service work together in which your children can see the difference they make (reading to under-privileged children, delivering food bank baskets to needy families, etc.) and then discussing the experiences.
Sharing with your children the small and large things you do for those around you, and talking about how you feel about it.
    Exercise: The Family Currency
    Do you know what your family currency might be? This kind of currency generally does not have anything to do with money. It is simply the actions and efforts that have agreed-upon value within your family. Every family has some sort of currency, whether it is fairness, service, food, kindness for others, effort toward family values, or something else.
    We would like you to think about what your family considers useful in trade with each other, and how valuable these things