Teaching (SEL) social and emotional learning enhances empathy in children. Sharing kindnesses stimulates their emotional brains to experience caring, loving, helpful, nice and their innate goodness to mention just a few. Empathy is lacking today for differences and inequalities. Our children spend much time on their technology toys with interaction and connection at a minimum. With the pandemic this has actually become an even more serious problem and it is up to parents and caregivers to provide more connection and interaction. Consequently, our children are suffering and this is one of the reasons. As humans, connection is tantamount in our development and survival.
Social and Emotional Learning Needs To Be A Parenting Priority
Parenting comes with many challenges and today they are more complicated with technology. While technology has provided us with the ability to gain knowledge and to become a global community, it has also lessened the time for quality parenting. Dinner tables were for the gathering of families. Unfortunately, technology stepped in and provided ongoing entertainment to fit each person’s interest. Sharing as a family the topics of the day and learning to be proper and appropriate, has fallen to the wayside. Conversation is a learned behavior that was apart of raising a family. So many skills lost as we tap those screens and have our heads buried in our latest social media messages and finds. Absolutely, dinner table conversations need to become popular again only this time we will understand its value in raising our children.
Social and Emotional Learning Enhances Empathy when teaching these Three Kindnesses
Learning to share kind voices and actions teaches children empathy providing feelings of goodness and caring. It helps in communicating and relating appropriately and certainly reduces bullying. Dinner table conversations for developing those social and emotional learning skills. Being relational is so important and structuring it for children, teaches them how to interact with kindness and openness.
3 Kindnesses are
- Teach them to say something kind, and please practice, to their friends, your friends or their relatives. Undoubtedly, practice is very important! This can happen at the dinner table or in the car! Ask them how they feel when they use kind voices and how they think the other person felt.
- Teach them to offer help to their teachers, their peers and friends. Importantly, have conversations in the ways they can do this. Practice is essential! Children need demonstration. Help your friends and relatives when they are present and always have a conversation of what you did, how you felt and why.
- Teach them to share at least one toy with their siblings,  First, designate the toy and even a time of day to share their toy. Second, if they are going to have friends over, plan what toys they will play with and how they will play with them. Structuring sharing at a young age is very important not to mention talking about it.
Conversation and Parenting Go Hand In Hand. Structuring It….Provides Learning and Emotional Well-Being
SEL for Children | Visit My YouTube Channel