Empathy
is an important life skill, which means to feel for others and
understand what they feel by putting yourself in someone's place. This
improves the ability to understand and respect others. Since kids aren't
naturally born to empathize, they learn it through the outdoor
activities. In this post, I am going to highlight some ways that play
boost empathizing skills in children.
1. Cooperation
Playing outdoors is all about teamwork, which, in turn, is linked to
cooperation. While playing in a group, each member has to interact and
support another in order to achieve the desired goal. Whether they are
playing in a playground, classroom, or a neighborhood park, the outdoor
playtime involves assistive work that directly links to empathizing
skills.
2. Mind Reading
Apart from playing with preschool playground equipment or other
types of equipment, some simple games such as chess or checkers help in
understanding what the opponent is thinking. We do not get to learn this
important life skill any other way. When a child becomes smart enough
to read other's minds, this makes him empathizing as he is now capable
of walking in his shoes.
3. Feel What Other Feels
The imaginative play or pretended play is all about being something
you are not. When a child acts like a teacher, doctor, and architect and
goes through all the processes these characters experience regularly,
he gets to know what it feels like. One can only understand another
person's feelings when he goes through the same process. Through
pretended play, a child becomes capable of seeing life from another
person's viewpoint and this makes him empathizing.
4. Caring for Other's Feelings
Children do stupid things sometimes such as hitting an animal and
enjoying it. They do so due to unawareness of the fact other living
beings have feelings. While playing outdoors, especially in a
playground, children meet and greet peers and colleagues and cooperate
with them in playing. When an unfavorable event occurs such as an injury
to a fellow, he feels what his friend would be feeling and helps him
cover his wounds.
Similarly, there are cats and dogs wandering
around in some playgrounds. I remember I took my daughter to the shade
structure in San Diego and she interacted with some cute cats there and
started hitting her. I told her just like we feel hurt with injuries and
wounds; animals can feel the same, too. This way, she learned to
empathize and I didn't see her hitting an animal again since then.
5. Respect Other's Choice
It happens pretty often on a playground that one child wants to play
a game while other wishes to experience something else. When two
children of different game choices interact, they respect each other's
selection. Never in my experience had I seen children fighting to force
each other into playing a particular game. Every child has the freedom
to play what he likes, and this, I believe, is a key to learning
empathy.
6. Achieving a Common Objective
A group has a common goal and each member strives the hardest to
achieve it. One day I saw some children playing puzzle together and all
of them were struggling to complete it and were putting their best
efforts. Upon focusing a little more, I realized they were the same
children I saw a few days back fighting with each other over something.
This made me realize outdoor play brings empathy to children's
personality. They work together by forgetting all the differences and
grudges when they have to, and this is amazing!
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