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Carter Harkins

Chief Storyteller, Harkins Creative

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How Do We Teach Children Compassion and Empathy?

Joan proposes that if compassion is so good for us, why don't we teach it to our children? But how is this done? What are your ideas? What has worked in your experience?

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Topics: child development compassion empathy
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  • Casandra Minetor

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    Sep 15 2011: What worked best for me personally was experiencing these issues first hand. SEEING the pain poverty causes children who maybe don't live in the greatest of house holds, experiencing issues from my own disability, helping them dive into the problems and see first hand how it feels, what is happening, and what we can do to make it better or at least less awful.

    Bhuvanesh has a WONDERFUL point about judging others based on prejudices and even one step further, our lack of experience dealing with a particular situation. When we don't truly understand how bad things can be, we cannot have compassion for people in that situation.

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