Sympathy or Empathy?

One child was teased by others “you do not know to read”.

This child brought his anger in dirt cleaning. He shared his own past how he was not studying……what he think snow, what he wants to do now, how he had been mentored, and so on. He spoke for 45 minutes, and all listened without asking a single questions. He kept on sharing “I am very angry, how can you say that?”Next day I brought the thought “so we want to work with sympathy or empathy?”

Do we want to work with Sympathy “oh! poor…………. you were teased?”Or we work with Empathy “You have not been able to read, how do you want to work on this or what we can for youu?”Do we allow him to behave in any which way because his past was sad for him?Or we work with for his TODAY – what he can do today? How he can FACE the fact of his life that he does not know how to read? Or we empower him to work on himself and also able to face facts of his life?

Kids expressed – what you say is fine, but we do not know “what is empathy and what is sympathy?”We took few examples and kids responded and we explored “was this sympathy or empathy?”If a child gets hurt, then what response will be sympathy and what will be empathy?

  • Oh! You got hurt, I will do massage to you.
  • Are you Ok?
  • Do you want me to do anything for you?
  • How many times I have told you to not to play with these gym equipments, be careful.
  • Oh! He is hurt, noone will trouble him, give him one extra chocolate.

We did not conclude, we just left it with a thought.


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