It’s Mine: Addressing Sharing with Young Children

It’s Mine: Addressing Sharing with Young Children

~ What to Do When It’s Hard to Share ~ It is the bane of early childhood–how do we teach children to share? Very young children start off life as giving beings. When they are babies, they have a built-in natural empathy. When they see someone sad, they pat a shoulder. When they see someone […]

Too Quick to Judge – A Video for Discussion

Too Quick to Judge – A Video for Discussion

Making a Snap Judgment In the following video, two people assume they know what the other person is thinking. They make snap judgments about each other. When you make a snap judgement it means that you have taken a mental position such as right or wrong, good or bad before having all the facts. When […]

Footsteps: An Activity for Developing Empathy

Footsteps: An Activity for Developing Empathy

Step into Another Person’s Mindset Jim Ziolkowski’s National Bestseller  Walk in Their Shoes: Can One Person Change the World? details his life changing experience. A business major, he had planned to go into a corporate career. However, while backpacking through Nepal in his senior year, he discovered how simple kindness and caring can change people’s […]

Books about Gift Giving

Books about Gift Giving

This is the season when we think about giving gifts to the people we care about.  The following books take gift giving to a higher level and force us to think about what is truly a gift. Perhaps one of these book will prove the perfect gift for a child you love. Those Shoes by […]

Steps to Preventing Bullying: A Graphic

Steps to Preventing Bullying: A Graphic

The first component is Cognitive. We must understand what bullying is so we can recognize it when we see it. The second component is Emotion. Unless our emotions are engaged, we will not be able to step beyond our own self-consciousness to take action for others. The key emotions are empathy – being able to […]

This is Our House: How to Be An Ally Activity

This is Our House: How to Be An Ally Activity

In this activity, suitable for preschool through primary grades, children learn to empathize with how it feels to be bullied and learn ways to be an ally and support the victim. “This house is mine,” declares George as he stakes claim to a large cardboard box and then ruthlessly excludes everybody else because they are […]

Develop Empathy: Pathways Taken

Develop Empathy: Pathways Taken

How do we develop more empathy?  What does it look like? by Tim Wolcott Develop Empathy through Trust Empathy is grounded in mutual trust.  James Baldwin called for faith in the “evidence of things not seen”.  He believed we should live life with the assumption that a sense of decency might yet live in the […]

Empathy & the Politics of Tenderness

Empathy & the Politics of Tenderness

It is almost impossible to grow up.  Most people just get older — Maya Angelou An essay by Tim Wolcott Empathy can be crushed Rancor for the ‘other’ has long been an effective tool of the Right to mobilize supporters.  In their plans, empathy is to be avoided at all costs. Many adults, harboring unresolved anger and mistrust, […]

Words of love and peace everyone should hear

Words of love and peace everyone should hear

Grant is a six-year-year old boy who is one of the “little people.” He suffers from a form of dwarfism – DiastrophicDisplasia‬. He has a message that everyone should hear. To learn more about dwarfism and bullying visit Kids Health. To learn more about Grant visit his Facebook Page Please share Grant’s message and help fight […]

A Resolution for Peace

It’s a new year. Following in the tradition of the ancient Babylonians and Romans, it is time to make those pesky resolutions. What will you resolve to improve this coming year? Research by Richard Weisman on Quirkology has shown that the failure rate is 88%. However, when men set small goals such as losing 10 […]

How to be an Ally

What does it mean to be an effective ally in a social movement? To be an ally means to be someone from outside an oppressed group who comes to help those who are discriminated against. The following ideas are summarized from a roundtable discussion broadcast on the radio program Making Contact and reprinted this week […]

3 Poetry Books for April

April is National Poetry Month. What books are you reading to your children? Are they full of hippity hoppity bunnies and spring flowers? Nothing wrong with that. But how about trying one or more of these.  Here are three poetic books to share with your children. Each one is completely different from the other, but […]