Empathy for Your 1-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship while growing empathy in your child so that they can work to develop healthy relationships and prepare for future success in school and life.

Empathy means the ability to take the perspective of and interpret the thoughts and feelings of others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Empathy directly relates to social awareness — the ability to understand social and ethical behavior norms and recognize family, school, and community resources and support. “Empathy can be instilled, and it is composed of teachable habits that can be developed, practiced, and lived.” ¹

One-year-olds build their social and emotional skills through loving interactions with you and your responses to their needs. A sense of security provides a foundation for your child to explore their world and to respond with care for others as they grow. The steps below include specific, practical strategies to prepare you.

Why Empathy?

Your child’s secure and trusting connection with you is pivotal for healthy development. As you interact and share love and conversation, you can lay the foundation for growing empathy.

Today, in the short term, building empathy can create

• more significant opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment
• feelings of safety and security
• a sense of well-being and motivation to engage

Tomorrow, in the longer term, growing empathy in your child

• prepares them for preschool and kindergarten
• develops the ability to share and take turns with adults and other children
• builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and responsible decision-making
• deepens family trust and intimacy

Five Steps for Growing Empathy

This five-step process helps you and lays the foundation for your child to grow empathy. It also builds essential critical life skills in your child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

One-year-olds are starting to verbalize their needs by babbling, crying, and starting to use single words. Despite your child’s emerging ability to use words, continue to pay close attention to their facial expressions, movements, and sounds to work on understanding what they are trying to communicate. Your efforts to learn from your child build trust and create empathetic interactions that promote empathy. In becoming sensitive to the nuances of your child’s verbal and nonverbal expressions, you

• are responding to their needs
• are growing their trust in you, sense of safety, and sense of healthy relationships
• are growing motivation for you and your child to work together
• are improving your ability to communicate with one another
• are growing your own and their self-control (to calm down when upset and focus their attention)
• are modeling empathy and problem-solving skills

Actions

• Consider how your child reacts when upset, angry, or frustrated.
  • How do they show you? Children this age may cry, yell, hit, bite, or throw things. They can be soothed by cuddling and rocking and learn to self-soothe when upset.
  • If a child cries, offer to hold them or provide comfort items like a favorite teddy bear or a blanket. Do not attempt to talk anything through when a child is distraught. Focus on calming down first.
  • If a child hits or bites in anger or frustration, stop and say, “Ouch. That hurts my arm, and it makes me feel sad,” or “I see you are frustrated.”
• Consider how your child reacts when they are happy or excited. How do they show you? Children at this age clap their hands, imitate others, smile, squeal, and laugh when they are happy or excited.
• Consider how your child reacts when they are scared. How do they show you? Children at this age are more aware of their surroundings, which can make them afraid of new things or sounds. They may cry, withdraw, or hide.
• Each time your child expresses any big feeling, be sure to name it: “You seem angry” or “You seem happy.” This will build their vocabulary, increase their self-awareness, and help them manage their feelings.

As you react to your child in ways that soothe, you will find they will feel a greater sense of your understanding and responsiveness, making your interactions more two-way than one-way.

One-year-olds are learning how to engage in healthy relationships through loving interactions. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is going through. Here are some examples: ²

• 12-18-month-olds will respond to their name and may use 5 to 10 words. They are starting to combine words with gestures, follow simple directions, and remember recent events and actions. They may feel uneasy when separated from their loved ones.
• 12-18-month-olds are beginning to walk independently, stack blocks, and point to objects of interest.
• 18-24-month-olds can understand ten times more than they can speak, are starting to respond to questions, point to familiar objects and people in pictures, and follow two-step directions. They are also beginning to want to try things on their own.
• 18-24-month-olds can throw and attempt to catch a ball without losing their balance, enjoy playing with new toys in varying ways, and usually get dressed without becoming upset.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions

• Model empathy while interacting with your child. Modeling empathy can be one of the most excellent teaching tools.
  • Share the focus. As you spend time with your child, follow their lead. As they pick up new toys or explore a different part of the room, notice and name what they are exploring.³
  • Notice gestures and listen for thoughts and feelings. Attempt to figure out what your child is trying to tell you through their sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. Name it When they express a feeling on their face or through their body. “I noticed your face is red, and your shoulders are tense. You look angry.”
  • Children require your attention to thrive. Try to build a special time into your routine when you are fully present to listen to what your child has to tell you. Turn off your phone. Set a timer if needed. Then, notice your body language. Ask yourself, “What is my body communicating, and how am I demonstrating that I’m listening?”
• Read together. Use reading time and select a book of faces to help your child learn to identify the different emotions of other children. Point out how you can tell each child’s feelings and practice recreating those cues with your child.
• Make your thinking and feelings explicit. Talk about how you feel, why, and what signs you give, mainly when uncomfortable. “I feel happy right now because I like to dance with you to the music. Can you tell? I am smiling.”
• Talk aloud about how you respond to your big feelings: “I’m gonna take a few deep breaths before trying again and see if that helps.”
• Develop empathetic thinking by talking about how others might be feeling.
  • “Your friend is crying. I think she is feeling sad.”
  • “Do you see the little boy over there? His face is frowning. Let’s go over and see if he needs our help.”

Your daily routines can allow you and your child to practice new vital skills if you seize those chances. Practice provides essential opportunities to grow empathy as they interact with you and begin to learn social cues. Practice grows vital new brain connections that strengthen and eventually form habits.

Actions

• Allow your child to interact with new people of all ages with you close by.
• Create a consistent routine with regular nap times, play times, and meals. Routines create a sense of safety and security so your child can focus on learning and growing.
• Narrate your day as you do your household chores or run errands in your community. This narration will offer your child a sense of connection and provide practice in some of the building blocks of empathy, such as listening to your thoughts and feelings.

At this point, you are developing your child’s empathy skills by modeling empathy in your actions and allowing them to practice. You can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, and coaching. Parents or someone in a parenting role naturally provide support when they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help, which is no different.

By providing support, you reinforce their ability to think and feel with empathy, which will help them grow their relationships and cooperate with others.

Actions

• Learn about your child’s development. Each new age presents different challenges. Being informed about your child’s developmental milestones offers you empathy and patience.
• Recognize effort using “I notice” statements like: “I noticed how you saw she was sad.”
• When you can see your child is scared of new people or situations, offer confidence in your child’s ability to face the unfamiliar. In a gentle, comforting voice, you can say, “This is my friend. He is very kind.”
• Actively reflect on how your child feels when approaching challenges. “You seem worried about going into this new store. I’ll hold you so you feel more confident.” Offering comfort when facing new situations can help your child gain a sense of security and face them rather than backing away.
  • You can also offer comfort items to help your child face new challenges. “Would your bear help you feel better?”

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is vital in promoting more of it. For example, “I noticed you smiled at your sister—I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment, such as a smile or hug.

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job. They could also be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. However, if used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent or someone in a parenting role offers to buy a sucker if the child stops the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice.
• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, snuggle and read before bed after getting through your bedtime routine. Or, in the morning, once ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.