ML Interest Tag: cognitive

Struggling with Fertility? It May Be Time to Assess Your Stress Level

By Dr. Wael Salem

The effect of stress on our health has become a major topic of conversation over the last few decades because our lives are continuously becoming more stressful. We live in a society that values ‘busyness,’ and believes that success is tied to action.

This is one of many reasons that makes navigating fertility challenges so stressful. We work so hard at it, invest so much energy, time, and money—we expect success because that is what we’ve been conditioned to expect. So, when pregnancy doesn’t happen and we feel we are doing everything we can, we begin to feel powerless. This lack of control can be frustrating and difficult.

Enter STRESS. Decades of research on the associations between stress and infertility have made this connection well-known and accepted. Encouragingly, there is as much data that suggests that mind-body practices can effectively reduce stress, mitigate the infertility experience, and perhaps even enhance reproductive outcomes.

As Maté outlines in “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection,” stress can be characterized as having four major causes: 1) lack of control, 2) uncertainty, 3) emotional isolation, and 4) inability to express emotions (2003). If you’ve had or are experiencing fertility challenges, you’re probably nodding your head thinking that these stressors pretty well sum up a life with infertility. When you’re told to relax, this often has the opposite effect, increasing the stress response. We are often left without the knowledge or tools to deal with stress. Also, the situations that cause stress will not go away and tend to cycle monthly.

If these stressors are inherent to the fertility journey and cannot be reduced, how can you minimize stress so you can support your fertility efforts? The prescription of staying stress-free, although based in truth, is extremely over-simplified and almost impossible. The good news is that we can control the way we deal with stress and the effects that it has on the body. We can periodically take our bodies out of the stress response and into the relaxation response. But first, we need to be able to identify stress in our bodies. Let’s break down the three stages of stress, known as the General Adaptation Syndrome, as described by Hans Seyle:

  • Alarm. When our bodies are in stress response, our body sends us warning signals that things are getting out of control. These warning signals can wear a variety of faces: a) physical – headaches, insomnia, loss of appetite or binge eating, teeth grinding; b) behavioral – alcohol or drug abuse, compulsiveness, restlessness; c) emotional – aggression, irritability, frequent crying; d) cognitive – impaired concentration, judgmental thoughts, racing mind, blaming, and distortions in thoughts like all or nothing thinking, or jumping to irrational conclusions.
  • Resistance. This is when the alarms are going off, but we choose to ignore them.
  • Exhaustion. After ignoring the symptoms, our bodies take control and slam on the brakes. This usually comes in the form of falling ill as our immune systems are compromised from being in heightened stress response for too long.

Once you’re able to identify stress, you can begin coming up with a stress management plan to help combat it. The three “A’s of Change” can be a useful framework to begin:

  • Awareness. Become aware of your warning signs. What are your alarm bells? Behavioral, Cognitive, Physical, Emotional?
  • Acceptance. Acceptance does not mean giving in. Recognizing and accepting is key to moving on. By saying, “I am sad, and sadness is a normal human response. It’s ok,” we acknowledge the warning signals and can begin to process our stress.
  • Action. This is the step that is often the hardest because it involves changing our old habits. Rather than reaching for a bottle of wine or the TV remote, find what brings you genuine ease (often bringing the attention inward). List a few options that you can follow to deal with the stress: take a bath, go for a walk, take a restorative yoga class, meditate, or simply stop and breathe deeply. Be preemptive in your action–when you know you have a particularly stressful procedure or appointment coming up, begin a few days before to deep breathe, meditate, and visualize positive outcomes.

Ask yourself (and be honest with yourself), do you take the time needed to increase your relaxation with mind-body practices? If your honest answer is no and you think you need a little help or motivation, start looking for that support. Find nice short walks in nature nearby and locate restorative or fertility yoga classes. Find classes online for meditation or yoga and schedule this time into your calendar. Make a promise to yourself to do it, and don’t break that promise. Relaxation takes practice – it’s not as easy as saying, “I am now going to be a relaxed person.” Just like any other skill, this takes time and commitment to make it part of your life. You can’t expect to relax on cue after spending weeks, months, or years in a state of chronic stress.

And finally, let’s reframe our view on relaxation from ‘doing nothing’ and make it more accessible to our ‘doing’ mindset. You are doing something profound, nurturing, and supportive of your fertility that does not involve huge amounts of money, medication, time, or energy. Relaxation is a proactive activity to support your fertility that you can control. You are preparing your body to be as receptive as possible to whatever measures you are taking to conceive.

This post originally appeared on CCRM Blog.

Dr. Wael Salem is Board Certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and is Board Eligible in Reproductive Endocrinology. His interests include fertility for cancer patients, PCOS, fertility preservation (egg freezing) and preimplantation genetic testing for hereditary genetic diseases. Dr. Salem joined CCRM Minneapolis in 2018.

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Babies Who Notice Fearful Looks Grow Up to Be More Compassionate Toddlers, Study Finds

by Shahrzad Warkentin

Getting your three-year-old to agree with you can sometimes feel like negotiating with a foreign diplomat who doesn’t speak the same language. Still, there are times when your tots will surprise you with the occasional “yes.” It’s definitely a challenge to figure out how to raise cooperative toddlers, but according to one study, some might be more prone to being agreeable than others.

The study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the University of Virginia found that certain behaviors in babies could predict whether or not they would grow up to be cooperative toddlers. The study concluded that babies who paid attention to fearful faces in adults were more likely to be altruistic as toddlers and preschoolers, and altruism is considered a key component in cooperative behavior.

The study measured infants’ responses to fear in others at seven months old by tracking eye movement. Babies were exposed to faces that displayed several emotions including fear, happiness and anger. They later looked at the same babies’ altruistic behavior at 14 months. Responding to happy or angry faces was not linked to altruism later, but a response to the fearful faces was.

“From early in development, variability in altruistic helping behavior is linked to our responsiveness to seeing others in distress and brain processes implicated in attentional control. These findings critically advance our understanding of the emergence of altruism in humans by identifying responsiveness to fear in others as an early precursor contributing to variability in prosocial behavior,” said Tobias Grossmann, the lead author of the study and research team leader.

If you find that your baby takes note when you look terrified that you just ran out of coffee or panicked when you accidentally spill that freshly pumped milk, it could be a sign of calmer, more cooperative days ahead.

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10 Afterschool Activities for Kids That Need Action!

By Michelle Worth

It’s 4 p.m. and you finally close the laptop as your child’s virtual school day ends. Or, maybe your child physically went to school today but had limited time at the playground. And it shows. They need action!

Physical activity helps a child stay regulated (process and adjust to their environment) and promotes the maturation of their nervous system. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it is even more important to make children’s physical wellbeing a priority to combat the potential negative effects on their physical, social, and psychological health. Physical activity in children is even associated with higher academic performance!

These top 10 afterschool activities are perfect for getting the wiggles out of your kids, no matter what materials or space you have!

1. Obstacle Course
Give your child a minimum of 3 to 4 steps. Get creative with what you have at home (both indoors and outdoors) when coming up with tasks at each “station”. A few ideas to start with: throw balls into a laundry basket, do 10 jumping jacks, jump in and out of a hoola-hoop, crawl under chairs. Try getting your child to complete as much of the course as independently as they can. Challenge them to remember each step in the sequence (and in the right order) to help develop their memory and other cognitive skills!

2. Simon Says
A classic! “Simon says do a handstand.” “Stand on 1 leg.” A simple game of Simon Says can help promote body awareness as your child engages in different movements. They’ll also have to use their auditory comprehension skills to follow the directions and listen for whether or not “Simon” said!

3. Ball Bounce
Bouncing on a large exercise ball against a wall can give your child just the amount of physical input their body needs. To add some cognitive demands, ask your child to sing their ABC’s while bounding, or go back and forth naming different animals for each letter of the alphabet without repeating.

4. Animal Walk Relay
Make a “path” around the house using tape, flags, or colorful dots. Have your child get from point A to point B by pretending to be the animal you name. Bear walk, bunny hop, crab walk, frog jumps – this one’s sure to work their muscle strength and coordination!

5. Go for a Ride
Kids can take a ride on their bike, scooter, skateboard, or whatever they choose! For an added language benefit, play “I Spy” while riding to help improve your child’s vocabulary by understanding and using descriptive words.

6. Towel Tug
Lay a towel on the floor and weigh it down with objects. Or, have a sibling sit on it! Have your child pull the towel across the room. Keep them motivated by asking them to make a prediction of how many times they think they can do this!

7. Scorpion Game
Parents—here’s a new sensory-motor game that also gives you time to interact with your kids! You pretend to be a scorpion, holding a pool noodle as your stinger and keeping your eyes closed. Your child is the squirrel that has to try and “rescue” stuffed animals from the ground by picking one up and running it back to the other side of the room. If your child gets “stung” and you tap them with the noodle, they must do an exercise you choose (jumping jacks, star jumps, or sit-ups, for example).

8. Dog Catcher
Make two bases across from each other, connected by a path of pillows. You are the dog catcher and your child is the puppy. He or she must rescue their stolen “bones” (balls) or animal friends (stuffed animals) by taking the pillow path to your base and back when you pretend to go to sleep. If your child wakes you up or accidentally steps on the floor, the dog catcher (you) have to try and tag the puppy!

9. Lava Floor
Pretend the floor is lava! You and your child can make a path in the living room to get from the couch to the door without touching the floor. Use pillows, bean bags, and other objects you find to help your child practice their balance, coordination, and creativity!

10. Jump Up!
A great way to give your child’s body some vestibular input (balance and awareness of their body’s position in space)? Jumping! Kids can jump on a trampoline or on a mattress you put on the floor.

Some children may have trouble with balance, coordination, strength, are constantly moving, or become easily distracted. If you have concerns in these areas of your child’s development, an evaluation by a physical therapist or occupational therapist can help. TherapyWorks is a company that provides these services (in addition to speech therapy, feeding therapy, and social work) via teletherapy. You will be connected with a therapist who specializes in your areas of concern and can provide more tips for at-home activities for your child!

 

Resources:
U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Considerations for schools.https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html

Sprang, Ginny & Silman, Miriam. (2013). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Parents and Youth After Health-Related Disasters. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 7. 10.1017/dmp.2013.22.

Chaddock-Heyman, L., Hillman, C. H., Cohen, N. J., & Kramer, A. F. (2014). III. The importance of physical activity and aerobic fitness for cognitive control and memory in children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 79(4), 25-50. https://doi.org/10.1111/mono.12129

 

I'm a mom entrepreneur and Co-Founder of TherapyWorks, a pediatric therapy company that provides services via telehealth. I recognized the need to make high-quality pediatric therapy more convenient after one of my own children needed therapy and launched TherapyWorks with my Co-Founder, an experienced speech language-pathologist, with that in mind. 

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5 Helpful Tips for Raising Bilingual Kids

By Alejandra Tejada

Raising a bilingual child is an incredibly rewarding experience. It gives parents the opportunity to share a part of themselves and their world, while also opening up so many new possibilities for their young and eager learners.

While studies have focused primarily on the career benefits of being multilingual, there are also great cognitive benefits too. Recent studies show that a bilingual experience has been linked to improved cognitive abilities, particularly in problem-solving.

Research has shown that the sooner a  child is exposed to a second language, the better. According to the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington’s published research, babies raised to listen to languages early stay adaptive to the different sounds. Assistant Professor Dr. Naja Ferjan Ramirez shares “results underscore the notion that not only are very young children capable of learning multiple languages, but that early childhood is the optimum time for them to begin.”

So how do parents encourage bilingual learning? It all starts at home. Parents can start by making sure the home environment is integrating the language in everyday life. Here are five helpful tips to get started:

1. Talk, Play, Sing & More Talk

​Babies respond best to personal interactions when learning a language. As a child, it’s nearly impossible to learn a language just from watching a TV show or playing with an app. Social interaction is necessary for language development and interacting with young babies through “baby talk” can really stimulate learning for the youngest of learners. Think about how a child mirrors your sounds and words, those are the basic building blocks—start talking early, and often!

2. Read Books to a Child Early & Often

Not only does reading to your child bring a lot of social and emotional benefits, but it also helps with language development. It’s another active way of engaging with children.

However, not all language books are created equal. Direct translations of English books can make it harder to learn about cultural expressions and figures of speech necessary for social interactions later on. Think about the books you share with your child and what you want them to learn. Having faced my own troubles finding quality books from authentic authors, I started Enlingos, which delivers Spanish and bilingual books for kids 0-6 to test out before buying.

3. Use TV Programming as Reinforcement, but Don’t Use It as a Crutch​

Kids shows and language programming are great tools to keep children engaged with second language learning. Turn to shows on Netflix like Little Baby Bum, Word Party, or Pocoyo, and change the language output to Spanish (or whatever language you are teaching). You can also purchase a subscription to Little Pim—online programming geared towards multi-language learning. While I recommend using these options as additional resources, it’s important to note that only listening passively to language does not help in development. Nothing can truly substitute in-person active interactions in a child’s language development.

4. Online Classes Can Be a Helpful Tool for Meaningful Interactions

As we continue to live through the pandemic one way that we’ve benefited from these times is the larger selection of online learning classes now available to kids. Classes found on Outschool, Care.com, or through sing-alongs like 123 Andres are now geared towards younger learners. While younger kids don’t do as well sitting in front of a screen just attending these classes together is a great way to support interactive play and learning.

5. Travel Early & Often When Able, or Increase Your Virtual Interactions

Yes, I know that the pandemic has limited this severely if not halted it altogether. But travel used to be, and will one day continue to be, the best way to keep children engaged in language learning. Travel gives children the opportunity to use their language skills with others, expand their learning, and deepen their motivations to be bilingual. While we may not be able to travel right now, do your best to increase the virtual interactions with friends or relatives from other countries. To know that others, not just he or she, speak the language can be an incredible booster for children as young as two.

So there you have it. While kids (just as adults) may have different levels of comfort in being bilingual throughout their life, it’s important to start paving that path early for them. There are still so many undiscovered benefits to teaching a child to be bilingual, not just for the child but for the parents as well.

 

Alejandra Tejada is the founder and CEO of Enlingos and Totts.  After spending four years in product innovation and digital consumer research, she left a startup incubator at a Fortune 100 company to pursue her passion for sharing travel, culture and learning with children by creating products serving young parents.

 

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Research Suggests Babies’ Random Choices Become Preferences

by Jennifer Swartvagher

When presented with a room filled with toys, which one will your baby pick? When a baby reaches for one toy over another, that seemingly random choice is very bad news for those unpicked toys. Your baby has likely decided they don’t like what they didn’t choose. 

baby with toy plane

Though researchers have long known that adults build unconscious biases over a lifetime of making choices between things that are essentially the same, the new Johns Hopkins University finding that even babies engage in this phenomenon demonstrates that this way of justifying choice is intuitive and somehow fundamental to the human experience.

“The act of making a choice changes how we feel about our options,” said co-author Alex Silver, a former Johns Hopkins undergraduate who’s now a graduate student in cognitive psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. “Even infants who are really just at the start of making choices for themselves have this bias.”

The findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.

People assume they choose things that they like. But research suggests that’s sometimes backwards. We like things because we choose them and we dislike things that we don’t choose.

“I chose this, so I must like it. I didn’t choose this other thing, so it must not be so good. Adults make these inferences unconsciously,” said co-author Lisa Feigenson, a Johns Hopkins cognitive scientist specializing in child development. “We justify our choice after the fact.”

This makes sense for adults who must make such choices every day, having to select which toothpaste to purchase or which car to drive. The question, for Feigenson and Silver, was when exactly do people start doing this. They turned to babies, who don’t get many choices so, as Feigenson puts it, are “a perfect window into the origin of this tendency.”

The team brought 10- to 20-month-old babies into the lab and gave them a choice of objects to play with: two equally bright and colorful soft blocks. They set each block far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the other — a random choice.

After the baby chose one of the toys, the researchers took it away and came back with a new option. The babies could then pick from the toy they didn’t play with the first time, or a brand new toy.

“The babies reliably chose to play with the new object rather than the one they had previously not chosen, as if they were saying, ‘Hmm, I didn’t choose that object last time, I guess I didn’t like it very much,’ ” Feigenson said. “That is the core phenomenon. Adults will like less the thing they didn’t choose, even if they had no real preference in the first place. And babies, just the same, dis-prefer the unchosen object.”

In follow-up experiments, when the researchers instead chose which toy the baby would play with, the phenomenon disappeared entirely. If you take the element of choice away, Feigenson said, the phenomenon goes away.

“They are really not choosing based on novelty or intrinsic preference,” Silver said. “I think it’s really surprising. We wouldn’t expect infants to be making such methodical choices.”

To continue studying the evolution of choice in babies, the lab will next look at the idea of “choice overload.” For adults, choice is good, but too many choices can be a problem, so the lab will try to determine if that is also true for babies.

—Jennifer Swartvagher

Featured photo: Minnie Zhou on Unsplash

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Disney Junior Premieres New Spanish-Language Version of “Ready for Preschool”

by Jennifer Swartvagher

Disney Junior’s Ready for Preschool short-form series premiered in October 2019. Featuring favorite characters from hit Disney Junior series including T.O.T.S., Doc McStuffins, Vampirina, Puppy Dog Pals, as well as Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, the series features fun and playful tunes that prepare young minds for preschool. In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Disney Junior is premiering a new Spanish-language version featuring  age-appropriate lessons for young kids with favorite Disney Junior characters and fun, upbeat music. 

The first four shorts debuted today on Disney Junior’s YouTube page, with additional shorts continuing to roll out later this year on Disney Junior YouTube and DisneyNOW and a Spanish-language EP, “Disney Junior Music: Listos para el Preescolar Vol. 1” will be released on Walt Disney Records. The short follows Mickey Mouse as he explores different shapes found in common objects like doors and trees. Also included is a quote from Disney Junior executive, Lori Mozilo and additional info on the Ready for Preschool short-form series and attached is a fun activity sheet for kids and families to enjoy together.

“The new Ready for Preschool Spanish-language shorts will provide more young viewers with the opportunity to follow along with their favorite Disney Junior characters and learn simple, preschool appropriate lessons in subjects like math, language arts, cognitive thinking and social-emotional development”, said Lori Mozilo, Executive Director, Original Programming, Disney Junior. “Having both the English and Spanish versions available for our audience encourages curiosity, not only about the lessons being presented, but also about different languages and by extension, different cultures.”

—Jennifer Swartvagher

Featured photo: Disney Junior via YouTube

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The More You Talk to Your Babies, the Smarter They’ll Be as Teens, New Study Finds

by Shahrzad Warkentin

Feel silly having a conversation with a baby that can’t talk? Don’t, because those one-sided conversations about farm animals and the colors of the rainbow are actually vital to your kids as they grow. A new study has found that how much parents talk with babies can have an impact on their IQ later in life.

The 10-year longitudinal study was conducted by LENA, a company that creates curriculum and programs for educators and parents to help with early language development. The researchers concluded that the amount of talking parents did with their babies up to age three had an impact on their IQ and verbal abilities, like vocabulary and verbal comprehension, in adolescence.

Photo: Pexels via Pixabay

“We know all of the child’s conversational partners matter, from their parents and primary caregivers to their child care teachers,” said Dr. Stephen Hannon, president of LENA. “This research confirms a growing body of science that says adult-child interactive talk is essential to early development and success in school.”

The study showed that while talking to babies at this age was important, what was most vital was talking to them in a conversational manner. In other words, even if your baby is too young to answer you, its important to speak to them as if they might answer.

In order to complete the study, LENA researchers developed and utilized their wearable “talk pedometer” to measure things like adult words spoken, “conversations,” like a parent saying something and a baby offering a coo or sound in response. The first phase of data collection was conducted in 2006 with 146 families. Ten years later in 2016, the same kids at ages nine to 14 were given language and cognitive tests. The amount of adult words recorded in the first phase of the study correlated with the kids test results ten years later.

“It’s incredible that we are able to measure the relationship between the experiences of babies and their cognitive skills 10 years later,” said Dr. Jill Gilkerson, Senior Research Director at LENA, and lead author on the paper. “It strongly supports what other research has shown: talk with babies may make a huge difference in their futures and there is a need to begin early, since parents’ talk habits in the 18-24-month window start forming from the moment the baby is born.”

—Shahrzad Warkentin

 

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5 Ways to Help Kids Build Cognitive Empathy

By Meghan Fitzgerald

Photo: Tinkergarten

If you spend time around babies and toddlers, you can see cognitive empathy growing as their brains develop. 

Sometimes called “perspective taking,” cognitive empathy (one of three types of empathy) is the ability to imagine how another person is thinking in a given situation.

Our capacity for cognitive empathy evolves: A 1-year-old may soothe a friend by handing her his own favorite toy. Once he is over 2, he may opt to go and get a sad friend the toy that she likes best, more able to note and respond to her emotions based on his knowledge of what would best soothe her. 

Eventually, this capacity enables us to communicate effectively with and support the needs of other people.

Here are 5 easy ways to help even our wee ones start to develop the skill.

1. Support pretend play. Pretend play is the way that children learn to take different perspectives. When a child makes believe that he is a mama bird, a monster, or a firefighter, he starts to explore what it must be like to be that other person or creature. Even though pretend play starts quite simple, early experiences with pretending form strong roots of perspective-taking that grow into more sophisticated cognitive empathy.

We do NOT need to be our child’s constant playmate in order to help them get more pretend play. Instead, there are a few, simple things we can do: give kids time to pretend; set up your home environment to inspire pretending; and give kids invitations to pretend.  

Give them time: Giving time requires a few agreements. First, you need to slow down and stay in one place long enough for kids to play (per research, that is 30 minutes or more). Second, kids need plenty of time to play to “catch fire,” and we have to allow their visible engagement level to rise and fall as they play. If they look “disinterested” that’s OK—lulls are part of play, and the less we intervene, the more likely they’ll learn to start, drive and revive their own play.

Set up your home environment: When we say environment, we mean both the objects (toys, clothes, loose parts), the space you designate for play, and how you arrange the objects in your house or yard. If you can get outside, take advantage of nature’s inspiring places to run, hide, climb, and an endless array of compelling objects. Indoors, use items to spark pretend play. An old bedsheet can become a cape, a cave, or a boat. A bucket can become a hat, a vessel for stew, or a steel drum. 

Give them an invitation: Sometimes just the prompt to “go play” is invitation enough. We can also invite children into their own play by doing the following types of things, then stepping back and letting them run with it:

  • Asking “I wonder” questions, like “I wonder what you could make in an outdoor kitchen?” or “I wonder what we could use to color this white sheet?”
  • Tell stories.
  • “Let’s pretend:” When you do have time, ask kids to pretend to be an animal that you see every day or a creature that they absolutely love.

2. Rewrite the golden rule. Doing unto others as you would have done unto you sounds virtuous, but it’s not empathetic at all. This new rule has given us a great starting point from which to engage in conversations that our kids can lead while we scaffold them with the chance to stop, reflect on the other person, and try to take their perspective.

3. Make animal allies. Education expert and inspiring advocate for outdoor learning David Sobel, reminds us, “Cultivating relationships with animals, both real and imagined, is one of the best ways to foster empathy during early childhood.” Because early childhood is a time in which children do not fully differentiate self from other, reality from fantasy, it makes them particularly able to identify with animals. So pretending to be animals not only supports perspective taking, it turns animals into allies, connecting children to other species in profound and lasting ways.

4. Show kids how you think about what other people are thinking. Show consistent curiosity about how others think.

  • As you are reading stories, ask questions like, “Why do you think she is doing that?” “What do you think he is hoping?” and “What was he thinking?!” Do this for characters who could fall in both good guy and bad guy buckets, making sure to present both in 3-D.
  • Be certain to do this for real people too, both children and adults. When you can, leave open the possibility that even someone who is frustrating may have reasons for acting in ways and also has wonderful qualities, valid feelings, etc.
  • Little kids are still learning. When a child does something that is not ideal socially, talk with our kids about how they are learning, like all of us. If you can, include something that you admire about that child, too.

5. Work hard to understand bias. We all carry bias into the interactions we have with others. If we truly want to nail cognitive empathy, we need to start by reflecting on how our own experiences and identity impact how we think and act. Where do we have hidden bias?

From this place of curiosity and self-reflection, we can start to work hard to better understand how experiences and identity impact those around us and inform their thoughts, motivations, and actions. This is life’s work.

Our world is not an equitable place, and aspects of identity including race, ethnicity, socioeconomics, nationality, and gender drastically impact the way we each experience, think and act in the world. The more we each can learn about this and start to better identify the biases that block us from understanding where others are coming from, the better we’ll be able to model true cognitive empathy for our kids. And, the better able we’ll be to take real action to address inequities that erode our communities.

This post originally appeared on Tinkergarten.

After 18 years as an educator, curriculum developer and school leader, Meghan has her dream gig—an entrepreneur/educator/mom who helps families everywhere, including hers, learn outside. Today, Meghan serves as co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Tinkergarten, the national leader in outdoor play-based learning. 

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4 Easy Ways to Teach Kids Empathy

By Meghan Fitzgerald

Photo: Tinkergarten

Developing empathy in children is one of our most important jobs as parents and caregivers. There are three main kinds of empathy: affective, cognitive, and compassionate. According to empathy experts Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman, we use these three in concert to realize empathy’s full potential. 

Affective empathy may be the most familiar to us. It’s the ability to sense the emotions that another person is feeling—like when you tear up at a sad movie or feel elated for the player who just scored the winning goal.

Early childhood is the perfect time to support affective empathy: This processing of emotions plays out in the limbic system, a part of the brain that develops early in life. We can cultivate this natural ability in our kids in simple ways every day. 

Here are just a few ways to help children as they’re developing empathy:

1. Focus on emotions vs. feelings. Rather than feeling daunted by the massive list of nuanced feelings we experience, focus on helping kids learn the six basic emotions first: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise. These are experienced by people all over the world, say experts like Paul Ekman.  

Start by helping kids develop emotional awareness, an important point from which kids can become aware of emotions in others. To support emotional awareness, acknowledge and validate children’s’ emotions—even the big ones. Help kids name their emotions by asking them questions like, “What are you feeling?” “Are you feeling sad?” Fred Rogers suggested narrating to them what you are seeing, saying things like, “I see you seem angry. Are you feeling angry inside too?” Wonder with kids what, in particular, is causing their emotional response. For example, “Are you feeling afraid of that dog?” or “Are you sad that mommy has to say goodbye for a little while?”

Model the full range of emotions to show kids more than the “positive” emotions. They’ll realize that the full range is available to them, too. If you get mad, you can talk through that moment with them and share that you were feeling a bit angry about whatever it was. 

In fact, it’s great for kids to see that we feel strong emotions of all kinds, can talk about it, and can find productive ways of processing and working with them. Be vulnerable now and again. Opening ourselves up to other people makes close connections even more possible. We should not be afraid to cry with our kids when something really sad happens.

2. Show kids how to notice other people’s feelings. Wonder about other people’s feelings, and do it out loud for kids. As children grow, they become more and more aware of other people and their emotions. If your child is too young to dialog about this, narrate to them about what you are noticing about other people’s emotions. Kids are able to receive language and benefit from our modeling before they are able to express such ideas on their own.

Read books and tell stories in which characters feel and express basic emotions. Stop along the way to look at the images and consider the story, wondering together, “How is the character feeling? Why do you think that character is feeling that way? How can you tell?”

When you see someone in real life who is feeling an emotion, use that as an opportunity to wonder, “How do you think grandma is feeling? What do you think made her feel that way?”

Hold back on “Sorry.” If your child does something, before asking him or her to say, “I’m sorry,” consider an alternative way to talk through the situation that teaches about affective empathy.

3. Teach kids to read faces. Humans all over the world make the same basic facial expressions in response to the six basic emotions, according to decades of research. Learning to read other people’s faces is a skill that helps kids identify and sense their emotions.

As you read books, pay particular attention to the faces of characters. Wonder whether they are wearing a “happy face,” a “sad face,” etc. Note the shape of their mouths, eyes, and eyebrows. Children for whom emotional awareness and nuanced social communication is challenging will benefit even more from learning to read faces. Because humans tend to make predictable facial expressions for a given emotion, kids can learn and apply the specific cues, taking much of the guesswork out of reading other people’s emotional state.

When you pretend-play together, pretend to have different emotions. Make it a point to use facial expressions as you play.

Once children’s drawings include details on the faces, note the way faces are drawn. Wonder with children about the choices they make as they draw faces in addition to talking about how the person or animal they drew is feeling. (Watch here for how to make tree faces, another fun, empathy-boosting nature activity to try!).

4. Sing Songs About Feelings. Active songs can naturally engage kids in learning about feelings and the body. Teach kids about emotions and faces by singing and acting out a simple song like this one:

Faces and Feelings Song (Sing to Yankee Doodle)

The expression on my face (Point a finger around your face)

Is like an open book. (Place your hands like a book)

You can read how I am feeling (Put your hand to your heart)

Given how my face looks. (Point a finger around your face)

Show me HAPPY. (Pause and make happy faces together)

Show me SAD. (Pause and make sad faces together)

Looking with our eyes. (Point to your eyes)

Show me ANGRY. (Pause and make angry faces together)

Show me GLAD. (Pause and make glad faces together)

And now we’ll show SURPRISE! (End with an excited SURPRISE! and make surprised faces together. Fall backwards too, if you like.)

This post originally appeared on Tinkergarten.

After 18 years as an educator, curriculum developer and school leader, Meghan has her dream gig—an entrepreneur/educator/mom who helps families everywhere, including hers, learn outside. Today, Meghan serves as co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Tinkergarten, the national leader in outdoor play-based learning. 

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Is an Educational Pod a Practical Alternative to In-Person Learning?

By Gay Cioffi

As the COVID-19 virus rages on, families are facing a crisis on all fronts. For those with children, the question of school reopening is front and center. Not only is it of importance to the cognitive and social development of their kids, in all likelihood, it will also determine whether or not they will be able to return to work.

Most school systems have either decided to have all learning remote or have taken a “wait and see” approach, leaving parents even more panicked about their plans come September.

As a result, many are taking educational opportunities into their own hands. Some parents are forming “pods” or small groups of children (between 5 and 8) to meet in a family’s home with an individual teacher hired to either “homeschool” or supplement the online learning that schools are providing. This accomplishes two goals; first, it provides much needed support for parents who have been struggling to keep up with their children’s distance learning, and secondly, it provides social interaction for children who have been isolated from their peers for several months.

On the face of it, if one can afford it and has the time to organize and supervise it, it may seem like a good alternative. That said, there are many things to consider before starting this journey.

Finding families that you trust and whose educational and social goals align with yours will be your first hurdle. Families who have high-risk members such as grandparents or immune-compromised individuals in their household are not good candidates. It is also essential to take into consideration the occupation of the parents in your pod; healthcare workers or other essential workers who come into frequent contact with the public may not be appropriate members either.

Equally important is a firm commitment that all members of the pod, including teachers and their families, follow best practices: masking, handwashing, and social distancing.

And before planning an academic schedule, parents must make provisional plans for the possible infection of children, staff, and all family and household members. Strict rules must be in place for if and when members of the pod become sick with coronavirus or other illnesses.

Finding and fairly compensating teachers will be the next challenge, especially if there is a broad range in the children’s grade level and abilities in your pod. Many online sites have sprung up to meet the demand of this new phenomenon, and a google search can help find staff in your area.

Parents who are forming pods have been criticized for poaching the best teachers from already taxed school systems, adding to the existing inequities in their communities. In some cases, parents invite families who could not afford to participate in a pod to attend for free. Other attempts to compensate for their privilege, have pod parents donating funds to their school communities to support those families without computers or internet service. These well-meaning gestures can be tricky territory to navigate, and along with all aspects of this pursuit must be carefully thought through to implement successfully.

If your goal is to provide “homeschooling,” you must contact your public school to withdraw your child and find out the curriculum that is being used in your jurisdiction and to get information about websites they recommend for guidelines.

If the goal is to supplement an online academic program provided by your child’s school, then you and the other families need to discuss and agree upon what content and activities you want to implement to augment their distance learning. In establishing daily and weekly schedules, limiting the number of teachers interacting with your pod is a major concern.

This endeavor is not impossible, but it will require tremendous focus and motivation by entire families who choose to participate.

I am a parent and grandparent with over four decades of experience in early childhood education. I share my passion, wisdom and experience, with parents and the people who care for and about children at Little Folks Big Questions, where we're out to answer the questions parents face in today's world.

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