Baby teaches kids to be more empathetic

By Ken Johnston
Editor

What can people learn from babies? How about a way to better understand others in a way that helps prevent bullying!
Nikki Blakeney of the Best Start Hub in Rainy River has been coordinating the Roots of Empathy program at Riverview School over the past few months. This is the second time it has been run at the school, but Blakeney’s first time as coordinator.
She is not the teacher as she puts it, “Baby Talon is the teacher!” Talon Jenson is Missy and Clint Jenson’s son. Originally the infant was slated to begin teaching the grade one and two kids in October but with the H1N1 flu scare the program was postponed until early February.
“We are running a condensed curriculum,” explained Blakeney, “allowing us to skip one unit.” However the focus is still the same. The program teaches the students about feelings, their own feelings and the feelings of others. “We teach the kids there is no exclusion. The baby loves you for who you are not matter where you come from, what you look like or what you wear.”
In the regular curriculum the coordinator visits the classroom every week for 27 weeks. Once every three weeks the baby and mom visit the classroom for a family visit. Blakeney then leads the class in noticing how the baby is growing and changing over the course of his first year of life.
There are nine themes taught over the course of the program. They include Meeting the Baby, Crying, Caring and Planning for the Baby, Emotions, Sleep, Safety, Communicating, Who Am I and Goodbye Good Wishes. The class skipped the Sleep theme in the compressed curriculum.
When the baby visits the class gathers in a circle and then Talon begins teaching. Blakeney said they talk about how Talon would feel in different situations such as when his mom leaves him in a room alone. Last Thursday his Mom said when she went to pick him up from a baby sitters that she went into another room while there and Talon was upset thinking she had left him again. The class then talked about how they would feel in a similar situation, hence allowing them to better understand other’s feelings.
Blakeney said that they talk a lot about how Talon would feel in different situations, even when Talon is not there. “He is still teaching them even when not visiting.” She said the kids have been doing some drawing about how they would feel in different situations faced by Talon. “I love going. The kids are so serious and the drawings are so detailed.”
For instance they talked about teething recently and many of the kids could relate because they are at the age when their baby teeth are falling out.
By superimposing Talon’s feelings onto their own, the kids learn to understand emotions of their own and of others. Research on Roots of Empathy has shown kids taking the program are “kinder to their friends, are less aggressive and bully other children less than those who do not participate in the program.” In a 2004-2007 follow-up study, the Government of Manitoba not only found a reduction in aggression and other improvements to behaviours in Roots of Empathy children immediately after the program, but also that improvements were maintained three years later.
Since the Roots of Empathy program started in 1996 about 150,000 kids have taken it. Founder Mary Gordon wrote a book called, “Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child.”
The mission statement of the Roots of Empathy program is, “To build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults.”