Helping Your Child Develop into a Caring Human Being

This week, my wife was at the dog park with a friend when a large dog ran up beside her and knocked her to the ground. The fall broke her leg.

While my wife was on the ground in excruciating pain, the owner of the dog began to lecture her on how everyone at the park is there at their own risk. He also questioned whether it was actually his dog that knocked her down and made it clear that whatever had happened, he wasn’t responsible. Standing beside him was his approximately 10-year-old child observing his behavior.

From the point of view of my wife and her friend, what was missing from his words was any sense of caring or compassion. He lectured my wife on his own lack of responsibility as she lay on the ground barely able to move. He then left the park without exchanging contact information or waiting for the paramedics to stabilize her leg. What kind of example did this set for his young child? Would we want our children to grow up and believe this was an appropriate way to respond to an emergency?

The Value of Compassion

How we raise our children can go a long way toward helping future generations develop compassion and caring in their lives. This is not just important for emergencies. When someone is empathetic and actually cares about the other person as well as themselves, it can go a long way toward helping them form stronger, more caring relationships. How many marriages would be saved if the partners in the relationship could be more sensitive to how their partner was feeling? How many personal and work relationships would thrive if people could put themselves in the other person’s shoes and show compassion to their needs?

Being compassionate strengthens us in many ways. It lets the other person know we care about them and helps the other person feel more connected to us. This is great for personal relationships as well as success in business. Wouldn’t you prefer doing business with someone who shows you caring and understanding? As an employer, wouldn’t you rather be around people who care about your needs on the job and work to get things done in the best possible way?

Modeling Compassionate Behaviors

The idea here is that helping children and adolescents develop understanding and compassion can be modeled by parents in simple ways. The easiest is to show compassion yourself. When a child drops a glass of milk, chances are they already feel bad about it. Help them clean it up. Don’t chastise them for an accident. Model for children that you can show compassion even when things don’t go as planned.

Ultimately, we can’t fully control the level of compassion our children will have in life. We can’t magically make them into compassionate, caring adults.

But what we can do is show them by example that compassion matters—that sometimes, when things don’t go as planned, finding a better way is more important than assigning blame. Children often internalize the behaviors they are shown by adults. By modeling sensitivity and compassion, you may just be helping your child find a pathway to a more caring, emotionally connected life.