A school-based programme aims to give children valuable life skills in resilience and adaptability

PREPARING CHILDREN for the future is one of the most important tasks any society can set itself. And while the acquisition of skills and knowledge are the fundamentals of an education system, there is a growing body of research which suggests that children need a parallel set of social and emotional skills to help them develop key life skills of resilience and adaptability.

In many cases, these skills are learned naturally through everyday life at home and in school. But, what happens if they aren’t? Canadian social entrepreneur Mary Gordon says the absence of these social and emotional skills results in bullying and disruption and also impedes children’s learning. “Children’s emotional intelligence is now known to be a predictor of positive life outcomes such as good mental health, successful relationships, academic and career success and civic responsibility and engagement,” she says.

Gordon was in Dublin recently to give a classroom demonstration of her internationally recognised programme, The Roots of Empathy. The programme is based on the simple premise that children can learn empathy by observing the close interactions between a parent and baby. While here, Gordon introduced two classes of school children in Tallaght to a mother and her six-month-old baby. The children sat around a mat on the floor watching and chatting about the baby with her mother and Gordon. They smiled, giggled and asked lots of questions as they watched the baby grab and play with soft toys, pull herself along the mat and gurgle with joy.

“In the Roots of Empathy, we provide children with the opportunity to observe a near-perfect model of empathy and emotional attunement: the loving relationship between a parent and a baby during the first year of life,” explains Gordon.

Over the course of seven classroom visits spread over a year, the children observe and label the baby’s emotions and witness how the parent responds to the infant’s needs. A certified Roots of Empathy instructor guides the children so they can extend this learning outwards to understand and speak about their own feelings and the feelings of others. The class teacher is also encouraged to extend the learning into the core subjects such as maths, science and use the experience as a resource during Social, Physical and Health Education (SPHE) classes.

Gordon explains that the central idea of Roots of Empathy is that all the children in the class learn the cognitive, social, physical and emotional milestones in the baby’s development and the importance of nurturing and stimulation in brain development. Through their interaction with the mother and baby, they come to understand that babies are affected by every experience, good and bad, and that early learning is dramatic. They also learn about the baby’s vulnerabilities, the dangers of second-hand smoke and risks of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Shaken Baby Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Gordon says this direct experiential learning enables children to develop behaviours such as caring, sharing, co-operating and being inclusive of others which will be with them for life.

Since it was first started in Canada in 1996, the Roots of Empathy programme has been used in schools in the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. On her visit to Ireland, Gordon met teachers, lecturers and those involved in curriculum development in the hope to set up some Roots of Empathy programmes here.

Deirbhile Nic Craith, education officer at the Irish National Teachers Organisation, was among those who watched the demonstration. She says the programme has potential to address issues in SPHE in primary schools. “Children respond very well to the relationship between a baby and a mother and it could be used as a resource for teachers implementing the SPHE programme. The problem is that it would take up more than the allocated time for SPHE. It might work if the certified instructor was the support or resource teacher in the school.”

Fergus Finlay, chief executive of Barnados, also watched the demonstration of Roots of Empathy. “There aren’t many school interventions like this one which focuses on the social and emotional learning. Such programmes help children develop resilience to deal with and cope with adversity but if it was introduced here, it would have to be piloted and adapted for Irish children,” he says.

Mona O’Moore co-ordinator of the Anti-Bullying Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin, also observed the demonstration in Killenarden Senior School, Tallaght. “Empathy is critical in any effort to reduce aggression, bullying and violence. When someone has empathy, they won’t hurt another person willingly so I would support programmes that develop empathy in young people,” she says.

See rootsofempathy.org and Roots of Empathy – changing the world child by childby Mary Gordon (The Experiment Publishing, New York)