Episode 12: “What's empathy?”

Elizabeth Romanski (00:11):
You're listening to Raising Curious Learners, a podcast from Britannica for Parents, where we talk to experts, and discuss issues and trends in child development, education and parenting.

Elizabeth Romanski (00:33):
Welcome back to Raising Curious Learners. I'm Elizabeth Romanski and my co-host as usual is Ann Gadzikowski. For many parents, the idea of the future can be a huge source of anxiety. Today, we're talking to an expert who's cluing us in to the one thing she says can guarantee your child's future success: empathy.

Elizabeth Romanski (00:55):
So here at Britannica for Parents, we're always looking for ways to help parents and caregivers lighten their load. Raising children, as we know, is such a tough job.

Ann Gadzikowski (01:06):
I know, especially these days, I wish there was a way that we could give families a magic wand that would help them relax and cope and enjoy being together.

Elizabeth Romanski (01:15):
Yeah, unfortunately, we don't have a magic wand. I would love one, but we do have a very special podcast guest today who has some fantastic parenting advice. Today we're welcoming Dr. Michele Borba, internationally recognized author and speaker. Her most recent book is called "Unselfie: How Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me-World." We're so happy to have you, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Borba.

Dr. Michele Borba (01:41):
Oh, I am so glad and delighted to be able to talk to you. This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart and soul. And I think we need to get back to just simple things that we know are proven and evidence-based, that are gonna make a big difference on our children's lives.

Ann Gadzikowski (01:55):
Well we are especially excited to talk to you today because we know that so much of your work is connected to the concept of empathy. Can we start by, um, asking you to define empathy and explain to us how it's different? It's something special and not quite the same as just being nice to each other.

Dr. Michele Borba (02:12):
Oh, thanks for that question. Because I think empathy is the absolute most quintessential human trait that we need to cultivate in our children. Now, the best news is it CAN be cultivated. Our kids are hard wired for it. First, we need to know what the heck it is. And I think it's feeling WITH someone not feeling for someone that's sympathy, but if you feel WITH someone, it's this amazing ability that actually helps a child later on to have this trajectory of a healthier relationship, less likely to get into conflicts with another person, they become deeper thinkers. They become more comfortable with differences, everything the world needs is right in that thing called empathy.

Ann Gadzikowski (02:53):
You know, when you were describing empathy just now, it reminded me of something that I experienced as a parent, when my daughter was really little. You know those buckets swings at the park that are for really small children and you just kind of plop them in the bucket and you swing them?

Elizabeth Romanski (03:06):
Mhm.

Ann Gadzikowski (03:06):
So I remember swinging my daughter, she was probably less than a year old, maybe like 10 or 11 months old, like a little toddler. And anytime that there was another child swinging near her, next to her or where she could see them, and they were having a really good time, she would laugh. There'd be like a silly dad with a kid next to her. And he'd be like doing some funny moves and she would just watch them and laugh. And sometimes I would just stop pushing her because she was so engaged in watching this other child have a good time. And she was having a good time. So is that empathy?

Dr. Michele Borba (03:39):
It's the seeds for it. And it's the trajectory towards it because she realizes, first of all, the other person exists. There's a glorious concept. The second thing is she's actually probably mirroring the other child. So when one child laughs you notice the other one laughs, when one child cries, you notice the other one cries. That's really where it all began because we now know that empathy kind of lies on a scaffold. It's kind of like a stepping stone. And it really is from womb to tomb. There's never too late to build empathy.

Elizabeth Romanski (04:07):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (04:07):
But the very beginning stages of how we get from there is helping our child realize that the other person is there. And then they start mirroring that child's empathy levels. For instance, their emotions watch a little one. I mean my two year old grandson was watching "Daniel Tiger", and all of a sudden his whole face looked like so sad. I thought he was going to cry. I said, "Are you okay?" So he says, "I sad, I sad." Because Daniel Tiger was sad.

Elizabeth Romanski (04:34):
Oh!

Dr. Michele Borba (04:34):
That's so wonderful. And it means that you as the parent can go in there and start using the words: "Are you sad?" "Yes." "How are we going to make you happy?" Because if we don't have the emotion words, we can get to the next level to be able to say, how does she feel and what does she need? It's just this wonderful little framework that we just use, those moments when our child is right there and experiencing those to be able to help them get to the next level. I love that story.

Ann Gadzikowski (05:01):
So the seeds of empathy really start in a family, right?

Dr. Michele Borba (05:04):
Yes. They started in a family and the most amazing thing is they actually start in a newborn nursery because they have put recordings of babies crying. They recorded the baby, put it into his little, into his little cubby, or his incubator.

Elizabeth Romanski (05:18):
Uhuh.

Dr. Michele Borba (05:18):
And then when he hears himself cry, he doesn't cry. This is the amazing miracle. When they put in a recording of another baby cry, he starts to cry.

Elizabeth Romanski (05:27):
Oh, wow.

Dr. Michele Borba (05:28):
That doesn't mean he has the cognitive ability to go, "Oh my gosh, that baby is so sad. I need to do something about it." But it does mean that he already has that potential to feel with another. We just need to nurture it along.

Ann Gadzikowski (05:41):
So that's how it begins for babies and toddlers and little ones. Can you tell us a little bit more about what empathy looks like as children grow older?

Dr. Michele Borba (05:48):
Yes. As children grow older, the first seeds we already talked about, with like that emotional literacy and mirroring it, and that's really just copying else's face. And then around the age of four, this real next step of a miracle comes in. It's called theory of mind. The child begins to realize, Oh my gosh, she's got a different brain than me. Or he doesn't think the same as me. And then around the age of eight - see, it just keeps growing and growing and growing - ages by nature can be different. It could be six, it could be nine, but around the age of eight is usually this child has this next step called perspective taking. He's able to kind of step into the other shoes and go, "How would I feel if that happened to me? And, oh my gosh, that's the moment that means we're really on a, on a level where we can take it up to maturity because now we can use books. You know, later on when you're reading even "To Kill a Mockingbird" in high school, how does Scout feel? What was Atticus Finch trying to tell Scout? the more we do that, the more we help our kids to be able to be... Really understand that you don't have to agree with what the person is saying, but try to understand where they're coming from.

Ann Gadzikowski (06:55):
Wow. That's an important message.

Elizabeth Romanski (06:57):
It's so important.

Dr. Michele Borba (06:58):
Yeah. I think especially now. Haha! We don't seem to be as adults doing that well enough.

Ann Gadzikowski (07:03):
And you said this is a lifetime journey of learning how to be empathetic. So even as adults, there's still more to learn, of course.

Dr. Michele Borba (07:11):
You know, what's really fascinating is they've done some new studies on us. When we look at the adults and I always get the question, "So what can I do to, to stretch my own empathy as a grownup?" One of the best things we now know is if you're in a literary book club, when you're reading like. "Bel Canto", or again, "To Kill a Mockingbird" or you're reading "All the Light You Cannot See". The kind of books that when you read them, you, oh, you can feel yourself being stirred? They've actually put us in MRIs and realized when they read different passages of different books, like "All the Light You Cannot See" versus "Fifty Shades of Gray". We flat line with "Fifty Shades of Gray"! You know, a beach read did nothing to us. Maybe it was enjoyable, but we got deeper into the part where our brains are, and where compassion is. Kind of like behind our ears?

Elizabeth Romanski (07:56):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (07:56):
So maybe step one is we want to be able to help our kids be more empathetic. Start with yourself, get yourself into a literary book club or read some good literary fiction so you're stepping into the shoes, you'll stretch your own empathy levels. And I don't think there's any better toolkit as a parent to be able to empathize with your child.

Elizabeth Romanski (08:14):
I agree. I think books are an underrated way that you can learn empathy, not just as adults. I think it's really important, and I am hopeful because I feel like book clubs have gained in popularity, especially this year. But I do feel like books are just for all ages that create the foundation of empathy because in books, characters are so much more vulnerable and you're able to see all of those sides of people and how they feel. And so I think it is a good foundation. So that's a great, that's a great tip for parents.

Dr. Michele Borba (08:42):
Well, here's another tip for parents. And I so agree with what you just said because when I was writing "Unselfie" and I knew empathy was so critical, I was trying to figure out if it's so critical and all the evidence says, we can cultivate it, then what are the habits that we can use to cultivate it?

Elizabeth Romanski (08:58):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (08:58):
And we already talked about the first one, which is emotional literacy, start talking emotions far with your children. And then the second one is moral identity, which means help your child see themselves as a caring person or that kind and caring matters in your home. Just keep emphasizing it. We're so quick to say, what'd you get as opposed to what kind thing did you do?

Elizabeth Romanski (09:16):
Yeah.

Dr. Michele Borba (09:17):
So the child needs to realize caring matters. Number three, we talked about! Perspective taking, getting into the shoes of the other one. Four? Bingo. You just mentioned it. And that is what I call moral imagination. That's using books and films. I don't care if you're two or 45, the same thing works because the kind of images or books we read can either elevate our empathy levels or diminish us. Let's be picky on what we read to our kids. Let's expose them, and let's turn off the news right now. All that doom and gloom? Children who are very empathetic after a while, that's going to take their empathy levels down, because they see the world is a mean and scary place. And so when we keep going up the levels of all those nine habits, we're trying to get them to be able to get to moral courage, to step in and do the right thing and help another person.

Ann Gadzikowski (10:05):
And, this is stating the obvious, but we're talking about all genders.

Elizabeth Romanski (10:09):
You know, it's hard for people to realize that all children, no matter what gender need to focus on empathy,

Dr. Michele Borba (10:16):
You know what? Yale studies is nodding up and down and going, yes, because - and here we're all going to feel guilty as moms. I'm a mom of three boys. Well, I looked at a study on Yale and what they did is that they were watching us as moms with our two year old sons versus our two year old daughters. And what did we do? We talked emotions far more with our two-year-old girls, than we do with our two year old boys. In fact, it was all about, "Oh, you look so happy. Oh my gosh, how wonderful all does sweetheart? That's so glorious" to the girl. What do we do with the boys? "Oh boys don't cry. Oh boy, you'll lose your friends if you do that." If we keep doing that, what they discovered is that even by the age of five, there's already a pink blue divide with the emotions. Our boys walk into kindergarten, far less prepared for emotional literacy, cause we haven't been talking it nearly enough. The solution is real simple: Talk. Emotions. Naturally. You don't need a program. You don't need a tutor. You just find simple little ways to talk about it because we've already discovered the teachers really appreciate an empathetic kid as they get older and older because they're deeper thinkers. They get far deeper into the character or the history lesson or the science or how their friend is feeling. And that's what the world needs. Let's go one step more. That's why Harvard also says, Harvard Business Review? That empathy is now the top employability factor because they're looking for employers who can get into the shoes of the client and go, "how would I feel if that happened to me?" It doesn't start at age 22. It starts when our kids are younger and we keep on building.

Elizabeth Romanski (11:46):
I'm really curious though, because you had your very popular TEDx talk in 2016. So that's already four years ago. You know, I think we can all agree that empathy has started to become a little bit more of a topic to discuss in the last four years. So have you seen, again COVID aside, cause I'll ask that related question in a bit, but have you seen any improvements in empathy among kids or...? You know, how have things changed since you had your talk?

Dr. Michele Borba (12:12):
That is a fascinating one. When I wrote "Unselfie", that was like five years ago and empathy was kind of seen as soft and fluffy. It wasn't transformational. I did a Ted talk called "Empathy is a Verb", and all of a sudden people started listening to it. And the fascinating thing is when you listen to the news, all of a sudden empathy is now spoken as a word, you hear it a lot in politics, of the empathy. My concern is that we may - in the mainstream - may be seeing it as critical, but as parents not quite simply doing it enough, teachers were the ones who bought into it. Counselors were the ones who bought into it. And I think they were buying into it because they were seeing a dip. The children coming in, because stress levels were going up, we've seen that. That's nothing new here. We're seeing a tremendous spike in stress levels of children prior to COVID. Well, as stress builds, you dial your empathy down, because you gotta be in survival mode. And what's happening to adults, as their stress builds, you dial your empathy down and pretty soon what happens is burnout 101, and there's the other thing that's happening. Counselors are always like "Baby, I think 10 years ahead of the game." They're seeing, this is something that kids need. We're put too much emphasis on test scores and GPA, and we've failed to raise the whole kid.

Elizabeth Romanski (13:25):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (13:25):
And now what we're dealing is, we're seeing a backlash of horrific stress and mental health needs. I just did an interview with teens and I asked them "Prior to COVID, how are you all feeling?" Every kid who's a teen told me "We're the most stressed out generation there is. We're not able to read one another. We're always looking at phones, not each other." And they said, "We fear we're being raised" - This is one kid who just broke my heart - "We're being raised as products. More like a test score, as opposed to a kid. It's all about what you get as opposed to who you are." That's very sad because you put it all together. It's that relationships we now know are the health and the vital bus that keep us together. Now we've got social distancing, so we've got another problem, but gotta keep it in mind in the big picture what's happening to our children.

Elizabeth Romanski (14:12):
Okay. So it's time for a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Ann Gadzikowski (14:28):
I am hearing a lot more about social, emotional learning, um, at least among educators. And I think parents and families are starting to get more curious about it too. Probably because of COVID, because we have kids learning at home and are really lonely and feeling isolated. So can you talk a little bit about how your work applies to the current situation?

Dr. Michele Borba (14:48):
Actually it dovetails absolutely perfectly because the first thing is we need to realize - you've, you've, mentioned the question and I think we need to go one step more with it. We're at a moment that I think is a perfect storm that can either take empathy up or down. Financial instability, stress levels going up, distance learning, being removed and, uh, social distanced from each other. All of those take empathy down. But on the other hand, don't go raising the white flag and say, there's nothing we can do about it. Our children are lonely. So what do we do? Well, we get creative. We've always done that. Let's just get creative. We can do zoom play dates. If they're regular, it's not like, "Okay, let's, let's find a kid who can go online." We can do zoom buddies for learning. We did paired sharing in a classroom. When it's my turn and it's your turn, now turn and discuss, or flash your flashcards with your friend and help each other. We can do the same thing when they're done with zoom learning. What a great thing to have a friend who can now be the buddy at three o'clock in the afternoon. Maybe the two of you just get online and look at each other in the face and find out how you're doing and just flash those flashcards or discuss your books. The other thing I've seen parents doing is zoom book clubs for kids! Let's all read "Wonder together. Oh gosh, don't you love that book? The kids love that book. Oh, I asked middle school kids, "What's your favorite book?" They're telling me "The Outsiders". I'm looking at 'em I go, "Really? That's like 50 years old!" And they go, "Yeah, but it's helping us get into the other shoes of the kid and understand what it feels like to be excluded." I'm going, "That's exactly what you need." Teens are saying, "Would you talk to us more about what's going on about hate, about racism." "That is history," one kids said "That is history, you know!" But parents need to stop thinking that it has to go away. No, we need to know about it because it's our world.

Elizabeth Romanski (16:30):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (16:30):
Kids at every age are craving this. We just need to be creative and step up to the plate.

Elizabeth Romanski (16:35):
Yeah. And I am curious on, because it's created so much isolation this year, but do you feel like you can get, and grow, and strengthen the empathy on zoom? Is it almost like as long as you can see the other person, whether it's through FaceTime or zoom or Google or whatever, that they're able to still tap into the empathy skills? Because I, I wonder if they have to be kind of there to not only see the person, but also just kind of feel their presence.

Dr. Michele Borba (17:01):
It's a good question. I think what we need to do is prime the child a little more, because this is a new, a whole new avenue of going. Now, we're looking at a screen and not looking at the person sitting next to me.

Elizabeth Romanski (17:14):
Mhm.

Dr. Michele Borba (17:14):
But how glorious to be able to say, you know what, let's call grandma. Let's FaceTime her, but let's listen to her voice. So you'll know when she's tired, or let's watch her face, so you'll know when she's happy or stressed. 'Cause kids, middle school kids - Common Sense Media did a report that said that middle school kids were more comfortable texting than talking. They were looking down, not up. What they were then doing is not using a phone. They were texting. So they weren't listening to voice tone, and they weren't looking at body posture. I think what we look at as emotional literacy is only looking at a face, where you can learn it from voice. You can learn it from posture. In fact, it was fascinating. I was, I was working at the Ray Charles School for deaf and blind children about empathy levels. And I discovered something that was absolutely I wasn't expecting. That blind children have a heightened level of empathy over deaf children. I go, "How could that be? They can't see the person." But I discovered what the blind child does is compensate by learning to hear the voice tone. Now the deaf child, very often at a young age, the parent may not know that the child is deaf and doesn't know how to communicate. So it just means that they're a little bit slower in the commodity of catching up. Look, no matter what our child's level is, all we need to do is figure out how to just tweak it a little bit and help the child learn. Are you an audio learner? Are you a visual learner? But for heaven's sakes, during this time during COVID, when we're certainly into social distancing, we know our kids are being robbed of what they need above all else is that buddy sitting side by side. But maybe there's a silver lining. It's more time that we have families sitting side by side. Family meals that we didn't do before. We gotta take advantage of those because you know, this is going to go by very quickly, and these are going to be lost moments if we don't say, "They're stuck in the house with us, maybe we can take advantage of it!"

Elizabeth Romanski (19:03):
Yeah. At the same time, I've heard a lot already in this, um, about compassion fatigue. And I wanted to kind of circle back to that because, you know, we just spent a little bit of time talking about how we could use COVID to strengthen empathy among kids using video, but at the same time, because everyone is so stressed, the compassion fatigue must be at an all time high. And so first, because I don't know if all of our audience understands what compassion fatigue is, so I wanted to hear your definition, but then I also want to hear how you think we as parents and for our kids can sort of mitigate that and make sure that we're not reaching a compassion fatigue. When right now it's more crucial to be empathetic than ever, I would say.

Dr. Michele Borba (19:42):
Think of compassion fatigue as - probably the best example of it are first responders. You watch them being so exhausted. They have such empathy for people, the doctors, the nurses, and then after a while they watch just a steady death toll, and they watch so much, uh, suffering. And after result, what happens is their own levels of empathy go down because they have to protect themself, and they're absolutely at an exhausted level of giving back. So what we're finding is the Boston University and many major universities are now helping first responders keep their empathy open and up. One way, if you yourself, as an adult, if you realize, "Oh my gosh, I'm really suffering. My empathy levels is going down." It probably is because you're looking at people in an affect level, but there's different kinds of empathy. One kind is affect. When you can see that in a child, they watched the movie Bambi and they're a basket case. They go into their room and they're just like sobbing their way through. That's affective empathy, but there's also cognitive empathy. That's the child who you think, I don't know if he has empathy. He's always so quiet. Not necessarily! That's a child who may be trying to understand where the other person's coming from. So one way you can actually help your compassion fatigue is go from affect into cognitive, and talk yourself into, "Hey, I need to think this through and not put this on my heart so much because it's exhausting me." Now, how you take that up a level for your children? You use the science. Step number one, back to the teens I interviewed. I say, "What do you guys doing? And we're so stressed, but what are you doing to help?" One group says, "Well, we're doing quarantine bags." And I went "What's that?" "We're worried about our friends who don't have access to counselors. They were depressed before that. We can hear it in their voice. We wanted to do something for them. So we got a group of friends. We're social distancing, Dr. Borba. We're not with each other. We're wearing masks." but I said, "Wo what are you doing?" "Well, we're planning this on by text where we put together" - Oh, this is so wonderful - "We put together like little bags, like lunch bags. And we put things inside them. Like maybe a note, a handwritten note that we miss you or how you're doing, or maybe a gum or maybe a candy. And we decorate the bag. We dropped the quarantine bag at the end of the driveway. And then we go." It's absolutely amazing. "It makes us feel so good. But each of the kids, when they get our bags, calls us up in tears, thinking, thank you for thinking about me. I didn't realize somebody was thinking about me." Okay. Now what's that do? One of the best ways to get rid of the compassion, fatigue or the best ways to boost empathy right now and reduce your stress is give, not get. "Hey, Mrs. Jones is next door. She's all by herself. You think she's lonely?" "I think she is too." "What can we do?" "Good idea. Let's bake her some cookies and drop it off at the porch." Or those precious children in Ohio who realized that their neighbor was so lonely. So they dragged their cellos onto her porch, sat there and played the cellos to her. The children were social distancing from her, but they take a video of it. The video went viral. Everybody cried, I'm crying just telling you the story!

Elizabeth Romanski (22:49):
Uhuh!

Dr. Michele Borba (22:49):
But it was the kids coming up with the idea. What can you do to help whoever is lonely? Some kids that could be playing a game. So it could be the cello. Some kids it could be the quarantine bag. Mobilize your children's hearts, ask them what we can do. And you will find one of the best ways to keep their hearts open their empathy, open and boost their stress down.

Elizabeth Romanski (23:10):
I also really like how you said, ask them what they want to do, because if you're giving them the, you know, the independence and authority to choose what they want to give, then they're going to be much more invested than you're just like, you should do this.

Dr. Michele Borba (23:22):
The other thing it becomes your idea, not theirs. What you want to do is empower the child. Oh my gosh. When I was writing Unselfie, my favorite chapter is chapter nine. I interviewed dozens of kids. All the teachers would say "Go figure out how that kid became so darn compassionate! That kid is absolutely glorious." It didn't make any difference if they were five or 17. But I remember interviewing a kid, gosh, he was, must've been around nine. His name was Nathan. I'll never forget Nathan. I said, "Everybody's talking about you, Nathan, that you're amazing that you were helping homeless people. How did you start that?" He said "I was driving, and it was a rainy day and I was in the back seat, and my mom was driving along the street and I saw this man and he looks so wet and so lonely. And I asked mom, can we give that man that extra overcoat? Daddy's coats in the backseat? Can we give him the overcoat? My mom stopped the car. She said, 'Sure, Nathan.' I took the coat. I gave it to the man. The look on his face was like, he started to cry a little bit. And you said, thanks for thinking of me. I got into the car. I got in the backseat. My mom drove away. I couldn't stop looking at him. He was, kept waving and kept waving. When I got home, I said, 'Mom, we gotta do this again!' Pretty soon we didn't have any coats left in the house. Pretty soon, there was no coats left in the neighborhood. All the rest of the kids started to help." But he said, "That's the moment it was giving it to one person. And it really made me realize, wow, I can do something really good to make somebody feel better." Oh, there's nothing more powerful.

Ann Gadzikowski (24:52):
So when we're thinking about our listeners, our parents who are at home and many of them are, um, you know, feeling overwhelmed or feeling stressed out. As we were talking about at the beginning, if you had just one piece of advice or wisdom to offer them, what do you think would be at the top of your list?

Dr. Michele Borba (25:08):
I think what we need to realize is that we got to take care of ourselves before we take care of our kids, because our stress really does spill over to our children.

Elizabeth Romanski (25:18):
Mm.

Dr. Michele Borba(25:18):
We want so much to do so much for them. Then maybe this is a time to stop being a verb and be a noun. Just be not do. And the reason for that, this is psychology that looked at thousands and thousands of studies on parenting. I mean there's been a lot of studies on really, truly what makes the good parent? A number one on the list, when they looked at the most highly correlated factors of good parenting, the number one long list was no brainer. They love the kid. Okay. Duh! What's number two on the list? Had nothing to do with the child. Number two on the list was the parent who figured out how to manage their stress. Because the parent who managed their stress had a child who was less stressed. That's why the habit number five in "Unselfie" of the nine habits of empathy is self-regulation. We've got to learn to cope with our own stress levels. And this is an absolutely goldmine opportunity right now in the months with our children are with us at home where we can also teach our children how to cope. This is an uncertain, uncertain world. If it's not COVID, I live in California where there's fires. If it's not a fire, it's going to be an earthquake. If it's not an earthquake, it's going to be something else. Our children are living in uncertainty. And one of the things that they're going to have to learn besides empathy is how to cope. How to learn a coping skill. Maybe the first thing we do all month long is just identify each other's stress signs. "Look, mommy, you're starting to get stressed, cause you're doing that weird thing with your eyes!" That's what my kids would tell me. And then you can turn to your kids and go "Looks like you're getting stressed because your feet are starting to go back and forth or your hands are starting to go into a little fist." This isn't discipline. This is, gloriously, look what's happening. And then what you could do something wonderful, is once the kids all know their stress signs, you can do step two. Everybody can come up with the stress sign. You just put your hand straight out. Don't say a thing, just put your hands straight out. That your timeout signal. That means I need some space. And number three is what do you do? Oh, this is wonderful. Make a calm down corner in your house.

Elizabeth Romanski (27:20):
Mm.

Dr. Michele Borba (27:20):
Have your kids help you make the calm down corner. Don't you do it for the kids. They can grab their beanbag chairs. They can grab pillows. They can grab books. Teen say they want music. Little kids say, maybe it's a Koosh ball. But every time you start to feel that stress sign, you give yourself the timeout signal, go to that calm down corner. And everybody in the house will start using that calm down corner. The rest of your child's life, they're going to know their signs, they're going to know they need to be able to take those deep, slow breaths. You can teach them deep, slow breathing as well, but I think we forget that they first need to know their signs. They second need to be able to say I'm getting stressed or I need to calm down and third, they need a place to go.

Ann Gadzikowski (28:00):
So Dr. Michelle Borba, thank you so much for joining us. It was such a pleasure to talk to you today.

Elizabeth Romanski (28:06):
It was.

Ann Gadzikowski (28:06):
We appreciate your sharing your expertise and giving us advice on how to develop empathy.

Elizabeth Romanski (28:11):
We really appreciate it. So thank you so much.

Dr. Michele Borba (28:14):
You're so welcome. Thank you.

Elizabeth Romanski (28:18):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Raising Curious Learners. Special, thanks to our guest today, Dr. Michele Borba, author of "Unselfie: How Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World", for giving us some tips on how we can help encourage our children to build their empathy, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm Elizabeth Romanski and my co-host is Ann Gadzikowski. Our audio engineer and editor for this episode is Emily Goldstein. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, leave us a review and share with your friends. This program is copyrighted by Encyclopedia Britannica Incorporated, all rights reserved.