Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child

If everyone learned at a young age the importance of true compassion, understanding and empathy for other human beings- our world would be very different.Teaching children information is very different than creating an experience to find out how others feel.This critically helps us realize our common humanity...how our behavior affects others...what our emotions are...and how what we first-think, say and do -deeply impacts others.It leads to self-responsibilty-excatly what we all need more of.This is critically important!This Book and Program shows us how to incorportae this in our schools...through their interactions with babies.What else happens that is quite amazing is that it gets children to open up about their own feelings...either form their time as babies or in how they may be felling in the "here and now"-something that is very important.Thanks for writing this book. I am hoping many others discover it.Sincerely, Bonny Corbeil.Virgin Islands.

As a social worker who has been running parenting groups for mothers referred by Child Protective Services for a few years now, I loved this book and the brilliant work and program Dr. Mary Gordon describes in it. I would so love to see this program in all our schools here in the States as I firmly believe it would help our children develop better social and emotional skills on multiple levels. In fact, the kind of sensitive, gentle observing and interacting that this program describes and encourages in the classroom would benefit all of us as it really focuses empathic attention and attunement right where it's needed most, with our infants and young children.

Mary Gordon grew up in a family of super-feelers, with parents deeply concerned about social justice. She couldn't buy black Mary Janes because little girls in India did not have shoes at all. And her family dinner table often included newly released convicts, invited for their first hot meal as free men. Gordon has now taken her extraordinarily high  Emotional Intelligence  and created a program to spread empathy across the globe, starting with elementary-age children.The Roots of Empathy program brings newborns into the classroom once a month and uses the experience to build lessons about relationships, parenting, and empathy. The program has been successful in reducing bullying, abusive parenting, and prejudice.Parents should read Roots of Empathy to learn real-world strategies for encouraging empathy in their own children. Gordon writes, "The instructor uses well-known children's literature to illustrate emotions such as loneliness and sadness and to underscore themes such as inclusion and bullying." Parents can use storytime to talk about feelings with their children, opening up the opportunity for those conversations later in life.Gordon's overarching premise is that babies are uniquely positioned to teach emotional literacy. Students learn by "observing the baby's experiences and the emotions they inspire; naming the emotions; anchoring the emotion in themselves privately through discussion; reflection, art, and journaling; and discussing their feelings with others." Parents too can take lessons from this progression. The next time your child sees a kid crying is an opportunity for you to help you child expand his or her emotional intelligence.Gordon also points out practices that inhibit the development of empathy. "Labeling children as the 'Down syndrome child' or the 'immigrant child' is a failure of inclusion," she writes. "It is defining people by their differences and erecting barriers to recognizing their achievements and contributions." Conversely, showing children their commonality with others paves the way for them to be caring, giving adults. The authors of the  The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement  similarly found that the most effective way to combat the growing wave of narcissism in American society is to create a sense connection with others. They wrote, "When we see ourselves as connected to others, egotism dissipates." Gordon's book puts a how-to lesson behind that conclusion.Gordon's book, however, is devoid of sociological or psychological research. The book is aspirational, along the lines of, if every classroom adopted the Roots of Empathy, we could change the world. This is repeated over and over in different variants and slows the book down at times.The book also includes a few dozen drawings from Roots of Empathy students, showing what their wishes for the infants that have acted as their teachers during the school year. Some kids wish for people to be nice to the baby. Others wish for the baby to have safe housing, or to live in a world with no war. The lesson from the drawings is that kids are naturally empathetic, and we only need to encourage those feelings to emerge. Gordon never discusses politics, but the reader might be struck by the fact that none of the children are concerned about wealth transfers or military strength, two constant themes in American political discussion. So there is a political lesson in this book as well: Our children display a natural capacity for empathy. This ingrained concern for others can flourish, if only we seek to show people what they have in common, instead of what pulls them apart. Most American political talk today, however, is about fights among factions--rich versus poor, Keynes versus Hayek, conservative versus progressive. Those divisive conversations kill empathy at its root, and there aren't powerful forces out there to create a balance. We've left it up to people like Mary Gordon to save our natural empathic natures from this destruction. But we need to do more to help them succeed.

Root of Empathy started in Canada. If I recall correctly, the program has been adopted country wide in public schools. It's used in many cities in the US, including the Seattle area where I live. Contrasted with teaching anti-bullying, this is all about teaching empathy. Evidence based and replicated research, including research results on Roots of Empathy, informs us of that teaching empathy is the key to raising children. If you engage with children, you'll be enlightened by this book.

This book could be very useful in today's political arena. Mary Gordon believes that Empathy is innate, that we are born with great abilities for Empathy. And how do we become Un-Empathic? Take a look at Trump and how he treats people and at how his father treated him........ A book for every parent, teacher, and those who care for children.

As a Board Certified Educational Therapist, I applaud Mary Gordon for her exemplary text. I was so taken by her empathic approach, that I will be citing her work in the second edition of The Clinical Practice of Educational Therapy: Learning and Functioning with Diversity, co-edited by myself and Jane Adelizzi, which should be out Fall 2017.

Gordon has an accessibility to her work that is engaging and inspiring. I was pleasantly surprised by this book and how quick the read is compared to some other books in this genre. If you want to learn about how to engage with children to promote empathy (good people), this is a must read.

If you are interested in stopping bullying this book is extremely helpful and insightful in understanding why it happens and how it can be stopped. The premise is that babies are born without bias and we teach them how to be what they become - whether it be "good" or "bad".

There's no question: The Roots of Empathy program introduced in this book needs to be in every school so that every child can experience it. There is no exaggeration in its claim that we can change the world child by child through this simple yet profound program. Parenting skills as well as empathy are introduced to children in a process that is nothing short of brilliant.Kudos Mary Gordon! Exceedingly well done!

El texto combina en exceso las fuentes de investigación y la propaganda del programa Roots of Empathy. Se hace excesivo en muchas ocasiones, perdiendo interés para aquellos que no estén específicamente interesados en este programa, como es mi caso.De fácil lectura y bien investigado, es un buen texto para conocer la aplicación de la empatía al mundo de la educación.

It took some time to get the book as the book was shipped from oversea, but the book is clean and I am satisfied with it.

This book describes the Roots of Empathy programme that has been running in Canada for several years to teach primary school children empathy, emotional intelligence and a host of other skills. The book is highly readable giving the right amount of detail and science and a wealth of beautiful examples of real children's reactions and work. I am a parent and a teacher, yet I learned a great deal about children and how they learn and develop. A really wonderful programme - I highly recommend this book.

I had never heard of the movement to take parents and young babies in to schools. It seemed like such a fine idea and the studies done evaluating the programs proved that children learned a lot from these sessions. Anything at all that will reduce children's anger and alienation should be implemented by caring adults. We throw away "kids" like disposable diapers, all over the world, even in civilized countries!