Educating our children to be empathic with others is a daily task in which parents have a fundamental role, but in families where there are brothers, they also have an important impact on the development of empathy in children.
When children have kind, caring and understanding older brothers and sisters, they tend to be more empathetic than children whose siblings lack these traits. It is the conclusion reached by a study recently published in the journal Child development
According to researchers at the University of Calgary, Laval University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Toronto, both older and younger siblings exert a positive influence mutual in empathic concern for the other over time. And it begins earlier than they thought.
“It was known that younger siblings influence older ones during adolescence, but our study indicates that this process can start long before we thought”.
In Babies and more The love of sisters, a beautiful friendship that begins from childhood Beyond the influence of parents, both older and younger siblings positively influence the development of empathy.To study it, the researchers looked at the behaviors of a group of 452 pairs of Canadian brothers 18 and 48 months old, and their mothers. They wanted to see if empathy levels could predict changes in the empathy of the other brothers 18 months later.
Videos of family interactions were recorded and each mother completed a questionnaire. The empathy of the children was measured by observing the behavioral and facial responses of each sibling to an adult investigator who pretended to be distressed (for example, after breaking a valuable item) and injured (for example, after hitting his knee) .
"Although it is assumed that older siblings and parents are the primary social influences in the development of young children, it turns out that little brothers also contribute positively to the development of empathy in older brothers, "said Marc Jambon, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto.
The emotional education that we give to our children is key so that they have the capacity to be respectful and understanding with others, as it is of course, our example (if you are empathic with your children, they will be with others). But also, sharing life with a brother (or siblings) is the best empathy school for our children.
In Babies and more Having sisters helps promote good emotional health during adolescence
