SCHOOL OF LOVE:
Bringing a baby into the classroom helps Kiwi kids learn to manage their own emotions and understand how others feel. Emma Clifton watches the Roots of Empathy programme in action and finds out about its powerful impact.
babies teach kids about the power of empathy
When you enter a classroom running a Roots of Empathy programme, you might find the teacher looks a little different to normal. Sure, he might be wearing an official T-shirt that reads “Teacher”, but he’s also as likely to be having a quick nap or looking for a snack. In this lesson, the teacher might be just a few months old, but don’t let the adorability factor fool you. This baby is here to help primary school students learn how to manage their own emotions, read physical cues and understand the concept of empathy, a characteristic that
Roots of Empathy founder Mary Gordon believes is the functional key that can determine either a good life or a difficult life, for both the students themselves and those around them.
“As children develop empathy, they become more adept at finding the humanity in one another. Without empathy, we can’t get to conflict resolution, altruism, or peace,” she writes in her book Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child.
The charity, Roots of Empathy, launched in Mary’s native Canada in 1996, but its ties to New Zealand run deep: we were the first country outside Canada to pick up the programme, in 2006. Helen Clark, then prime minister, met with Mary and was a supporter of the programme from the beginning.
Mary’s message is that if you can teach children how to manage their own emotions, rather than fear them, they learn in turn how other people feel. And it’s harder to hurt people if you know that their hurt feels just the same as yours. The idea came from Mary’s work as a teacher, particularly with teenage mothers. Some of these young mums faced a litany of issues: addiction, domestic violence, incarceration, poverty. Mary created a network of Parenting and Family Literacy Centres in Toronto, which has now been adopted by the provincial government.
It was successful, and research proved it worked. But her work with teenage mums made her want to go further.
“What I realised is that with all violence – whether it was child abuse or domestic violence – the common denominator was a lack of empathy,” she says. “I didn’t think anyone was evil. But I’ve worked in prisons and places like that and these people didn’t understand how others were feeling. They couldn’t feel it. So the other big ‘aha moment’ I had was, ‘okay, if the absence of empathy is the cause of all of this, where does empathy come from and how can we give people big doses of it?’”
“My understanding was that the
LEFT: Students are all smiles during Baby Noah’s classroom visit. BELOW Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy. key relationship is between a baby and a parent in the first year. If you parent a baby in a sensitive way, you’re in tune to your baby’s needs as best you can be… because nobody actually knows anything,” Mary laughs. “We’re all just trying to do our best – nobody really knows why a baby cries, but if you respond in a supportive way, that’s empathy. And the baby becomes empathetic.”
The general premise of the programme is deceptively simple. It runs once a week – and every third week a young parent brings their baby into the classroom and the children spend 30 minutes watching both the baby, and the baby with the parent. “In Roots of Empathy, we help children regulate their emotions by them watching this little baby,” says
Brenda McCormack, Director of International Relations and Business Development for Roots of Empathy. Babies are fantastic for learning emotions, because they can run through a wide spectrum of human emotions in the space of one lesson. “Everything from pure joy to being really frustrated and upset,” Brenda laughs. “We had a good example last week, when the instructor took the toy away. Every time the instructor took the toy away, the baby would look at her, like, ‘give me the toy!’ When the instructor took it away a second time, the baby’s whole body went rigid. So we’re teaching children to read body language and emotional cues.” The children are then asked
“I’ve worked in prisons… and these people didn’t understand how others were feeling.”
experiential questions. When was a time you felt angry? What did you do to help calm yourself down? The strategy has many benefits. Firstly, you can’t get an experiential question wrong, which means the whole class learns to participate, without fear of giving an incorrect answer. Secondly, they learn that their peers also get angry, and also have tools to cope with the anger. It’s an important point to make about the programme – the warm fuzzies are just the start. There
The Dalai Lama greets Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, before leading a discussion at a conference on compassion in the US city of Seattle. is a phenomenal amount of research to back up the results, with a number of researchers following the programme for 20 years. Roots of Empathy consistently reduces aggression and bullying in classrooms, as well as increasing “pro-social behaviour”, research-speak for kindness, sharing and including. Not only does it work on an individual level, it also works as a group: the classroom becomes less of a competitive arena, and more of a team.
“You see children being able to regulate their behaviour better and becoming more inclusive with each other, more caring,” Brenda says. “So suddenly the kid that never gets invited to the birthday party? They get invited that year. And that’s very significant. Because the children learn: how would I feel if I was excluded?”
All about love
Watching the parent and the baby interact also has another function – it demonstrates a healthy, loving parent/ child relationship as well, which not all the students in the classroom will get to experience in their own home lives. In her book, Mary talks about an intermediate level boy who had been in foster care since the age of four after seeing his mother killed in front of him. Life, and school, had not been easy for him since and he had been held back for two years, making him the oldest child in the classroom by far. He was tough looking, with a shaved and tattooed head, and when he asked to hold the baby, there was some initial hesitation. But he was a delight; rocking her in his arms while she snuggled into him.
When the boy returned the baby to her mother, he asked her: “If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
There are hundreds of anecdotes like this that will break your heart, Mary says. Towards the end of the programme, the students are asked to make a wish for something they want for the baby when the baby is their age – a completely selfless act which is also deeply telling about the kind of lives they themselves are leading.
Ally Fulcher, who runs the Roots of Empathy branch in New Zealand, tells the story of one Kiwi boy’s response. “His wish for the baby in his class was ‘I wish she has a better life than I do.’” Brenda adds a story about a Seattle boy, who was part of a classroom of children that included those living in homeless shelters.
“This little redhead boy, the first thing he said was ‘I wish our baby will always have his own pillow.’”
“It’s hard,” Mary says, seeing the children go through this. “And some people say to us, ‘Well, isn’t that cruel?’ No, it’s painful. But it’s like grief – just because you don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. But what it does – and this is what scientists have told me – is that it creates another channel in the brain, another track that allows the child to have a different frame of reference when they become a parent.”
While bringing this programme into lower decile schools is a priority, Mary says they also see the importance of targeting schools in the highest socio-economic areas as well. “There’s a good chance those children will be leaders, in business or government, and you want leaders who have empathy. You want leaders who bring empathy into their policies.”
It can be the deciding factor, Mary believes, between governments that hurt and governments that help. “Think about policies that come not from judgement and criticism, but from a place of ‘how do we solve a problem?’” she says. Scandinavian countries like Norway are world leaders when it comes to social policies that are designed to strengthen the bond between parents and their children, predominantly by supporting parents to have more time at home. Paid parental leave is both generous and flexible, not just for mothers, but also for fathers, who are expected to take a couple of months off as well. As well as that, working from home is encouraged.
“These children are the happiest children in the world and it’s all because of the parents. It’s not because they’re better parents than any of us, it’s because they have more time with their children.”
And that time is the most crucial part of being a good parent, Mary says. “I always say ‘love grows brains.’ Not instructions, love. What we are trying to say to parents is ‘it’s all about you.’ You’re the most important person to the baby. You don’t need to
stimulate the baby. Just hang out. All the baby wants to do is chill with you. When you realise that, you don’t need a course. You just need to have time. The relationship between the parent and the baby in the first year is where empathy blooms or fades.”
Baby lessons
One Thursday morning, at Bairds Mainfreight Primary, a decile one school in the South Auckland suburb of Otara, 20 students form a loose circle on a green blanket, waiting for the arrival of baby Noah and his mum, Deb, who was a teacher at the school for three years. She saw the profound effect the Roots of Empathy programme had on students in other classes. So when she was pregnant with Noah, she knew she wanted to take part. It’s exciting for the children as well, she says, because they saw her pregnant and then they met her baby, experiencing the full cycle.
Before Deb and Noah arrive, the classroom teacher, Michelle, urges the children to form a tighter circle. Noah is nicknamed “the escape artist” for his ability to crawl swiftly through gaps. When Deb brings baby Noah in, Ally, the Roots of Empathy instructor, tells the students, “E tu¯ ” and they all stand up and sing the welcoming song to the pair. “Kia ora pe¯pi Noah,” they begin, as Deb, carrying a beaming Noah in her arms, walks him around the circle so all the children can shake his tiny sock-clad foot as a greeting. Once they are all seated on the ground, Noah makes a beeline for a student in the corner, climbing into the lap of the young boy who is initially cautious but warms up over the course of the 30-minute session. Later on, Ally will tell me this is a pattern they see repeated in classroom after classroom: “The baby goes to the child who needs them the most.”
Anyone who’s had anything to do with children knows that keeping them engaged for more than five minutes can be a battle. Not in this programme though; each child sits there entranced, all eyes on their tiny
“The relationship between the parent and the baby in the first year is where empathy blooms or fades.”
tutor in the middle of their circle, wearing the “Teacher” T-shirt. They watch Noah play with toys, eat his favourite food – cucumber – and try a new food – avocado, which he smushes in his little hands before shoving the slice into his mouth. They are drawn on their own experiences and also asked to observe Noah. Did he like that food? How can you tell? Before they go to pick Noah up, they know to ask Noah if it’s okay for them to touch him. (Noah is having the time of his life, but the subtle lesson is one about touching and consent.) The children are not only in tune with Noah’s emotions, they also have their safety radar up: when
Noah spies a piece of bark on the ground, two boys immediately remove it. “Choking hazard,” one of them says.
Noah was just four months when the programme started and now, at 10 months, the children can see how he’s changed. He balances his body on an inflatable toy and, with a student holding it firmly, climbs into a standing position. The whole class, as one, cries “oooooooh” as Noah squawks victoriously. When the class finishes, he is taken around the circles again by Deb, and as the students sing goodbye he launches himself at various students for a hug. At the end, there is a line for cuddles. It’s hard to say who looks happier – Noah, or the tribe of children waiting to hold him.
After seeing just one example of the Roots of Empathy programme, it’s easy to see why Mary has faith in word of mouth as its main marketing strategy; the bare-faced wonder from this class of students, marvelling and learning from this delight of a child… I don’t think
I’ll ever forget it.
l Roots of Empathy is always looking for volunteers to take the programme around New Zealand. Please visit nz.rootsofempathy.org/new-zealand/.