By the time learners reach adolescence, their ability to take on the perspective of another person is well-developed. When you add this to the emerging sense of their own identities and their strong commitment to social justice, the Third Plane is an ideal opportunity to see empathy at work. Except that we don't look for it all that often. Except that we are so fixated on teenagers' choice of dress or hair or music that we forget that, even these, can we evidence of their emp

If you believe what you see in the media, you might expect children in the Second Plane to be just plain awful, disrespectful and limit-testing and unkempt and chaotic. There's some of that, to be true, for important developmental reasons. But the same phenomena of development that make children in the Second Plane so distasteful sometimes also supports some really lovely expressions of empathy. In earlier development, children may have been capable of emotional contagion, pi

As infants and toddlers, children demonstrate initial kindness, especially toward people with whom they have a special bond. As they move into Early Childhood, children's natural empathy also expands. They are able both to understand that people's emotions have causes and they are increasingly able to demonstrate empathetic concern, that ability to take care of others when they are in distress. But just as in their earlier development, these developing expressions of kindness

Are children naturally empathetic? You may have heard of the phenomenon of infants crying in a nursery, reacting to each other's cries in a sort of snowball of emotional distress. Research shows that newborns, for example, respond more to the cries of other babies then they do to other loud sounds. They respond more to the cries of other babies than they do even to the recorded sound of their own cries. Caregivers often describe this response as evidence of the innate nature

By the time learners reach adolescence, their ability to take on the perspective of another person is well-developed. When you add this to the emerging sense of their own identities and their strong commitment to social justice, the Third Plane is an ideal opportunity to see empathy at work. Except that we don't look for it all that often. Except that we are so fixated on teenagers' choice of dress or hair or music that we forget that, even these, can we evidence of their emp

If you believe what you see in the media, you might expect children in the Second Plane to be just plain awful, disrespectful and limit-testing and unkempt and chaotic. There's some of that, to be true, for important developmental reasons. But the same phenomena of development that make children in the Second Plane so distasteful sometimes also supports some really lovely expressions of empathy. In earlier development, children may have been capable of emotional contagion, pi

As infants and toddlers, children demonstrate initial kindness, especially toward people with whom they have a special bond. As they move into Early Childhood, children's natural empathy also expands. They are able both to understand that people's emotions have causes and they are increasingly able to demonstrate empathetic concern, that ability to take care of others when they are in distress. But just as in their earlier development, these developing expressions of kindness

Are children naturally empathetic? You may have heard of the phenomenon of infants crying in a nursery, reacting to each other's cries in a sort of snowball of emotional distress. Research shows that newborns, for example, respond more to the cries of other babies then they do to other loud sounds. They respond more to the cries of other babies than they do even to the recorded sound of their own cries. Caregivers often describe this response as evidence of the innate nature