Researchers are now saying that having a sense of empathy can help creativity blossom in children. As their children grow, moms try and instil some very important lessons into them. They want to make sure that they are raising kind and empathetic children. That their children will grow up to help others when they need and be able to understand emotions in other people. On top of empathy, moms want their children to be creative. This doesn’t just mean being able to draw a nice picture, but the ability to think outside-the-box and take anything in their lives and turn it into something beautiful.
According to CNN, researchers have found a link between the two, and they are stating that having a sense of empathy can help children become more creative in life. It seems like a 2-for-1 special that all moms can sign up for.
Bill Nicholl and Helen Demetriou are both lecturers at the University of Cambridge and they created and oversaw a study that was published by SAGE Journals. Their aim was to see what would happen if you combined social/emotional learning with more traditional work.
They used a case study about making an asthma-treatment “pack” for young children, and they did it at two different schools with two different sets of students. They had to create a kit that had practical details on how to treat asthma, the tools required to treat, as well as, the understanding of the emotional feelings involved when having asthma.
The “catch” was that one group had spent the year previously following a special curriculum that integrated empathy into their learning. The other group that was asked was following the usual, traditional curriculum. When both groups were done, the researchers compared the finished projects and found that empathy really does boost creativity.
The students who followed an empathy-based curriculum were much more creative in their outcomes. Children can apply the sense of empathy to any settings, including make kits for young children who had a respiratory ailment.
The research also showed that children who were learning empathy had a high engagement with learning and school in general, and this helped to close the gender gap when it came to learning.
Empathy is an important skill for children to have as they grow, and it is what is going to lead them to be compassionate to those around them, but it turns out that there are more benefits to empathy than we thought we knew.
Sources: CNN, SAGE Journal