A Quote by Stephanie Land

I think my biggest role as a parent is teaching empathy. — © Stephanie Land
I think my biggest role as a parent is teaching empathy.
The traditional paradigm of parenting has been very hierarchical, the parent knows best and very top down. Conscious parenting topples [this paradigm] on its head and creates this mutuality, this circularity where both parent and child serve each other and where in fact, perhaps, the child could be even more of a guru for the parent .... teaching the parent how the parent needs to grow, teaching the parent how to enter the present moment like only children know how to do.
We have become a society that lacks empathy. Are we teaching empathy? The Internet desensitises, too.
Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel.
I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy; not being able to look at the other person down the street.
For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there.
I think there's such a fine line in a relationship. The role of imagination and privacy... how much space can you allow before that becomes distance? And similarly, imagination is empathy. That's how you achieve empathy. It's how you can be with another person and understand how they are in the world.
As a teacher and parent, I've had a very personal interest in seeking new ways of teaching. Like most other teachers and parents, I've been well aware painfully so, at times that the whole teaching/learning process is extraordinarily imprecise, most of the time a hit-and-miss operation. Students may not learn what we think we are teaching them and what they learn may not be what we intended to teach them at all.
Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent's job is to make the rule. The child's job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines. The child breaks the rule again, and the parent manages the consequences and empathy that then turn the rule into reality and internal structure for the child.
The amazing thing about becoming a parent is that you will never again be your own first priority. The gift of motherhood is the selflessness that it introduces you to, and I think that's really freeing... I think it allows you to put yourself in other people's shoes...the empathy that it slugs you with, being a mother. And I think it makes you a better storyteller.
By default I am the good parent. I've used my own personal experience. I came from a world where I was in need and starving for the good parent, so it's like I'm bringing my own persona issues into that. I am the parent that I always wanted to have; that's how I look at my role.
Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that, in most cases, it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.
I think the biggest problem is parents are so concerned with being friends with their kids. You're not their friend. You're their parent.
I honestly think the biggest trials end up teaching you how to let go.
Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life's biggest questions, but actually, the opposite is true. The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers.
I don't think conservativism is about a deficiency. I think it's about a commitment to an ideology that has to in some ways devalue the usefulness of empathy. I do think empathy can be learned. And enhanced.
With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels.
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