How playing outside teaches children lessons in empathy

Empathy is an important life skill, which means feeling for others and understanding how they feel when putting yourself in someone’s shoes. This enhances the ability to understand and respect others. Since children are not naturally born to empathize, they learn it through outdoor activities. In this post, I’m going to highlight some ways that play increases empathy skills in children.

1. Cooperation
Playing outdoors is all about teamwork, which, in turn, is linked to cooperation. While playing in a group, each member must interact and support another to achieve the desired goal. Whether they’re playing on a playground, a classroom, or a neighborhood park, outdoor playtime involves assistive work that ties directly to empathy skills.

2. Mind reading
In addition to playing with preschool playground equipment or other types of equipment, some simple games like chess or checkers help to understand what the opponent is thinking. We cannot learn this important life skill any other way. When a child becomes smart enough to read the minds of others, this makes him empathize as he is now able to walk in their shoes.

3. Feel what others feel
Imaginative play or pretend play is all about being something you are not. When a child acts as a teacher, a doctor, and an architect, and goes through all the processes that these characters regularly go through, he comes to know how he feels. One can only understand another person’s feelings when he goes through the same process. Through pretend play, a child becomes able to see life from another person’s point of view and this makes him feel empathy.

4. Take care of the feelings of others
Children sometimes do stupid things, like hit an animal and enjoy it. They do it out of ignorance of the fact that other living beings have feelings. While playing outdoors, especially on a playground, children meet and greet their peers and colleagues and cooperate with them in play. When an unfavorable event occurs, such as an injury to a partner, he feels what his friend would feel and helps him cover his injuries.

Similarly, there are cats and dogs roaming around some playgrounds. I remember taking my daughter to the shade structure in San Diego and she interacted with some cute cats there and started hitting on her. I told him just how we feel hurt with wounds and wounds; animals can also feel the same. That’s how she learned to empathize and I haven’t seen her hitting an animal since then.

5. Respect the choice of others
It happens very often on a playground that one child wants to play one game while another wants to experience something else. When two children of different play options interact, they respect each other’s choice. Never in my experience have I seen children fighting to force each other to play a particular game. Each child has the freedom to play what he likes, and this, I believe, is the key to learning empathy.

6. Achieve a common goal
A group has a common goal and each member tries his best to achieve it. One day I saw some kids playing puzzles together and all of them were struggling to complete it and they were trying their best. By concentrating a little more, I realized that they were the same children that I saw a few days ago fighting among themselves over something. This made me realize that playing outdoors brings empathy to the personality of children. They work together forgetting all the differences and grudges when they have to, and this is amazing!