Learning Empathy through Playing
Date: 02/01/2024
Play therapy is a form of counselling for children with emotional problems. As different types of Play Therapy are derived from different psychological theories, there are also multiple types of Play Therapy. Child-Centered Play Therapy is derived from Person-Centered Theory. Many people have the misconception that this is a Western theory that might not be suitable for Chinese society. In fact, this Western theory and traditional Chinese ideology share similar views on people.
Mencius said, “Everyone has a heart of compassion”. According to traditional Chinese ideology, a person will naturally feel anxious and regret if they see a young child fall into a well as humans are kind by nature. This traditional Chinese ideology is extremely similar to the empathy spoken of in Person-Centred Theory. In other words, you feel unhappy when you see others suffering and feel happy for others when you see them happy.
There is a Chinese proverb that is roughly translated as, “Water flows downwards, while people aim high”, which means that people are naturally motivated to improve. Meanwhile, according to Person-Centered Theory, people naturally have the need and power to aim for self-actualization. To self-actualize means to grow positively, understand your own strengths and weaknesses, establish life goals, and fully utilize your strength to strive to achieve your life goals. This Person-Centered Theory has a similar meaning to the viewpoint of the previously mentioned Chinese proverb. However, some people interpret this as the pursuit of fame and fortune, which places excessive focus on material needs, and may not necessarily be the original intention of our predecessors
Combining the concepts that “Born to be kind” and “strive to be good”, that is, empathy and self-actualization, gives us a solution for children’s negative emotions. When a counsellor empathizes with a child, and the child feels understood and accepted, the child’s inherent self-actualization power will be naturally brought into play, driving the child to shift their mindset from negative to positive. How do we empathize with children? Empathy concerns thoughts and feelings, and there are three levels of empathy:
1) Cognitive empathy (understanding what other people think);
2) Emotional empathy (understanding how other people feel); and
3) Compassionate empathy (experiencing what other people feel).
As the focus of empathy is feelings, it cannot be taught only by cognitive training but it requires a certain extent of cognitive thinking ability to understand other people. The cognitive thinking ability of kindergarten children is not well developed because of very young age. It is difficult for them to understand others. However, this is the prime time for the development of the “emotional brain”, which is why we must let children feel being empathized. In other words, if adults can be more aware of the feelings of children and show empathy, this will facilitate the development of empathy in children.
A few years ago, I counselled a child who was in K3. His mother sought help because her child would easily lose his temper, liked to compare, competition and stubborn. When I did Play Therapy with the child, I found that he liked to play competitive games that required a lot of thinking. It was because his parents often played this type of game with him to train his cognitive ability. Both of his parents were highly educated professionals.
However, his mother told me that he had a poor relationship with his father, and the more they played, the worse their relationship. The child always lost when he played with father. The father was an upright and rational person who insisted not to make a concession. The child became very unhappy because he lost every time they played games, so the father and son always ended games on bad terms. I tried to talk to the father, but he insisted that he wouldn’t fake anything. He understood that a child would be unhappy after losing but thought that children should not feel this way as he believed we must learn to face our failures to be able to face difficulties and challenges in the future. The things he said sounded somewhat reasonable.
Later, the mother found that her son would intentionally lose when playing games with his grandfather, and he wouldn’t lose his temper either. This was quite different to his competitive personality. She was curious and asked him about this. The child told mother that his grandfather often lost, and he knew that losing made people unhappy, so he deliberately lost to his grandfather because he didn’t want the later to be unhappy. She was really touched after hearing this and appreciated that her son had considered his grandfather’s feelings and was willing to let go of his desire to win. She told her husband about this, and he also appreciated what their son did because he could face failure and was willing to consider other people.
The son understood and accepted that his grandfather would feel unhappy after failure. He was empathizing with his grandfather. When people are empathetic, they will naturally care about other people, and they may even be willing to sacrifice their own interests sometimes. Why did he empathize with his grandfather? It turned out that his grandfather loved him a lot and was very concern of his feelings. His grandfather took his feelings seriously and understood what he was thinking. When children receive enough empathy, their desire to become better will naturally come into play, which generates positive feelings, guides positive behaviours, and leads them to consider other people’s feelings, be considerate of them, and help them.
In Child-Centered Play Therapy, the therapist delivers four messages to the child. One of them was “I understand”. This understanding includes the child’s behaviour, feeling and thinking. Empathy includes understanding, feeling, and acceptance. What this means is that the therapist understands and unconditionally accepts the positive and negative emotions expressed by children while playing. The therapist is anxious when the child is anxious, sad when the child is sad, and angry when the child is angry.
In Child-Centered Play Therapy, the therapist conveys empathy to children through the following methods:
1. Verbal expression: The therapist pays attention to the child’s verbal and non-verbal responses, interprets the emotions behind the child’s behaviour while playing, and expresses the child’s emotions in words. Sometimes, the content of games played by children is positive even though the atmosphere is negative. I once counselled a girl in Primary 1. She playing cooking and requested me to play with her. As she played, she kept telling me how to cut and season food; however, she kept rushing me all the time, saying: “Quickly! You’re so slow! There’s a lot more to chop up! Time’s up!” I sensed that the atmosphere of the game was anxious and not relaxed, so I responded to her, saying: “So nervous! So rushed!”. Feelings of nervous and rushed are the feeling that the girl had in her real life because she joined a lot of tutorials and interest classes.
2. Non-verbal expression: The tone of the therapist must match the mood of the child and the atmosphere of the game. For example, if a child is frowning when hitting a tumbler doll, the therapist would hatefully say: “Argh! I’m so angry! I want to hit them really hard!” However, if the child is smiling when hitting the tumbler doll, the therapist would say: “Wow! I feel full of power. I really like playing like this!”
3. Understanding the role played by the child in the game: Children sometimes play games with more than one character, so therapists need to know which role the child is playing to empathize with the feelings of this character. For example, if a monster is biting a baby in the game and the child is playing the role of the baby, the therapist would say: “Help! I’m so scared! It hurts!” However, if the child is playing the role of the monster, the therapist would say: “Rargh! Rargh! I’ll bite you! I’ll bite you! Rargh!”
4. Understanding the emotional projection of children: Many children project their emotions on the therapist while playing. A colleague of mine once counselled a kindergarten child. In the game they played, the child played the role of a teacher, and my colleague played the role of a student in a pretend class. The plot of the game was that the student had to answer the teacher’s questions; however, even if my colleague followed the child’s instructions, the child said my colleague was wrong no matter what was said, which made my colleague feel frustrated. Although the child made the therapist feel frustrated in the game, I thought the child experienced this frustration in real life. So, I suggested that my colleague say the feelings of the “student” while playing because the child role-playing as the teacher experienced these feelings in real life.
In short, if adults can empathize with the children around them in daily life, this will help them develop empathy towards others. In Play Therapy, the empathy expressed by a therapist to a child facilitates the activation of the child’s self-actualization, which converts negative emotions and relieves emotional problems.
Written by SHUM Wing Yan (Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor of the Association for Play Therapy of U.S.A., Registered Social Worker, Certified Social Work Supervisor)
