Strategies for Helping Clients With Autism Learn Empathy

I recently read a book recommended by our elementary school counselor called, “Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me-World.” The premise of the book says society is becoming less empathetic and more self-absorbed. The author, Michele Borba, EdD, calls this the selfie syndrome. Borba describes nine essential empathy habits—emotional literacy, moral identity, perspective taking, moral imagination, self-regulation, kindness, collaboration, moral courage and leadership—which educators and caregivers can develop and nurture in children to instill in them the “empathy advantage.” The book presents various empathy-building activities to help kids connect and feel with others. Borba says cultivating empathy leads to raising successful, resilient kids and the foundation for empathy is face-to-face human connection. “Unselfie” speaks primarily to parents and educators, but I found numerous applications for SLPs. As I read, I thought about the layers upon layers of cognitive-communication skills involved in developing empathy. The skills required to communicate empathy go beyond basic expressive and receptive language. Joint attention, theory of mind, executive function, emotional regulation and social language are all vital parts of communicating empathy. A few of the Essential Empathy Habits described in the book stood out to me and best exemplify how closely cognitive-communication skills interrelate with putting empathy into practice: Emo...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Autism Spectrum Disorder Early Intervention empathy Executive Functions Language Disorders Source Type: blogs