Compassion. Is It Innate?

I've noticed when someone is crying or even just pretending to cry, Kai almost always says, "(So-and-so) need a BandAid". When he saw my blood red nail polish, he pointed to each of my toes and said with great concern, "Mommy, this one hurt. This one hurt, too." Last week, I cried in front of Kai for the first time because I was exhausted after a full day of work, Bill was away on business, and Kai refused to go to sleep. This 2-year-old went from a little rebel trying to get out of my arms by swaying his 33-pound body from left to right to a little angel who quietly climbed down my legs, went to the coffee table and brought back a tissue, "Mommy sad. Need tissue. No Mommy cry." And of course, that made me cry some more.

Later I apologized to him for losing control of my emotions. I explained to him that Mommy wasn't sad. Mommy was just very tired and would like to go to sleep now. He sat on my lap holding my face in his two hands and said, "Okay," after each sentence I said. At the end, he leaned into my chest, put his arms around me, and said, "Kaikai and Mommy go to sleep now."

How did he learn to show compassion and empathy? Is it learnt or innate?

Behavioural theorists, such as Piaget and Vygotsky, believe that, instead of being passive sponges that simply absorbs information, children in fact play an active role in gaining knowledge of the world. They are like little scientists who learn through experimentation and experience. Similarly, psychologist Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory also suggests that children develop new skills and acquire new information from observing the actions of others -- parents, caregivers, peers, and perhaps the culture at large.

If that's the case, Bill and I should be happy that we're surrounded by empathetic people and proud that we ourselves have consistently demonstrated compassion so that our little scientist is able to do the same.

But can we really take full credit for it?

Personally I would like to think that empathy and compassion is within a child's nature. When our children laugh at other people's misfortune or pull on a pet's tail just for giggles, they're simply experimenting to see what would happen if they did that. Adults can't teach compassion, but we can encourage and foster it from within the child through promoting intrinsic reinforcements such as a sense of pride, satisfaction and accomplishment.

Then it becomes a happy circle: if you do good, you feel good, which makes you want to do more good and feel more good. :)