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Home › Articles › Development › Helping Hands

Helping Hands

Nurturing Altruism in Toddlers

By Kelly Burgess

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In other words, while the children may have been motivated to help for emotional reasons such as sympathy or empathy, their responses were intellectual. They were able to discern that the researcher was trying to accomplish a specific goal hanging clothes and to understand that in order to do so he needed his clothespins. When he dropped one, they knew he had to get it back to finish his task so they helped by handing it over. Why they didn't bother to hand it back when he deliberately dropped it is one of the intriguing facets of the study. Perhaps they realized that if he had needed that one he wouldn't have tossed it aside. Even this latter response indicates the children were learning.

The Human Factor
Dr. Warneken repeated the same study with 3- and 4-year-old chimpanzees and found that they were also willing to help retrieve the clothespin, although not as quickly, and they needed more time to decipher what the researcher was trying to accomplish. However, the difference between the chimps and the human toddlers is one of motivation.Dr. Warneken's study, combined with studies based on the empathy tradition of human helpfulness, has important implications in raising our children to be altruistic.

Dr. Janice Cohn, author of Raising Compassionate Courageous Children in a Violent World (Longstreet Press, 2001), says parents should encourage their children in their attempts at altruism and can do so on both a small and large scale.

"One important thing to remember in nurturing this capacity is to have children engage in helping behavior from a very young age," saysDr. Cohn. "There's not a child who is too young to help in some way and no boundaries that should be set by special needs or behavior."

This applies to every facet of life, from having children help Mom or Dad around the house to helping and observing their parents' volunteer work in the community. What's important, saysDr. Cohn, is that children see how their parents treat others.

Trixie Doyle of Toronto, Canada, says she and her husband try to be good role models for their two sons, a 3-year-old and an 8-month-old. "The main thing my husband and I do to encourage our sons is to first demonstrate kindness and helpfulness ourselves," says Doyle. "We are especially careful how we treat our children. How can we expect them to act politely, helpful and kind to others if we don't treat them the same way? We also limit the amount of praise we give for being kind and helpful. We don't want our sons to just act kind and helpful; we want them to be kind and helpful. Their motivation shouldn't be to please us."

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