How to be caring without scaring

Reality is a tricky teaching tool when it comes to parenting.

On the one hand, you want to shield your children from images and stories that will frighten them or cause them anxiety. On the other, you want to teach them perspective and knowledge about the world around them.

If you want your child to have empathy, you can – and should – do both, experts say.

“You don’t feed a baby a steak,” says Homa Sabet Tavangar, author of “Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be at Home in the World” (Ballantine Books). “You give them age-appropriate portions and the right consistency, but you do need to feed them.”

So it is with “feeding” them reality.

When an earthquake struck Haiti in January, Tavangar pre-screened a photo slideshow on a newspaper website to show her 6-year-old. The images showed the ravaged island and survivors living in tents.

“You want to humanize the dignity and strength of the people experiencing the disaster, so it’s not just ‘those people,’” she says. “A natural part of growing up is knowing the world has justice and injustice and there are things we care about and things we can change and things we need to change.”

But don’t wait for a natural disaster to start imparting empathy. The lessons can happen in daily doses, say experts. Here are five tips to get you started.

• Meet your child’s needs.

Children are naturally self-centered, and nurturing them can actually help them become less so.

“When a child’s needs are met in all the ways they have needs – emotional, physical, spiritual – they don’t have to put energy into getting their own needs met, and they have energy left over to direct in other ways,” says Warren B. Seiler, child and adolescent psychiatrist and author of “Battling the Enemy Within: Conquering the Causes of Inner Struggle and Unhappiness” (Victory Laine).

• Don’t overindulge.

“If you meet all your child’s needs, you can’t cause any problems,” Seiler says. “If you meet all their wants, that’s a different story.”

• Be a role model.

“When a child grows up in an empathetic environment, they know what it looks like and what it feels like,” Tavangar says. “Who are your friends? Who do you invite to your dinner table? What kind of service are you engaged in? Do you talk that stuff through?”

• Have frequent discussions.

Talk about the harsh realities your children encounter, whether it’s a homeless person living on the street or a child being bullied at school. Ask them how they feel about what they witness, and tell them how you would respond empathetically.

• Figure out ways to help.

“Empathy is like a muscle,” says Tavangar. “We can have it in us, but if we don’t exercise it, it doesn’t come out necessarily.”