Unselfie

How can you raise children who lead with compassion rather than self-interest? In UnSelfie, psychologist Michele Borba argues that empathy is not a soft skill but a power skill—a teachable, repeatable capacity that predicts happiness, resilience, success, and moral courage. She insists that empathy gives children a measurable advantage across life domains from academics to relationships to leadership.

Borba’s core claim is bold: empathy can be systematically cultivated through daily habits. She dismantles the myth that empathy is innate, showing through research and real-world programs that it can be learned just as literacy or math can. In fact, she names this developmental capacity the Empathy Advantage, arguing it’s the antidote to what she calls the Selfie Syndrome—a cultural drift toward narcissism and isolation fueled by overvaluation and screen immersion.

Why Empathy Is Urgent

Empathy decline among youth is measurable: studies show a 40% drop over three decades, with narcissism up nearly 60%. The consequences are evident—rising bullying rates, mental-health struggles, and loneliness. Borba warns that a generation absorbed in self-promotion risks losing the capacity for genuine connection. (Note: This mirrors arguments from Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation, which also ties digital life to empathy erosion.)

Empathy predicts far more than kindness. Longitudinal data show that emotionally attuned children perform better in school, display greater moral reasoning, and later emerge as collaborative leaders—the exact traits top employers seek according to Harvard Business Review. Borba thus repositions empathy as a practical life asset, not sentimental virtue.

Empathy Is Teachable

Evidence from globally recognized programs proves the point. The Seeds of Peace camp transformed Israeli and Palestinian teens through guided perspective-taking sessions and collaborative tasks, producing sustained trust and peacebuilding attitudes confirmed years later by University of Chicago researchers. The Roots of Empathy program built by Mary Gordon uses baby visits in classrooms to teach emotional literacy and compassion. Follow-up evaluations show lasting gains in prosocial behavior and declines in aggression.

These examples illustrate Borba’s thesis: empathy grows when children repeatedly experience emotion-rich, face-to-face interactions that help them read windows into other minds and hearts. Such interactions cannot be replaced by digital simulations or text-only exchanges because they rely on microcues—body language, eye contact, tone—that develop neural empathy circuits.

What the Empathy Advantage Looks Like

Children who cultivate empathy are healthier, happier, and more resilient. They approach conflicts by asking what others feel, cooperate in teams, and make ethical choices when faced with bystander dilemmas. Borba predicts that empathy will become a top leadership differentiator in the 21st century, shaping workplaces, communities, and even international relations. In her view, empathy is both compass and currency—the skill that underwrites every human-capital outcome from innovation to civic engagement.

The Heart of the Book

Teaching empathy is a national survival skill. Borba argues that communities who deliberately model and instruct caring prevent cruelty, reduce bullying, and strengthen social resilience. Empathy isn’t innate goodness—it’s trained attention turned outward.

From Ideas to Habits

The remainder of the book translates this philosophy into practice—nine habits that build empathy from the inside out. These habits include emotional literacy, perspective taking, moral imagination, moral identity, self-regulation, kindness, teamwork, courage, and changemaking. Each habit connects evidence, stories, and actionable routines parents and educators can use.

You’ll see how daily rituals—from breathing exercises and kindness jars to literary discussions and team play—convert abstract values into embodied behaviors. Borba’s message is clear: empathy can be taught, strengthened, and lived. When you make compassion habitual, you give your child—and society—the ultimate competitive edge.

The first building block of the Empathy Advantage is emotional literacy—the ability to recognize, name, and express feelings in yourself and others. You cannot empathize without first identifying what emotions look and sound like. Borba calls this skill the gateway to all other forms of empathy.

How Emotional Literacy Develops

Children learn emotional vocabulary through modeling, repetition, and guided attention. The Roots of Empathy program offers an elegant demonstration: a baby named Joshua visits a classroom monthly. Kids watch his body language and discuss what they see—his clenched fists when upset or relaxed eyes when content. This structured observation builds recognition and emotional language simultaneously.

Borba advises teaching three mini-skills: identifying feelings, understanding triggers, and expressing emotions appropriately. Parents and educators play a coaching role—asking 'How do you think Joshua feels today?' and waiting for children to interpret cues. This forms the foundation of perspective-taking and compassion later on.

Science and Developmental Timing

From birth, babies are wired to tune into others. Neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Nathan Fox found that newborns respond to other infants’ cries and show early brain activation to emotional stimuli. By age two, toddlers commonly offer comfort—proof that empathy begins early, but depends on nurturing contexts. (Note: This aligns with Daniel Siegel’s concept of 'mirror neurons' shaping attunement.)

Practical Steps for Parents

Borba presents the 4-Step 'Tune-In' method families can use daily:

• Stop and Tune In: Pause devices and distractions to give full attention.
• Look Face-to-Face: Maintain eye contact and mutual focus.
• Focus on Feelings: Label emotions clearly ('You look frustrated').
• Express the Feelings: Ask how others might feel to shift from 'me' to 'you' focus.

Using emotional labeling helps children regulate their own reactions and interpret others’ inner worlds. Psychologist John Gottman’s Emotion Coaching research confirms that emotionally attuned parenting predicts social competence and empathy development.

Start Early, Talk Often

For empathy to flourish, emotional literacy must be practiced before screens dominate attention. Talk feelings, name them, and validate them—the emotional dictionary you build becomes your child’s moral GPS.

Whether through baby visits, bedtime safe-space talks, or emotion cards, you can begin teaching empathy at home today. Emotional literacy is the first muscle of compassion; once developed, it naturally extends to perspective taking and moral action.

Perspective taking is empathy’s cognitive engine—the practice of imagining what another person feels, thinks, and needs. Borba argues that this skill must be trained through experience, not mere instruction. Children must 'walk in someone else’s shoes' again and again until it becomes reflexive.

From Classroom to Playground

Jane Elliott’s famous brown-eye/blue-eye classroom experiment demonstrates how vividly perspective-taking transforms understanding. After experiencing discrimination role reversal, children permanently shifted moral awareness. Borba encourages frequent small-scale versions—like role-play, cooperative games, or reading exercises—that ask kids to imagine others’ emotions and experiences.

Tools for Teaching Perspective

She provides practical frameworks such as the CARE Discipline Method: Call attention to behavior, Assess its impact, Repair the harm, and Express disappointment while restating caring norms. This approach, rooted in induction theory from child psychology, helps children link their actions to others’ feelings and strengthens empathy even during correction.

In everyday interactions, parents can build listening skills using SOLER + FEEL + IMAGINE + SHARE: sit attentively, observe cues, empathize imaginatively, and then paraphrase what the other person feels. Doing this repeatedly turns caring into comprehension.

Empathy-Based Discipline

When discipline shifts from punishment to reflection—asking 'How did your action affect them?'—you’re training cognitive empathy alongside moral reasoning. Inductive approaches outperform authoritarian ones in fostering conscience.

Making It Habitual

Borba emphasizes that perspective doesn’t change from a single lesson; it must be integrated into real conflicts such as sibling fights or playground exclusion. Meetings, role reversals, and family discussions consolidate the skill. Over time, children stop wondering 'What do I get?' and start asking 'What is it like for them?'—a shift from ego to empathy at the heart of moral growth.

This habit—the trained capacity to consider others’ minds—connects neurological empathy with moral action. It’s how empathy becomes wisdom in practice.

Empathy alone doesn’t guarantee prosocial behavior. For compassion to guide actions, it must fuse with identity—what Borba calls moral identity. It’s the internal conviction 'I am a caring person.' When kindness defines who you are, it persists even when no one is watching.

How Moral Identity Forms

The process begins with language and modeling. Praising character ('You’re generous') rather than acts ('Good job sharing') helps children internalize empathy traits. Psychologist Adam Grant’s experiments show that this grammatical shift from verbs to nouns profoundly increases helping behavior. Parents can reinforce moral identity through family mottos ('We are helpful, not hurtful'), bedtime reflection letters, and visible values.

Stories That Inspire Identity

Captain Sully Sullenberger serves as Borba’s prime example. His pledge as a teenager never to be a bystander shaped his later heroic behavior landing Flight 1549. A moral identity functions like a lifelong compass—formed in youth, refined through repetition, expressed through courage.

Threats and Solutions

Overpraise, entitlement, and excessive 'self-esteem' campaigns can erode caring orientation, breeding narcissism instead. Borba advises monitoring praise for inflation and deliberately emphasizing empathy-based traits during recognition. You should also model the value yourself—children calibrate self-concept from their environment.

Build Mantras and Rituals

Family mottos, service scrapbooks, and reflection journals are potent identity builders. A consistent mantra—'I am kind; I help others'—anchors empathy within self-image.

When morality becomes identity, empathy finds its permanent home. You’re not just teaching what to do—you’re shaping who your child believes they are.

Part Two of Borba’s work connects feeling to action. Self-regulation and kindness are the hinge: without emotional control, empathy collapses under stress; without practice, it remains abstract. Teaching calm and consistent kindness transforms empathy into daily behavior.

Teaching Calm

Schools like Tulita Elementary teach neuroscience basics—explaining the amygdala and prefrontal cortex as the brain’s emotion-control systems—and use belly breathing to 'stop popping lids.' These tools help kids notice physiological cues and use breath to regain focus. Mindfulness programs such as Quiet Time have reduced suspensions and boosted concentration across districts. (Richard Davidson’s work shows these practices reshape emotional circuits.)

Kindness as Daily Exercise

Borba likens kindness to muscle training: repetition builds strength. Experiments by Lyubomirsky show that performing five kind acts in one day weekly produces significant mood and empathy gains. Student projects like Milford High’s “Million Acts of Kindness” demonstrate contagious effects: kindness spreads socially, altering norms of behavior.

Simple, Sustainable Rituals

At home, parents can use Kindness Jars, Secret Buddy games, or pebble baskets to visualize kindness frequency. A Two-Kind Rule—doing and saying two kind things daily—keeps practices consistent. The goal is not reward but recognition and reflection: 'What did you do that made someone’s day?' These small reflections reinforce moral identity and empathy synchronization.

Calm Hearts Act Kindly

Stress narrows perception; calm widens it. Teaching self-regulation is therefore the essential precondition of empathy-driven action.

Together, calm and kindness form the practice side of empathy—a reminder that emotional steadiness and social giving must be routine, not random. That’s how empathy builds endurance.

Empathy thrives in social contexts. Borba examines how play and teamwork transform individualistic mentalities into collective ones—teaching 'us' thinking instead of 'them.' Cooperative play provides emotional laboratories where empathy skills are rehearsed naturally.

Organized Play and Cooperative Goals

Programs like Aldama Elementary’s Playworks show how structured recess revives empathy. Students recite agreements ('include everyone, be kind, work together') and practice inclusive games under junior coaches. Research from Stanford confirms bullying declines nearly 43% when Playworks is implemented.

Classic experiments echo the power of shared goals. Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave study showed hostility dissolved only when rival groups had common objectives. Elliot Aronson’s Jigsaw Classroom required diverse teams to teach each other sections of a lesson, reducing prejudice and raising achievement. Together, these cases illustrate the emotional physics of cooperation.

Practical Steps

Mix friendship circles to build inclusive teams; teach conflict-resolution tactics like 'Step up, step back'; and create shared family missions where every member holds a unique role. Borba distinguishes cooperation from competition—success should rely on collective achievement, not defeat of peers.

The Playground as Empathy School

Play builds empathy loops through fun, inclusion, and shared problem-solving—precisely the microcontexts where humanity grows.

Repeated cooperative experiences create lasting 'we' mindsets. When children work toward joint goals, they feel interdependent—and empathy ceases to be optional.

Empathy must eventually translate into moral courage—the willingness to act against harm. Borba’s research on upstander training shows how you can teach kids practical interventions that make caring visible and protect vulnerable peers.

Barriers to Acting

Studies by Darley and Latané revealed why bystanders often freeze: diffusion of responsibility, fear of retaliation, or uncertainty about what’s expected. Children may feel empathy but lack scripts for response. Training eliminates these gaps by giving them simple, safe action plans.

Seven Upstander Strategies

Borba offers mnemonic training using the acronym STAND UP:

• Seek Support—join with another bystander.
• Tell a Trusted Adult—report safely, not as 'tattling.'
• Assist the Victim—offer direct help or social presence.
• Negate with Positives—counter rumors with truth.
• Design a Detour—remove audience attention.
• Use Distraction—create diversion for safe exit.
• Pause and Rethink—prompt reflection: 'How would you feel if that was you?'

Training Turns Courage On

When children practice these strategies, bullying stops within seconds in over half of cases. Courage expands through rehearsal, not spontaneous heroism.

Through stories like Lucy—who intervened because her father discussed caring expectations—Borba shows that moral courage depends on guidance and preparation. With explicit tools, empathy becomes defense, not paralysis.

Empathy matures into meaningful change when children use it to improve the world. Borba calls these young leaders 'Changemakers': kids who convert compassion into sustained civic or social projects. She reveals how to nurture this pathway step-by-step.

The Spark of Purpose

The changemaker journey often begins with a single, vivid encounter. Trevor Ferrell’s act of giving a pillow to a homeless man or Craig Kielburger’s reaction to a child-slavery headline transformed personal empathy into public service. These emotional breakthroughs—face-to-face or deeply felt—fuel enduring motivation.

How to Guide the Process

• Help children find causes they care about through volunteering or exposure to need.
• Encourage small, achievable first actions—collection drives, neighborhood projects.
• Provide adult support and structure—mentoring sustains follow-through.
• Promote face-to-face connections with beneficiaries to deepen emotional impact.
• Make helping repeatable—weekly or monthly—to embed caring in identity.

Borba also stresses the power of mindset: children who believe empathy can grow are likelier to persevere in understanding others. This aligns with Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindsets—applied here to compassion.

Inspiring Examples

Young changemakers such as Rachel Wheeler (Haiti homes) and Yash Gupta (gathering glasses for the poor) began small but scaled through repetition and purpose. Each story illustrates that passion plus empathy leads to effectiveness—and that adult mentorship amplifies moral momentum.

From Compassion to Commitment

Empathy becomes influence when anchored in purpose and structure. Changemaking is learned courage—the moment empathy finds legs.

Through projects, mentoring, and sustained engagement, children learn to turn caring into capability. This is the final evolution of empathy: feeling deeply, thinking clearly, and acting persistently for others.

Borba closes with a reminder: parents and caregivers hold the deepest influence on empathy’s development. Your expectations, examples, and family rituals create the climate where empathy either thrives or withers.

Expect, Model, and Coach

Set clear moral expectations ('We care for others'), but back them with action. Lucy became an upstander because her father voiced consistent expectations and modeled concern for others. Children learn empathy not by hearing about it but watching it practiced—neighbors helped, apologies made, kindness repeated.

Balance Help and Responsibility

Avoid rescuing your child from difficulties. Let them face age-appropriate conflict and practice repair. When you guide reflection rather than shield from discomfort, you strengthen emotional regulation and confidence—key ingredients for empathy.

Rituals That Anchor Values

Family meetings, kindness boxes, and bedtime reflection notes all serve as rituals embedding empathy into daily life. Borba calls these cultural anchors—the quiet repetition that builds moral consistency. Inductive discipline (explaining how behavior affects others) shapes conscience far better than authoritarian rules alone.

A Village of Empathy

Building moral identity benefits from shared parenting circles. Borba cites Ashoka’s 'Parenting Changemakers' groups as examples of collective empathy instruction spreading through neighborhoods.

Ultimately, you cultivate empathy by expecting it, modeling it, and giving children space to practice it. The family becomes the first empathy lab—its culture, language, and rituals forge children capable of compassion and courage beyond the home.