Teaching Empathy and Impulse Control to At-Risk Children and Youth
Children exposed to harsh treatment or violence at home or in their communities often lose the ability to empathize with others. They (and their parents) are often impulsive and easily angered. They may lack insight and empathy, seeming unaware of or untroubled by the impact of their harmful behavior on others. This workshop presents age-appropriate and effective humane interventions that teach impulse control, empathy and restorative justice through animal care and training. In safe settings, children and youth learn to nurture animals and each other, and elicit desired behaviors exclusively with positive reinforcement. They learn to plan for a humane future and grow beyond the harsh limits of their childhoods and surroundings.
This workshop teaches participants to design safe and effective animal-assisted intervention programs focusing on five keys to changing behavior and outlook:
- Mastery over impulsivity
B. Empathy, learning to care for and about others
C. Future Orientation, anticipating and planning for a better future
D. Consolidating and reinforcing gains
E. Contributing to a humane community through mentoriships, internships, community service, peer counseling and volunteer work, based on the principles of Balanced and Restorative Justice
Examples include Forget Me Not Farms at the Humane Society of Sonoma County (children in foster care), SHIP (Strategic Humane Interventions Programs) San Francisco (inner city families in a violent, impoverished neighborhood), SHIP East Palo Alto (at-risk immigrant youth in a poor, marginalized community), SHIP Cincinnati (mothers and children in a battered women’s shelter), SHIP for Seniors (senior citizens with physical limitations), and Project Click (juvenile probation) at the Humane Society of Southwest Washington.
Lynn Loar, Ph.D., LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and the president of the Pryor Foundation, an organization which promotes methods that facilitate behavioral change exclusively through positive reinforcement. She specializes in abuse and neglect across the lifespan, and in the role that cruelty to and neglect of animals play in family dysfunction and violence. She is the co-author of numerous books and articles on the role animals play in family violence, including Loar, L. and L. Colman. (2004). Teaching empathy: Animal-assisted therapy programs for children and families exposed to violence, and Patronek, G., L. Loar, and J. Nathanson. (2006). Animal hoarding: Structuring interdisciplinary responses to help people, animals and communities at risk.