Nearly an hour into my conversation with author and child psychologist Michele Borba, I asked a question relating to her new book, Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. I asked her how we can teach our children to be empathetic — probably the most important life skill they can acquire, if you believe her book’s argument — in a world that can be so searingly un-empathetic, and so terrifically awful sometimes.
I brought it up because she does in the introduction to the book, which was just published. It’s not every day that one encounters what is essentially a parental-guidance book that mentions Auschwitz, Israel and Palestine, Rwanda, Armenia, and school shootings. But Borba isn’t making an everyday argument.
By Laura June
