Rami Rustom
2012-08-23 15:58:46 UTC
In these situations, the child might be very quiet about what the
problem is. So an approach that works is to guess why he might be sad
and form it into a question: "Are you sad about your mom not being
here?" If the guess was wrong, he'll tell you "no". If it was right,
he'll tell you "yes". And he may open up a lot more and tell you more
details. If he does, then use those details to form more accurate
"Are you sad because you won't be able to play with her anymore?" And
continue the cycle. And some point he'll give you a detail that is a
mistaken idea and you could help him by showing him that its a
mistaken idea. He might say, "I don't want to lose you." So at this
point you realize that the child is worried that he'll lose his only
remaining parent because he has already lost one parent. So here the
parent can say, "Oh.. well I'm very healthy, I'm probably not going to
die until I'm very old, like older than grandpa.. and by then you'll
be old like me. Did you know that most people die when they are very
old like older than grandpa?"
I'd agree this last part would be the right kind of response, but whatproblem is. So an approach that works is to guess why he might be sad
and form it into a question: "Are you sad about your mom not being
here?" If the guess was wrong, he'll tell you "no". If it was right,
he'll tell you "yes". And he may open up a lot more and tell you more
details. If he does, then use those details to form more accurate
"Are you sad because you won't be able to play with her anymore?" And
continue the cycle. And some point he'll give you a detail that is a
mistaken idea and you could help him by showing him that its a
mistaken idea. He might say, "I don't want to lose you." So at this
point you realize that the child is worried that he'll lose his only
remaining parent because he has already lost one parent. So here the
parent can say, "Oh.. well I'm very healthy, I'm probably not going to
die until I'm very old, like older than grandpa.. and by then you'll
be old like me. Did you know that most people die when they are very
old like older than grandpa?"
are you really doing...correcting a mistaken idea, or recognizing an
emotional need (with your emotions) and providing reassurance? If the
second, then does it make what is happening between you and the child
more or less clear by using this other vocabularly?
definitions of it. Here's my definition:
Empathy: The ability to understand that someone else is (mentally) hurting.
I noticed that TCS is big on empathy, even though the word empathy is
not used at all anywhere in TCS literature. TCS says that people
should not hurt each other. By hurt I mean mental/psychological hurt.
Mental hurt is an emotion.
TCS explains that hurt is caused by doing something to someone that
they don't want done to them. Also someone can hurt themselves by
acting on a want while having a conflicting want, so part of him wants
to do X and part of him wants to do Y but X and Y are conflicting, so
acting on X means doing something when part of you didn't want to do
it.
So if a parent makes his daughter do something she didn't want to do,
then he is hurting her. She has a negative emotion because she does
something she didn't want to do. This emotion is called coercion. The
child felt coerced. And the parent caused it.
In these situations, sometimes the parent feels a negative emotion
*because* the child felt a negative emotion. The parent doesn't want
the child to hurt, but the child is hurting. So part of the him
doesn't want to hurt his daughter, but part of him wants his daughter
do this thing. So the parent is coerced too, i.e. he feels coercion.
In these situations, the parent is empathetic. So empathy alone didn't
solve the problem.
Sometimes (or some parents?) doesn't feel a negative emotion about
coercing his child. In which case the parent isn't coerced, i.e. he
doesn't feel coercion. This is not empathetic.
So whats the solution? TCS explains that we should not coerce our
children (nor ourselves or anyone else either). But how do we get
things done? One alternative to coercion is persuasion, which works
well for children that can speak. Although the technique for
younger-than-speaking-age children is the same for older children and
even for adults, which is to be creative in providing alternate ideas
for things to do until one is found to be something that everyone
wants, so no one is coerced.
So here's an example. Your 4 year old is bored at home cause there
aren't any kids to play with so he decides that he wants to go to
school with the other kids. Before school starts, we have to have a
dental checkup. The night before the dental appointment, parent says
to child, "oh btw, tomorrow morning we have a dental appointment." Kid
says (with a frown), "no I don't want to go to the dentist." Parent
says, "oh if we don't do the dentist appointment then they won't let
you in school." Kid says (with a smile), "oh" and then goes about his
business ending the discussion. The next day he wakes up mentally
ready to go to the dentist.
Now many people believe that kids aren't rational enough to be
persuaded. This is false. What is true is that sometimes parents are
not rational enough to create persuasive enough arguments. Sometimes
rational discussion is prevented when either of the two people are
using knowledge that they don't share. So the parent should hone the
skill of refining his explanations using only the knowledge that they
both share. Another preventer of rational discussion is that parents
have bad habits of using facial expressions (e.g. frowns) that explain
to the child that the parent is angry or annoyed, which antagonizes
the child. And sometimes parents are doing everything right but
because there is a history of doing it wrong, the child has a distrust
for that parent, again preventing rational discussion. All of these
things are the parent's fault.
Many people think that empathy involves things like kissing and
hugging and saying "I love you." But these same people coerce their
children a lot. So they coerce their children (and feel coerced
themselves) and then they kiss and hug and say "I love you" to help
the child and themselves feel better after causing them to feel bad.
This is immoral. Kissing and hugging and saying "I love you" is good,
but not when its used as a solution for coercion.
On a similar note, often parents will use kissing and hugging and
saying "I love you" as positive reinforcement for when the child does
something the parent approves of. And then also using frowns and
saying "I'm upset with you" as negative reinforcement for when the
child does something the parent disapproves of. Both of these methods
are immoral. In the case of parent approval, the parent doesn't need
to do anything. In the case of parental disapproval, have a rational
discussion about why parent thinks child's action is wrong. If you
fail to persuade him, improve your explanation. If you continue to
fail, then maybe your idea is wrong and child is right.
So what do you think of my definition of empathy?
Which parts of my explanation do you disagree with?
-- Rami