Reviewed by DIANA KURTTS, Special to the Press-Register
For every parent who has been at wit’s end with their child, Jennifer Kolari’s “Connected Parenting: Transform Your Challenging Child and Build Loving Bonds for Life” is a godsend.
Nonviolent Parenting with Empathy
Writing for Psychology Today, Karyl McBride, Ph.D. is a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.
The marker for maternal narcissism is lack of empathy and the inability to tune into the emotional welfare of others, especially children. So if we want to go in the opposite direction for our own growth and understanding, we need to be aware of this thing called empathy. True empathy requires the ability to tune into other people emotionally and be able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. I wonder why this is so difficult for so many and why we all struggle in some ways with this important component of relating to others.
To be a true child advocate, empathy is a key for parenting and for establishing other satisfying relationships in life. I will always believe that the greatest gift we can give another person is the ability to tune into their feelings and give them validation and acknowledgement whether we agree with them or not. How many times as a parent or a love partner, do we face this difficult dilemma? How good are we really at this crucial skill and why are we not standing on our heads trying to learn this simple key to healthy parenting and interactions with others? Are we just too immersed in this current narcissistic culture or too busy that we don’t think about it? Maybe we got no role modeling from our parents or grandparents. Maybe nobody cares. Do we live in such a self-absorbed culture that this has become unimportant to most or do we just not know how to do it?
From David Elkind blogging at the Hufington Post (David Elkind is currently Professor emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.):
Empathy is the earliest social disposition to appear in the course of human life cycle. Toddlers will try and comfort another child who is obviously unhappy or in pain. Young children are, however, not yet able to empathize with those who do not give any obvious signs of emotional distress. Preschoolers might, to illustrate, comment loudly on the size of stranger’s nose, or ears, totally unaware of the impact this might have on the other person. This is not cruel, it just represents the fact that young children do not yet understand what another person might be feeling if they have no visual clues to guide them.
It is only after the age of six or seven, with the attainment of the mental operations that Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget called concrete operations, that children are able to intellectually take the point of view of others when it is different than their own. It is at this age that they become aware that others may have non-visible feelings and intentions. In their moral judgments, for example, young children assign culpability according to the amount of damage done. They regard a child who breaks five dishes as more culpable than the child who breaks one. After they attain concrete operations, however, they say that child who breaks one dish doing something he is not supposed to, is more to blame than a child who breaks five trying to help his mother.
Inbal Kashtan Explores How Empathic Connection Can Reduce Sibling Rivalry and Family Conflicts
What parent has not experienced a surge of protectiveness when your older child hurts their younger sibling? Our cultural training calls on us to immediately take two roles: the judge, determining who did what wrong and what the consequences will be, and the police officer, enforcing the consequences. These are thankless jobs that usually result in frustration, resentment, pain, and separation between parent and child and between the children themselves. Sadly, our actions do not really contribute to our deepest yearnings: peace, connection, trust and love in our homes.
From the examiner.com, Phoenix edtion:
Empathy, the ability to be aware and understand what another another person feels, is first learned at home. Children have an egocentric awareness, and must gradually learn the skills with which to effectively interact with others on a daily basis.
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