Most of our parents grew up under the strict requirements of our parents when we were young, and even under the sticks, not to mention what "empathy" and "emotional acceptance". Therefore, many people's "empathy ability" is relatively lacking.
Unfortunately, the cultivation of "empathy ability" does not happen overnight. Sometimes, even if you can't empathize with yourself, how can you empathize with your children?
Today's article provides a very practical "empathy talk" and "empathy response method", hoping to help parents with weak empathy ability to solve their urgent needs.
What is empathy?
Did you have such an experience as a child?
When you get a good score and happily "show" to your parents, they say, "What is so happy, whoever takes the test better is not as happy as you";
When you are bullied by children outside and crying to find your parents, they say, "Cry what you cry, don't come out, others beat you, you won't fight back, you know crying!" ”；
Other children come to the house as guests, and the adults ask you to give them their most beloved toys, and when you are not happy, they say, "You are too stingy!" Be an older brother/sister and be more atmospheric, let the younger brothers and sisters";
......
Remember how you felt back then? Is it really becoming "low-key and modest", "strong", "atmospheric", or more angry, aggrieved, sad, sad...
Emotions are rivers, and strong emotions are like floods. When the flood in the child's emotional river hits, if the parents just try to block it, the flood will only become more violent, and finally "wash away" all obstacles with the momentum of destruction and decay, and even directly destroy the river.
Behind the "impulsive suicide" of so many children in recent years, it is not impulsiveness, but the last attempt after the emotional flood has been blocked for a long time.
The daily mood swings of a worker
To cure water, it is better to block than to loosen. In the face of children's emotions, parents should see, accept and channel, and the best way is empathy.
Empathy is understanding another person's experience in this world as if you were that person. But at the same time, you always remember that you are different from him; you just understand the person, not become him.
Empathy also means letting the person you empathize with know that you understand him.
Everyone has the ability to empathize, so they can be infected by the emotions and emotions in art, have emotional resonance with another person, and compassion for human suffering.
Many parents can't "empathize" with themselves!
Empathy is an important way to soothe children's emotions and improve children's emotional intelligence, which is to fully see and accept the emotions of another person, and the child's emotions will only be accepted by the parents if they are seen and accepted by the parents, and the children will accept their emotions and reduce emotional distress.
Many parents have the experience of "writing homework with their children", when the child always does wrong, many people's first feeling may be anger, but they feel that "anger is not good, can not be angry with the child", so they began to suppress, the result is more and more anger, until the final outbreak. This is the emotional agitation caused by the non-acceptance of emotions.
Why is there a sound of "suppressed emotions"? Tracing back to the source, it is because many parents have not been empathized with their emotions when they were young.
If parents can appreciate, understand, and accept their children's emotions from an early age, the children will know: I can produce anger/sadness/anxiety/depression, and although these emotions are uncomfortable, they can exist. When they grow up and face negative emotions, they can be more active and calm to resolve them, rather than desperately suppressing or denying them.
Of course, empathy ability cannot be cultivated overnight, it requires parents to have the courage to break up their past selves and let themselves grow again in an environment of love, acceptance, and permission. But empathy also has shortcuts to follow, and there are techniques to learn.
As a teacher and psychologist, I don't want to talk about empathy as a technique, but for most parents who have not been trained professionally and have never experienced empathy growing up, rapidly improving empathy is difficult.
Therefore, I introduce an "empathy talk" to help parents and friends solve their urgent needs. It is called "speech" because it contains only the "skin" of empathy, but not the "bone" of empathy.
True empathy is "experiencing the inner world of others," that is, being each other. That is to say, only by becoming children can parents experience what their children are experiencing and understand why their children have such and such emotional experiences and behavioral manifestations.
For example, why does a 4-year-old start crying as soon as he enters the supermarket? Is it the child who is deliberately causing trouble or wants to eat sugar? Only when parents really crouch down and observe the supermarket from their children's perspective can they find out why their children are crying.
Empathy,
A technology that solves the urgent need!
"Empathy" is a technique that can be used when parents cannot truly empathize with their children, but they need to soothe their children's emotions. In other words, it's a "no-brainer" technique.
The advantage is that it can be quickly started, as long as more attention and practice, parents can quickly learn and see the effect.
Its limitations are also obvious, children are most sensitive to everything about their parents, especially when the parents are inconsistent inside and outside, they can always be keenly aware of the true thoughts and feelings of the parents.
Therefore, if parents often use verbal techniques and ignore the cultivation of true "empathy", then sooner or later the child will find the "hypocrisy" of the parents' words and the real feelings of inner accusations, dislikes, and boredom, and eventually lose trust in the parents.
So much has been laid, just hope that parents can use "empathy" with caution. Next, let's take a look at how empathy should be used.
Specifically, empathy consists of three parts:
Feelings, that is, expressing the emotions and thoughts of children who have observed or understood;
Understanding, i.e. expressing an understanding of the nature of the event or problem that caused the child's emotions;
Guidance, that is, to give the child practical behavior guidance and listen to the child's feedback.
These three parts are layered, and expressing feelings is the foundation and the most important part.
After fully understanding the child's feelings, expressing them, and getting the child's response, the emotions can be soothed, the activation degree of the emotional brain is reduced, the rational and useful understanding and guidance information can be transmitted to the rational brain, and the child can calm down to think and accept the parents' suggestions.
Let's imagine a scenario like this:
One day when you come home from work, you find your partner sitting angrily in the living room, and the child stays in the room and refuses to come out. You walk in and the kid says with a dejected head, "Mom/Dad always forces me to do things I don't want to do, and he scolds me if I don't do it." ”
How do you respond at this point?
Some parents may respond like this, such as:
Why would he force you to do these things, don't you know?
Ta is all for your own good, you should understand him;
You're not a kid anymore, you can convince him.
Are these words very familiar, or have they been inadvertently said? How do you think your child will feel when he hears these words?
These responses are very typical of no empathy. Not only can it not soothe the child's emotions, but it will also add fuel to the fire, intensify the contradiction, and make the child more emotional. In detail, the first response is "questioning" with accusations and judgments; the second is with high demands; and the third is "suggestions" but not constructive.
So what does an empathetic response look like?
I've got a few options here that you can also try to bring in your child, to feel the emotional experience of each response, and to find the most comfortable and handy way.
Only feeling: "He always forces you to do things, and you feel angry and frustrated because of it." ”
Feeling + Understanding: "Your ideas don't seem to be respected by the TA, so you feel angry and frustrated, and you want the TA to respect your wishes." ”
Feeling + Understanding + Guidance: "Your ideas do not seem to be respected by the TA, so you feel angry and frustrated, you want the TA to respect your wishes, in fact, you can express your feelings and thoughts with your father." ”
Such layers of progress, let the child's emotions be seen, accepted, and then put themselves in the child's shoes to help him think of a way. Even if parental advice may not be useful, the child's feelings will be much better at the moment.
This kind of empathy is not only applicable to parents and children, but also between husband and wife, friends and subordinates. Parents can first practice dialogue with their partners, on the one hand, to enhance the relationship between husband and wife, on the other hand, they are also skilled. When the technology is perfect, it can be easily used on children.
However, I still have to emphasize that the "art" can only cope with the child's temporary emotions, if you want to really improve the child's emotional management ability, so that the child can have a high emotional intelligence and a more self-consistent inner world, parents still need to put down the body, open the body and mind, unconditional attention, acceptance and love of the child, so as to truly empathize with the child, and in the subtle to help the child establish emotional feelings, recognition, acceptance and management ability, improve the child's emotional intelligence.
empathic response,
Be a mirror of your child's emotions!
In addition to empathy, I'll talk about empathy responses.
Empathy response refers to a series of feedbacks that let the child know that you are without any criticism, pay attention to his physical feelings and emotional fluctuations, and feedback these small, imperceptible children's reactions or changes to the child, so as to enhance the child's ability to perceive his emotions.
Empathic response allows parents to become a mirror for their children, allowing them to accurately understand what emotions they are experiencing, what reactions are there inside and outside, and how to understand and cope with such emotions.
So, how to improve the ability to respond to children's empathy? You can start from these aspects:
1. Feedback on non-verbal information
Nonverbal information refers to all the information that is not conveyed through language in communication, including expressions, voice intonation, body movements, and so on.
Non-verbal information is an important part of emotional expression, and it is also an important clue for parents to perceive and feedback their children's emotions. Parents should practice focusing on observing children's expressions and movements, being very sensitive to changes in children's voice intonation, and then using accurate language to feedback this information to children. Like what:
Child: I'm doing well at school today.
Parent: Well, I see your expression is a little frustrated, listening to your tone is also relatively low, I feel that you may have a bad experience today, can you talk to me?
After such a response, the child may face his frustration and frustration more calmly, and open the conversation box to communicate with the parents.
2. Feedback on deeper emotions
This requires parents to have a very keen emotional awareness and be able to see the core emotions under the surface emotions.
Pay attention to the emotional misalignment of your own communication with your child – that is, the child is describing his emotional feelings, and you have another emotional feeling, that is, you and the child's core emotions have resonated, and the child may not be aware of his core emotions. Like what:
Child: me! The bowl wasn't broken by me, but Grandma didn't listen to me at all.
Parents: Criticized by Grandma, I can feel your anger. At the same time, I think I still feel aggrieved from your words, thinking that Grandma doesn't believe you and makes you very hurt.
After responding in this way, the child will gradually realize that what he really wants is actually the understanding and trust of the grandmother.
3. Point out conflicting information
In the case of consistent communication, our verbal and non-verbal messages are consistent, laughing when happy and crying when sad. But in the process of growing up, if children's emotional feelings are often denied by others, especially parents, then they learn to suppress and disguise emotions. For example, if a mother doesn't like her child crying, she gradually learns to laugh sadly.
Usually, this conflict is due to the child's inner struggle or difficulty. If parents can be keenly aware of the child's conflict information, feedback to the child, and guide the child to dig further into the cause of the conflict, the child may be freed from the dilemma, rather than always going around in it.
4. Visualize the child's emotions
Figurative emotions are to visualize children's language or feelings into pictures to enhance children's understanding of emotions.
Children's thinking development is a process from figurative to abstract development, for young children, replacing abstract truths with figurative pictures can help children understand more clearly what they are experiencing. Moreover, the embodiment of abstract emotions itself can mobilize the child's right brain and activate more resources to help the child process emotions. Like what:
child:...... (Skimming, not talking)
Parents: Seeing your current state, I imagine that you are surrounded by teachers and classmates, and they are all saying that you are not doing it right. You want to explain, but you feel like you can't say or do anything, so you're helpless and angry.
5. Use analogy to respond
This method is similar to figuration, except that parents do not use the child's real experience, but use the figurative form to present some complex or difficult emotional experiences. For example, to compare emotions to rivers is to enable people to "see" and understand abstract emotions.
Similarly, a parent can creatively use objects to analogize with his emotional experience. Like what:
Child: Dad, I'm so uncomfortable.
Parents: Do you feel that there is a stone pressed on your body, making you very tired and painful, and you can't breathe? Let's see how the stone came to be, and then find a way to get it away.
6. Use the work to respond
Parents can also creatively use fairy tales, movies, books or picture books to reflect on their children's emotions. This can not only make children have a strong interest in participating in exploration and discussion, but also can be used to discuss some deep or awkward emotions and scenes that are inconvenient to talk to the child directly, or the child is unwilling to talk about. Like what:
Child: I'm just good friends with the guys at the same table, we don't have anything.
Parents: Your experience reminds me of the two protagonists in the TV series "Little Joy", they are neighbors, classmates, good friends, although they are a boy and a girl, but the friendship between them is very beautiful and precious. They are also very calm and cherish each other. This friendship can feel warm and precious.
7. Appropriate self-exposure
Parents are a child's first and most important teacher, and children are naturally very curious about everything about their parents. Therefore, if, in communication, the parent can reveal his or her similar experience to the child to express your understanding of his situation and feelings, the child will feel that the parent truly understands his feelings and is on his side.
More importantly, through self-exposure, parents can also euphemistically pass on their experience and wisdom to their children, so that children know that these emotions are normal and can be successfully coped with. Like what:
Child: I was really sad about this competition, I've worked so hard, I'm practicing every day, but I still lose.
Parents: Did you know? I lost once when I was your age, and I felt disappointed and sad for days. It took me a lot of effort to get out.
Well, the above is my sharing of "empathy", and finally I want to emphasize again: true empathy requires parents to cultivate internal skills, and only when parents can "empathize" with themselves can they truly see and accept their children's emotions.
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The author 丨 大頭, middle school mental health teacher, family educator.
Edited by Lin Yiyi, the mother of a 4-year-old boy.
Typography 丨 Antelope, human cub observer.