No time to care
If you rarely watch young children interact on a playground, you may be surprised by how rough and tumble that world is. Toddlers, elementary school students and even middle schoolers don’t fully recognize when something hurts another person physically or emotionally. That explains the indiscriminate cutting in line, lightweight shoving or lack of recognition when passing by another child.
Hands on caring
Some of this absence of shame for these types of activities can be assigned to a lack of empathy. The hands-on guidance that comes with aging-up and better role-modeling transforms young people into caring beings. As the brain bandwidth expands, the ability to keep track of what we do that does not meet the social norm grows. When one young sophisticate sticks her tongue out at another, she is greeted with a mirrored response. It’s the same premise behind that smile you eked out of a baby by constantly smiling at them.
Enter with care
Teens can be considered self-serving but they know the thoughts behind being the butt of insensitivity. That may be why they seem to automatically react with a bold overreaction to combat any perceived lack of empathy towards their life choices. They do care. It just shows up as corrosive because they are fairly busy keeping score in life. The drama starts to dissolve as they are able to improve their own world view.
Model caring
Humans gradually figure out that they depend on each other. After collaborative successes, understanding for one another grows and becomes a well of kindness that flows deeply enough to share with others without going dry. You don’t really get along with others until you allow them to have their own set of beliefs distinct from yours and you accept them. That is when empathy really forms a river that leads to a waterfall, bouncing easily over obstacles with enough force to create beauty.
Is it easy to care for others? Who should get the most care? Do you ever run without empathy like a middle-schooler in the playground?
