I have said 'empathy' ten thousand times, but most parents still use it wrongly, please don't perfunctory children
I have to say that today's parents are a generation of people who learn with humility, especially when it comes to educating children. Everyone regards cultivating children's high emotional intelligence as an important part of education.
Therefore, when a child loses his temper, parents also learn to manage their emotions first, and try to relieve their negative emotions by acknowledging and accepting their children's emotions through empathy according to what parenting experts or books say the goal of.
But the so-called talk on paper is shallow in the end, and I know that this matter must be practiced. Even if parents want to empathize with their children and think they have done it, not everyone can achieve the desired effect.
Often under empathy articles, you will see messages like this: "I obviously empathize, why does the child still lose his temper?"
The repeated failures in practice began to make parents doubt the correctness of empathy.
In fact, this is really not a pot of empathy. If you use empathy wrongly, it will be useless.
01 about empathy
The concept of empathy was proposed by Rogers, the founder of humanism. Refers to a person's ability to experience the inner world of others. To put it simply, it is to be able to truly start from the perspective of others and think about problems in empathy.
Including three meanings:
■Parents go deep into the child's heart through his external words and deeds to experience his emotions and thoughts.
■Parents use their own knowledge and experience, and have a certain grasp of the child's experience and personality, so they can better understand where the problem lies.
■Parents use skills to successfully communicate their empathy to their children and obtain positive feedback from their children.
It can be seen that empathy is not a simple subject. It not only requires parents to have a certain understanding of their children, but also requires skills.
Empathy is actually a very difficult thing. After all, without personal experience, it is impossible to truly perceive the events that happened from all angles and psychology of others.
But qualified empathy means that parents can be keenly aware of their children's negative emotions, and use their own positive emotions to eliminate them, so that children feel that "so parents understand me".
02 False empathy without thinking
Why do you say empathy ten thousand times, but most parents still use it wrong? In fact, this is a kind of inertia.
The immediate thought of many parents is to let their children stop crying quickly, so they use their wisdom as an adult to implement the so-called empathy for their children through their brains, without distracting their hearts.
As recommended by most books, when a child shows negative emotions, the first step for parents is to use empathy to help him define and recognize his emotions.
The dialogue goes like this: I can feel you are angry right now.
But the result is that the child will turn a deaf ear to this sentence, and even show resistance.
Introspect carefully, in this process, have the parents stood from the perspective of the child? No! They still stand from their own point of view, thinking about using the empathy skills in the books to quickly stop the children from making trouble.
As a result, empathy has changed from an education to a skill. When parents use this technique with their brains, they do not use their hearts to instill love and attention in their children.
If you use the definition in the encyclopedia to express empathy more completely, it should be: accompany your child calmly with love and attention, and help him recognize and understand his emotions.
If each word is disassembled in detail, it is as follows:
■Take care, really love and pay attention to the child, the purpose is to prevent the child from feeling unhappy because he has been indulging in negative emotions, not after the child stops crying, I can do my own thing.
■Calm, many parents are not calm when their children are crying and tossing, they will be very anxious, they will go up to pick up their children and coax them to stop crying. Therefore, the anxiety of parents is the most intuitive feeling for children.
■Accompaniment, when parents empathize, they must be beside their children, not far away. For example, if the child is crying in the bedroom, the parent sits in the living room or study and says from a distance: I know you are sad now, but shall we calm down first? This is perfunctory.
■Help children understand their own emotions. This understanding must be correct. Parents should not simply and rudely define their children's emotions without consideration. May wish to think about what happened before the child cried, and what is his motivation? This will be more accurate and effective.
03 The prerequisite for correct empathy - both parents and children have a precise understanding of emotions
This belongs to the understanding and experience of parents and children themselves. If they do not have an accurate grasp of emotions, then using empathy is like being blind.
Parents should first learn the vocabulary of emotional names, and then teach their children what is in the emotional library in the process of getting along with them daily, and try to tell him which emotion the expression on his face corresponds to.
For example, I often ask my children: Which face are you in here now? Now which face is mother here?
And when reading picture books or watching cartoons, make full use of the opportunity to express to children the current emotional atmosphere of the characters in them.
Parents can refer to the emotional library picture below in positive discipline.
04 The correct way to open empathy, please stop perfunctory children
- Respect and allow children to vent their emotions
Sometimes children have some intense anger, sadness, frustration and other negative emotions. If they don't vent out, the consequences of stagnation in their hearts will be very serious.
Parents don't rush to talk, try to accompany the child quietly first, wait for him to vent the uneasiness in his heart, and give appropriate verbal guidance.
For example: Baby, it’s okay, if you are really sad now, you can cry out loud, and mom will be by your side, okay?
Many parents make mistakes from this step, because they want their children to stop crying quickly, but this is actually wrong. To let children recover quickly from violent emotions, a buffer time is definitely needed. This is the best way to give children Best respect.
- Guide the child to calm down
In the process of the child venting his emotions, if the parents find that he has gradually shown signs of easing up, this is the time to intervene.
It has been proved in scientific research that actions such as hugging can directly shake a child's heart and help him calm down more than words.
Therefore, parents can immediately send a hug, and then tell the child to try to take a deep breath to calm down physically and emotionally.
At this point, more than half of the empathy has been carried out, but the child's negative emotions have not been completely resolved.
- Help the child review the video
This step is usually forgotten by most parents, but it is precisely the key step for children to grow.
In such a review, there are three elements:
■What happened just now?
■What kind of emotions did this incident cause you?
■How do you let the emotions slowly ease down?
In such a process, guide children to understand the context and understand that their negative emotions are not without reason, and how to deal with similar things next time?
05 written at the end
Everything is easier said than done, and parenting is even more so. Because he is not just a child, but also a person with his own independent thoughts and consciousness.
Parents cannot fully replace their children as parents, or achieve their own goals under the guise of empathy.
It should be realized that empathy is not to solve the problem of children crying now, but to teach children how to manage their emotions. In this way, even if he grows up in the future and his parents can't be with him, he can still have the ability to calm himself rationally and peacefully.
If the cognition is wrong on this point, such false empathy will not only fail to achieve results, but will become an accomplice in opening up the gap between parents and children.
So, start practicing slowly today! The next time your child is overly emotional, I hope you can truly empathize.