Empathy...to have or not to have?

Hiya is now eight. She is having a good year at school till now. Her teacher is fairly supportive, I believe and my efforts to focus on Math a little more than the rest of her subjects is paying off. She likes Math, and has been getting a lot of good remarks at school for her work. She is thrilled, and my heart melts when I see her smile.

The other day, Hiya had a class test in Hindi. Now Hindi is Sooo.... not our comfort zone. But with a little extra effort, she managed to get most of her work correct that day. She was quite proud about it, and let's admit, I was happy too. I then asked her the question that I spend entire days telling parents to veer away from in my professional capacity"So, how did the others do"? Her face fell a little as she said, "R got a remark saying she needs to learn her spellings better."

A little imp inside of me, called Competition, drilled through years and years of school and later work, did a little jig and said"Yeayyyy!!!" And that self-same imp egged me onto ask her why SHE looked so sad. Hiya turned back to look at me, surprise writ large on her innocent face,"But Mummy!She is my BEST friend!!"

Of course!Here was empathy-in its purest, most untutored form. And here I was-trying to replace it with a 'competitive streak'. A streak that knows no boundaries, a world where there are no true friends, a race that has no finish line.Was I right, to try and build her for the 'real world' around her? Or should I have simply let go, to give that rare quality of empathy a chance to  flourish?

What is our role as parents? How true are we to what we teach our children? Do our actions really support what we preach? How often in  day do we send out such mixed messages to our children?

Of vegetables and egg-plants!

More from the concrete world of a 7 year old.

While on vacation, the three of us were playing 'Antakshari' in our own way. Each of us had to come up with the name of a fruit or vegetable starting with the last letter of the word before. So, when it was my husband;s turn to come up with a vegetable starting with 'e', he said 'eggplant'.

Much to our surprise, 7 year old Hiya shook her briskly and said, "No, that's not correct.". Intrigued, I asked her why. She said,"But an eggplant is a hen only."

Teaching values

“ Mamma, how do people become rich”? piped up Hiya, recently turned seven.

Hmmmm…..I wondered. “Here’s my opportunity to teach her values”. So I started off by telling her how people can become rich in different ways, honest and dishonest. We had recently come across the term “dishonest’ in one of her book chapters, so that made my job a little easier. She appeared to understand, nodded her head and summed it up by saying, “So we can become rich if we study well, work hard and save our money”.

Sounded about right to me. Hiya was satisfied and she went on to watching how a dog was engrossed in eating tomatoes by the side of the road.

Blame my age, but I could not so easily make a switch from such a loaded abstract question to something as concrete as a roadside dog. I pondered on how most Indian children must be learning such lessons at their parents’ and grandparents’ knees. How most of us have grown up on a staple of Panchatantra and Amar Chitra Katha staples, leave alone our Mahabharata, Gita and Ramayana.

Then how on earth did we end up as such a corrupt nation?? Why do we bribe our way around everything? Why do we want to buy Porsches and BMWs but want to not pay our import duties? Why do we buy houses from conniving builders who violate every rule possible to create monstrosities of cement and concrete? Why do our ministers get richer to the tunes of millions while our numbers below poverty line remain the same?

So, then I wonder…..what should I have said when my daughter asked me that question. Am I wrong to think the way I do…..or is the new moral “Be amoral”?

Death and Children

Sourav called me up at 6:00 pm, as I was coming home from work. I smiled as I saw his name on the display on my mobile,"Maybe he is coming home early today?" I said a breezy "Hi' to him, only to be met with a serious, desolate voice saying, "She passed away today, half an hour ago." 'She' was his friend's wife, not even 40 years old , and had been detected with Ca pancreas barely five months ago. Her struggle and that of her family's had lasted for five months, and now she was no more. While it was inevitable, we had been hoping, against common medical sense and intuition, that this day would be a little further down time. It wasn't to be and Sourav rushed to be at his friend's place.

As I went home that day, I picked up Hiya on the way from her daycare. "When's Daddy coming home?" she piped up in her little girl voice. I debated, one full minute, as the mom in me screamed, "Don't tell her, she doesn't need to know about Life's cruelties yet". But then, my saner developmental pediatrician voice took over. I held her soft, still little hand in mine, and I told her. She heard me, her expression concerned and the first thing she asked me was "What will now now happen to that Dada (she knew they had a son)? Who will take care of him?"

How true!! That is the first thought that strikes us all when we lose somebody we love-What will now happen to me? How will I get along without him/her? That makes me wonder, when we lose somebody, do we grieve for him/her whom we have lost or do we grieve for ourselves, for what could have been and will now never be, for our dreams and our hopes, for the security that he or she represented, for the comfort and solace that they brought to our lives.

Children grieve similarly, though their understanding of death changes as they progress through different stages of develpment. While an infant or toddler (till the age of 2) may react with behavioral changs like excessive clinginess and whining after the death of a parent, a pre-schooler (3-6 years) may think of Death as something that is reversible or temporary. Unfortunately, they are extremely egocentric in their thinking and they might end up making spurious associations between some of their own behaviors and the death of a person they loved, holding themselves accountable for the death in some way. A school aged child (6-12) like Hiya realises that Death is more final, and now the main concern is about predictability and safety. "Who will now care for me" becomes their concern. They are not being selfish or unfeeling about who has gone, they simply want to kow how their world will change fundamentally because of this death (Dixon, 2006).

Another thing to remember is that children at this stage are also fascinated by what seems like inexplicable fascination for gory or gruesome details, especially related to the body. As adults, we may not feel these details are something we can handle , especially at tension wrought times like after somebody's death, such questions are howevr part of a child's attempt to make sense of an overwhelming abstract event.

I realised this after Hiya bowled me her last googly on the topic that day. "After she died, did her eyes close for ever?" Yes, I replied. Then she says, "You told me Maani's mother (my grandma) can still see us from Heaven. How can she do that if her eyes closed for ever"? Hmmmm....

Hiya is growing up. I look at her and now she reaches upto my waist, when she stands by my side. God, wasnt it a few days ago that she would barely reach upto my knees. How time flies! And how I regret that I did not make more of an efort to record some of her comments and conversations as she was growing. It would have helped so much to have a written record of how her thoughts reflect her cognitive understanding of her world. For instance, the other day, at the nd of the World Cup final match between India and pakistan, she jumped up and down with me , when India won. Then she asked me," Now that the game is over, they will go back to work"?

"What did I do wrong"??
It was one of those days, one of those families.One of the children that I was assessing today was on a follow up visit. Since it was not a fresh assessment, we had actually gone past the anxiety and awkward questions about the initial diagnoses. And I had moved on to the question that I dread asking parents the most...and but always try to ask,"How are you coping?"And then the carefully -held emotional barriers broke.Those thoughts about "Why us?Why our child? We never knowingly hurt anybody" came out in the open. As the tears fell, I could only listen, and watch them fall. Are there ever any answers to such heart-rending questions? I did what I always do- applauded the parents for the wonderful way that they are supporting their child's development and spoke to them about how they can continue to do so. And I told them what I truly believe, that the Good God who has presented them with their trials will also hold their hand, in some way or the other.

Grapes are Sour...or not?

Hiya had a 'Library' period at school today.It is a period in which the children are required to read a book.It appears that Hiya got to read the well-loved story about the fox and the grapes.She told me in great detail about how the fox jumped again and again and gain to eat the grapes and having failed, walked off, saying,"The grapes are too high. I cannot reach them."

Now i was a little taken aback by this new ending and I told her that the fox walked off saying, "The grapes are sour".To this, my six year old daughter replied,"well mamma, the fox couldnt taste the grapes.How could it say the grapes were sour?"

And then I realised that what I was seeing or rather hearing, was a perfect example of what we refer to as 'pre-operational thinking in childre in the ages of 4-7 years'. Preoperational children believe that everyone sees what they see, hears what they hear, and knows what they know. Their thinking is very concrete, and does not include logical or abstract reasoning.