Courtesy of Mindframes (http://drshefalibatra.blogspot.com/2012/11/step-into-their-shoes.html)
Sometimes I wonder what kind of parent I would be. Hopefully not too overbearing or protective, but not afraid to lay down the rules either. I never imagined having a child as being easy, but it definitely seemed easier when I was a child myself. Anytime my parents did something frustrating or seemingly unfair I made a mental note that I would understand kids better when in my parents’ shoes. How couldn’t I? After all, I had years of experience.
I don’t think it ever quite works out that way in reality though. Even if we somehow avoid ideas or mannerisms we found so infuriating in our parents, who’s to say we won’t develop our own set of even worse ones? I never thought I would have trouble talking to children, but age really does make it harder to empathize.
Edward Eager, a children’s novelist, once wrote a passage (from his book “Half Magic”) that sticks in my head to this day. It states that from the perspective of the four children protagonists there are four types of adults (I think Eager was fond of fours). The first type of adult simply cannot get along with children no matter what the circumstances are, because they don’t understand children at all. The second type wants to get along with children, but tries to do so by pretending to be a child themselves. The third type treats children as if they were adults as well. Finally, the fourth type, “last and best and rarest of all,” according to Eager, are “the ones who seemed to feel that children were children and grown-ups were grown-ups and that was that, and yet at the same time there wasn’t any reason why they couldn’t get along perfectly well and naturally together…without changing that fact.”
For the longest time I thought Eager was being absurd. Clearly the third type was the way to go. After all, who wants to be treated like a child? If an adult thinks you are an adult too then they might respect you more, listen to what you have to say. How could someone who treats people by the category they were placed in without their consent be the “best and rarest of all?”
Now I think I understand what Eager meant. His point was not that the fourth kind of person only sees children as children and nothing more. Rather, this fourth adult understands and respects others for who they are. Communicating and empathizing with people isn’t achieved by forcing them into your own perspective. People are different, and those differences help make up who they are. Belittling such differences is not so much kind as arrogant.
That’s not the kind of parent, nor the kind of grown-up I want to be. After all, if we’re honest with ourselves, these notions apply to far more than just parent/child relations. Accepting someone’s perspective applies any time we interact with another person. I apologize if I sound like a preachy psychologist, but understanding mutual similarities isn’t enough to empathize. Differences do, or at least should, count for at least as much.
SCRIBERE 