Young children are tremendously empathic beings, they live emotions in full bloom and are able to see suffering or discomfort in others and get to feel it too.
Surely many of you remember an announcement in which an African child cried and cried in slow motion and a blond boy stood up, approached the TV and tried to put a pacifier on him. Surely many have seen a baby cry because they see another baby cry and surely you have been surprised to see your son cry after seeing you cry to you and do everything possible to see you smile again. This is where an adult realizes how much he has to learn from children, who live emotions more purely than we do and who they would do anything to bring joy where there is none.
However, something must happen at some point, because it is not difficult to see, for example, 3 and 4 year old children who hit others with hardly any reason and without being disturbed by the crying of the other or their discomfort. That is why I am asking: When do children lose the ability to be empathic?
Maybe someone has not been empathic with them
At this point in the film we all know that children learn more by imitation than by attending to our words and by all it is known that, unfortunately for children, most adults feel superior to children and treat them with less respect for what they deserve or what they give to other adults.
There are parents who beat their children, there are parents who ignore their tears and tell them that “do not cry, it is not so much!”, “Do not cry that you look like a baby!” Or who simply omit to comment no eye contact, as if the child had disappeared from the face of the earth. There are also parents who shout at their children or who treat them like simple pets: “I told you not to come near, to stay there leaning on the wall!”, “Shut up now, you're putting the head like…! ”, and other fairly typical phrases that could serve as an example.
In such cases, some children learn that it is normal to use cheeks to show your anger, that the normal thing is that in crying and discomfort the person does not receive attention and that the normal thing is that screams and humiliations are used to get the other Behave in one way or another, or to get him to stop doing something. That is, immersed in that spiral of (bad) treatment, children end up believing that what they receive is normal and that this is what they should do with others (sooner or later, still children or when they are adults).
Not all children may internalize these premises, but it is very likely that those who learn this way of exercising authority make use of the model for those times when they want to achieve something. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for losing empathy for others.
Promoting competitiveness
The society in which we live is tremendously competitive, so much that many parents (and the same environment) pass on this competitiveness to their children. They soon learn that in order to be well seen they must do things as others expect and that the better they do, the more recognition they receive. Then situations begin to appear in which if a child wins, another loses ("let's see who finishes before eating", "to see who dresses before", "to see which one runs more", "to see who gets better grades ”,…) And many parents fall in competitiveness with their children (“ see what my son does ”), always valuing the child according to his abilities and motivating those who are not the first to try to be them.
So, if for one child to win the other one has to lose, children stop empathizing with the defeat or failure of others, because they have managed to be the first and that is something that adults value.
Maybe someone has not taught them to channel negative emotions
There are children who, as they grow up, face the impossibility of using verbal communication to express emotions such as anger, anger or anger make use of non-verbal communication, that is, of the body, to show that discomfort. By this I mean scratching, biting, pushing or hitting.
These behaviors are difficult to extinguish because in the same way that they cannot express what they feel in words, they do not just understand our words when we tell them that they are hurting and that this should not be done.
But nevertheless our work as parents must be continuous and constant. On the one hand we must try to anticipate so that at the moment when it is going to hurt we can stop it. Then we must talk about his emotion: "I see that you are angry", show that you understand him: "It is normal, because this child has taken your toy away" and talk about the behavior he was going to carry out: "But not because of that you have to hit, because you hurt him… tell him that it is yours and that you do not want it removed ”, and together the child is told this while the toy is recovered (or the problem is solved if it has a solution).
However, this is a job, as I say, constant and that requires a very active presence in the first relationships of children with other children, and many parents, because they do not know or because they do not want, do not carry it out, leaving the acts of Children in the hands of destiny: "These are children's things, don't mess with them, fix them".
It is not that they lack some reason, because children have to manage to negotiate and fix their problems (basically because they are learning to live and life is a constant compendium of elections, decisions and negotiations), however everything has a moment and a age and, in the same way that we don't let a child go alone on the street with two years (although he has to learn, over time, to go alone), we cannot leave two children who are not able to express emotions and feelings with the word, to solve their differences with their hands. We cannot, because if nobody modifies these behaviors and the children see that they get things with them, they will fix them as a valid method to get things done.
Summarizing
In summary, I can think of these three factors that can help children lose the ability to empathize with other children, although as it is very possible that there are more, I leave the question in the air in case you and you can think of more factors.
If you wonder how to act, my answer is clear: not letting one pass. If you remember the great documentary "Thinking of others" (if you have not seen it already you are taking), before a show of intolerance and teasing in his class, Professor Kanamori, stops for several days classes and the agenda to try something so serious as is the insult and loss of respect.
We parents should do the same, not miss a single one, talking to our children as much as necessary, addressing the issue as many times as necessary and trying to show that others suffer when they are hit or hurt, in addition to explaining the typical "treat others as you would like to be treated".
