As
so often happens to five-year-olds with younger
siblings, Len has lost all patience with Jay, his
two-and-a-half-year-old brother, who is making a
mess of the Lego blocks they've been playing
with. Carried away by a wave of rage, Len bites
Jay, who breaks into tears. Their mother, hearing
Jay's pained yelp, bustles over and scolds Len,
ordering him to put away those objects of
contention, the Lego blocks. At thiswhat
surely must seem a gross miscarriage of justiceLen
bursts out crying. Still peeved, his mother
refuses to console him.
But Len is proffered comfort from an unlikely
source: Jay, who, although the original injured
party, is now so concerned by his older brother's
tears that he undertakes a campaign to calm Len
down. The exchange goes something like this: (1)
"Len,
don't," Jay implores. "Stop crying,
mate. Stop it crying."
But Len still cries. His direct plea a failure,
Jay beseeches their mother on Len's behalf;
"'Len crying, Mummy! Len crying. Look. Me
show you. Len crying."
And then, turning to Len, Jay adopts a mothering
mode, patting his weeping brother as he reassures
him in soothing tones, "Look, Len. No go on
crying."
Len's sobs continue, despite the comforting. So
Jay turns to another tactic, lending a helping
hand in putting away the Lego blocks in their
bag, with a friendly, "Ah, Len. I put it
back for Lennie, hey?"
Even so, the tears continue. The ever-ingenious
Jay tries yet another strategy, distraction.
Showing his brother a toy car, Jay tries to draw
his attention away from the minor tragedy that
has just befallen him. "There's this man in
here. What's this, Len? What's this, Len?"
Len takes no interest. He's inconsolable; his
tears know no end. Losing her patience with him,
his mother resorts to that classic parental
threat, "Do you want me to smack you?"
to which Len responds with a wavering,
"No."
"Then just
stop it, please," says his mother firmly, if
a bit exasperatedly. Through his sobs, Len
manages a pathetic, gasping, "I'm trying
to." Which prompts Jay's final stratagem:
borrowing his mother's firmness and voice of
authority, he threatens, "Stop crying, Len.
Smack your bottom!"
This microdrama
reveals the remarkable emotional sophistication
that a toddler of just thirty months can bring to
bear in trying to manage someone else's emotions.
In his urgent attempts to soothe his brother, Jay
is able to draw on a large repertoire of tactics,
ranging from a simple plea, to seeking an ally in
his mother (no help, she), to physically
comforting him, to lending a helping hand, to
distraction, threats, and direct commands. No
doubt Jay relies on an arsenal that has been
tried with him in his own moments of distress. No
matter. What counts is that he can readily put
them to use in a pinch even at this very young
age.
Of course, as
every parent of young children knows, Jay's
display of empathy and soothing is by no means
universal. It is perhaps as likely that a child
his age will see a sibling's upset as a chance
for vengeance, and so do whatever it takes to
make the upset even worse. The same skills can be
used to tease or torment a sibling. But even that
mean-spiritedness bespeaks the emergence of a
crucial emotional aptitude: the ability to know
another's feelings and to act in a way that
further shapes those feelings. Being able to
manage emotions in someone else is the core of
the art of handling relationships.
To manifest such
interpersonal power, toddlers must first reach a
benchmark of self-control, the beginnings of the
capacity to damp down their own anger and
distress, their impulses and excitementeven
if that ability usually falters. Attunement to
others demands a modicum of calm in oneself.
Tentative signs of this ability to manage their
own emotions emerge around this same period:
toddlers begin to be able to wait without
wailing, to argue or cajole to get their way
rather than using brute forceeven if they
don't always choose to use this ability. Patience
emerges as an alternative to tantrums, at least
occasionally. And signs of empathy emerge by age
two; it was Jay's empathy, the root of
compassion, that drove him to try so hard to
cheer up his sobbing brother, Len. Thus handling
emotions in someone elsethe fine art of
relationshipsrequires the ripeness of two
other emotional skills, self-management and
empathy.
--
Goleman's
footnote:
1. The exchange
between Jay and Len was reported by Judy Dunn and
Jane Brown in "Relationships, Talk About
Feelings, and the Development of Affect
Regulation in Early Childhood," Judy Garber
and Kenneth A. Dodge, eds., The Development of
Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991). The dramatic
flourishes are my own.
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