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The Story of Jay, Len...
as told by Daniel Goleman

 

From Emotional Intelligence, Goleman, Chapter 8 "The Social Arts"

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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 this—what surely must seem a gross miscarriage of justice—Len 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 excitement—even 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 force—even 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 else—the fine art of relationships—requires the ripeness of two other emotional skills, self-management and empathy.

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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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