Doctor Maria Robinson: Empathy
It’s really, really crucial for practitioners who are working with babies and very young children to really have an understanding of the needs of the child, and to be able to step into what the world might actually be like for that child, so that when they are upset there is not this business about – with the older ones for example – oh that didn’t hurt, or whatever. And maybe when they fall down and they start to cry perhaps you do feel inside that they might be making a bit of a fuss, but we don’t actually know how that fall has impacted on that child. We don’t know when the baby is crying just what it feels like for them, we can only imagine what it feels like for us when we are upset, and so using that knowledge and understanding and insight we start to put ourselves in the place of the child, so that we begin to see that it’s horrible to be upset, and that what the child needs, no matter what, is first of all for their particular feeling to be acknowledged “Oh did that hurt, oh isn’t that awful?” Or “Oh you sound so upset”, and then from that you can start to perhaps say, if it’s a little baby, oh you were so upset, let me give you a cuddle, let’s look at the birdies, lets give you a pat and lets do whatever. So in other words you acknowledge the feeling, you comfort the feeling, and then what you do is to try and help the child feel better. So the child learns over hundred of experiences that that feeling can actually be comforted, and they can feel better, which helps them in the end be able to be a bit more resilient to life’s ups and downs. Because after all what is mental health, mental wellbeing, emotional wellbeing? It’s to be able to actually deal with all the frustrations, and ups and downs, and somebody taking your pencil, when you get older, or sticking with something that’s a bit boring when you are an adult. It may seem that that capacity, in an adult, to stick with something when they might be a bit bored and fed up, it might seem as though it’s got nothing to do with what happens when you are a baby, but yes it does, because the capacity to be comforted and soothed, to have your needs responded to, to have somebody acknowledging how you feel; to have that kind of empathic understanding, helps you understand that yes, you can be comforted, this can be made better, and yes over time I will learn that I can wait a little bit, and I can actually suck my thumb, or twiddle my hair, or play with my things. And as I get older I can walk away from something, or I might still feel upset but I know I can deal with it. It seems to be so much better.