Let the Children Explore!



This is Samantha's nephew, Hayden Marcus.
She said it "was his first time crawling on
 the grass. He actually liked the grass, unlike
some kids."



After reading the fifth chapter of Roots of Empathy I was very impressed and interested in what the author said and how she gave different examples of why children sometimes behave and do the things they do. I had not thought about these concepts before. She gave three good examples with details that helped me better understand the minds of not only little children, but also adults, too.

 One illustration the author gave was about babies who were abused in early childhood. She said that their brains become smaller and they tend to avoid doing things that may cause them pain. She stated that babies who are abused tend to be hypersensitive, and can sense when the abuser is mad through facial expressions or tone of voice. I think this is very interesting because I didn’t realize that babies are smart enough to recognize such subtle cues that tell them whether someone is happy, mad, or sad. The author also said that babies adapt very easily to their surroundings, which makes sense; for instance, when their abuser behaves a certain way then the baby will react depending on the state of mind of their abuser.

Babies who are abused tend to grow up misunderstanding other people’s emotions because their examples growing up were somewhat distorted, or they think someone is threatening them. This makes me think of my friend who was abused by her father when she was younger. She is very aggressive and defensive, and tends to think that people are attacking her when they are just talking to her; it is as though she is misreading the other person’s cues. Reading this chapter has helped me make better sense of why my friend acts the way she does. She is using her survival mechanism to cope in her adult life. She does not seem to be able to show empathy towards others, and she tends to push other people’s feelings to the side because she is in survival mode.

A second issue I thought was interesting was allowing children to explore their environments and encouraging them to do so. The author gave an example of ants crawling in the house and allowing the child to explore instead of just telling them that they are bad, giving the child a chance to play and be creative with the ants. This gives the child a hands-on learning environment where he can see for himself what the ants would do. At my house this past summer, we had an ant infestation and every day we had to kill them with ant spray. We told my nephew who is two not to touch them because they were yucky. I now realize that when he was looking and trying to touch the ants, it was his way of expressing his curiosity. My family and I did not allow my nephew to be imaginative and creative with the ants; we just didn’t think that playing with ants was a good thing for him to play with. This did not open any opportunities for him to ask about the ants or ask to learn more about them. All he knows is that ants are yucky and to not touch them. We limited him to only one way of thinking about what ants are. I feel that not allowing my nephew to play with the ants did not help him build his self-esteem or provoke his curiosity.  He probably felt like he couldn’t explore to see exactly what these ants were all about.

In another section of the chapter, I thought it was so interesting that one of the teachers was holding a special doll and told the kids that the baby would not stop crying. She handed the baby off to a little boy who then cradled the baby in a football position and patted the baby on the back just how he was taught. This amazed me that in the fifth grade, he would know so much about caring for the baby. All the children in the class took turns soothing the special doll and that was amazing that they picked up on the cues of what the baby needed. They truly understood the meaning of empathy; the children naturally tried to know the feelings, the thoughts and the attitudes of the baby.

I was saddened to think that babies actually do get abused and have to turn on survival mechanisms that they may otherwise not use if they weren’t put in that position in early childhood. To think that they will never get the chance to explore and live an imaginative life without abuse like my nephew does saddens me. As early childhood teachers we should make it a point to help these children to thrive in a community that they can and will explore, along with finding out the world is not such a bad kind of a place after all.