Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting Podcast with me, Kim John Payne. This week I've been thinking about, particularly about the theme of empathy and I've been visiting in schools and with families and I've seen some really beautifully empathetic kids, you will notice when someone is hurt and generally you think, okay, that's a child who's got a really good sense of empathy. And over the years I've watched this and what's a standout feature of kids who have that empathy? It's not to say they don't have their struggles with their siblings as well, but a standout feature in that kind of ability to reach into someone else's experience, just a little bit, you know, not that we need to over-expect, but it does seem to line up with having enough simplicity and balance in a child's life.
And you know, there's a way in which I think about this and certainly the way in which I've observed it, is that when a child has age appropriately, the ability to understand how someone else is feeling, just a little bit, you know, little children only understand that a little bit, we've got to be careful, as I mentioned, not to over-expect, but when they can do that, it's a real hallmark that they are not overwhelmed by life, that they're not just trying to survive on a day-to-day basis, that they're operating from a base of security, they're operating from a base of safety, that home life for them is a place of refuge and it's a place where they can decompress. The overwhelm, one of the primary culprits of kids who find it very difficult to reach out into the world is when they don't have that feeling of safety and security and they're actually just struggling to get through the day, you know, they're much more on survival mode. Now, when you're on survival mode, it's a lot of what any child is going to be occupied with is just simply getting through and being able to reach out to others, siblings, friends, classmates, in that sense is secondary, you know, the brain, particularly the amygdala, the fight or flight brain is saying, you know, take care of yourself, the world's dangerous, it's overwhelming you and that child is going to have a lot of struggles to, you know, be able to move out of that position, you know, bless their little overwhelmed hearts, they don't mean it at all, but there is a default survival mode that a child will go into when they feel overwhelmed.
Now, in the Simplicity Parenting book, I make quite a case for the new normal of the fast-paced, supersized family life is actually causing a kind of a cumulative stress response, is how I refer to it in the book, and that cumulative stress response is so ubiquitous now, it's become somewhat the new normal and so too has low levels of empathy, because when a child has that kind of lifestyle, then that primary protective instinct, self-protective instinct kicks in and they don't mean it at all, it's just, it's a very primal, ancient type of just getting through. And by contrast, when a child has a life that is not causing that cumulative stress response, where life is manageable, where the amygdala, the ancient brain is not pumping out adrenaline and cortisol, a child who has that more inner space, inner peace, isn't necessarily concerned or overly concerned with their own survival, you know, that's just a part of life, that's being secure and being able to cope with how fast life is moving, that's all taken care of, you know, my parents are guardians, they're sort of sentinels, you know, standing at the threshold of my life and they take care of that for me. So therefore, I have the ability as a child to be able to reach out beyond my own needs, my own needs are being tended to, so I can tend to the needs of someone else.
It's very basic actually, isn't it? It's kind of common sense, but it's very much a part of raising a child who is socially and emotionally intelligent, because then they're not dominated by the amygdala, by the ancient fight-flight-freeze-or-flock brain, then the limbic system and the frontal lobes, neocortex, all these more highly evolved parts of the brain are then free to do their work, they're free to myelinate, you know, lay down the road pathways to these higher functions, because as long as a child feels safe and secure, then those pathways will open up and they open up for life. Once these pathways are laid down, they're there and a child has them. So the long-term outlook for parents practicing simplicity and balance in their child's life is really beautiful, it's wonderful to see.
Now, just to wrap up this thought, we also have to be a little bit careful of what to expect. As I mentioned earlier from a child's empathy, you know, right up through the age of 10, 11, 12, there's not a lot of traffic crossing over the brain bridge, you know, over the corpus colossum. It's, you know, in terms of understanding complicated, more subtle cause and effect on a social-emotional level, little children don't necessarily, you know, have that level of complexity.
However, a young child, you know, four, five, six years old, if they have a life that is more balanced and is not overwhelming them, they will be more open to direction. If something does go wrong with the siblings, they will be more open to healing and redoing what went wrong. And they will most definitely be able to be open to your show of empathy.
If you're moving into a situation where something has gone wrong, and you show empathy, a child who's not being overwhelmed by life will be able to read you. And via reading you, you know, your social, your emotional state, and the fact that you have empathy for a sibling that's been pushed or an argument that's happened, and they will be able to imitate you. This is by, via a part of the brain called the mirror neurons, which another podcast actually, earlier podcast mentioned.
These mirror neurons will pick up the subtle flow of emotions within a person that particularly within a person that the child feels is safe base that they can trust. And not only but, but particularly. And so via reading you, and your empathy for the situation, they will be able to build a bridge more and more, a more and more solid bridge as they grow older.
And so with all that said, the more we can lower the sensory overwhelm, the kind of the base beat of life to a manageable level for children, then the more pathways to empathy that will will open up. Okay, hope that's helpful. Bye bye for now.
