Empathy and Repentence

Last updated on: October 24, 2013 at 11:57 am by Kate Cousino

Empathy and Repentence 2013-10-24T11:57:00-04:00 Kate Cousino

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I had one of those moments last week that sparks hope and excitement over this hard work of parenting.

Both of my boys came home with notes for misbehavior on the bus that day. I talked with them about it a little bit, but I was tired and didn’t feel like making a big deal out of it, so I didn’t dole out any punishments. Instead I change the subject and told them I had brownies for them as a thank you for being so good the night before, when I was out.

The Bug was uncharacteristically quiet while I said this. Then he surprised me by spontaneously volunteering to give up computer time “until the signed bus note is turned in” because, he said, “I want to show you how sorry I am”.

I pointed out to him that it was Friday, and the bus note wouldn’t be returned until Monday, so that meant going all weekend without computer games. He really meant it though, and he was determined to do it. He honestly struck me speechless! I couldn’t say anything, I just hugged him!

He was stoic about it though, even when his little brother asked for computer time on Sunday afternoon, at a point when both boys were kind of at loose ends. I told Sweet Pea that it would be unkind to play computer games in front of The Bug when he had given them up, but The Bug heard this and said that, it was ok, he would just stay upstairs “away from temptation.”

There are so many times when they are little that you wonder whether they will ever develop the capacity for sincere remorse (instead of just wanting to evade consequences), to really see that their actions affect other people and want to grow and change accordingly. My Bug is maturing in surprising leaps and bounds, in between bouts of familiar goofiness. Maybe that thing I read recently about how reading literature develops empathy was on to something. Certainly, he reads voraciously, and is now at an age to really enter into the lives of some interesting and complex characters.

Empathy is hard. It can make us uncomfortable, especially when we aren’t able to relieve the suffering or anger of another and have to fight against our desire to make everything ‘right’ again. It opens us to be hurt by others, to feel their pain as well as our own. There is a danger to ‘doing unto others’ in a world where that may be taken as either insincerity or idiocy, and sometimes I’ve wondered whether I ought not raise my children to be tougher and more hard-nosed than I have been, if it might spare them some pain.

But…I want my children to be more than merely alive and satiated; I want them to thrive, and be fully human. I want them to be open to the myriad beauties of the created world, including the miraculous and sacred beauty of each human soul. This requires empathy; that combination of imagination and intuition that feeds on stories of humor, kindness, humility, mercy, and love.

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