Lagging Alexandra Salas: Perfunctory Empathy

Alexandra Salas: It is important to understand challenging children’s lagging skills because if we don’t we won’t understand which skills the child needs to learn. But if we do, we will be better prepared to handle situations in which his challenging behaviors are most likely to occur. When we realize that the lagging skills contribute to challenging behaviors don’t always come naturally to all kids we have made a big breakthrough because most adults think that all children are created equal with the same social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. One very important thing to keep in mind is that challenging behavior occurs when life demands skills that a child lacks and when we see things from this perspective we no longer view lagging

The problem with this is very clear: vague concerns lead to vague solutions. Therefore, in order to avoid this when you’re in the Empathy step you should be an information seeking mode. Some adults find it a difficult task to stay patient in the Empathy step, but it is important to keep in mind that you’re not done with this step until you have the best possible understanding of the student’s concern. One way that you can test yourself if you have done a good job is to ask yourself at the end of this step if you have identified and clarified the concerns of the child and have arrived at the Invitation step. When you find yourself summarizing concerns that aren’t specific enough, you should simply backtrack. Due to the fact that children are too often dismissed by adults, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they seem to have problems figuring out what those concerns may be. I have a personal experience of a situation that I would not exactly label as me using perfunctory empathy. In fact, I think that it was exactly the opposite, but for me it was a learning experience. My sister who is in 5th grade is a very bright student that is above grade level in most subjects and is a very active learner. When her teacher called my mom about her not finishing several of her math homeworks my first reaction was to tell her she only had one job to do and that was to do well in school. I then told her to get her act together. Weeks later, her teacher sent a small sticky on an old homework saying that she needed to go back and do some sections over again because she had gotten several questions wrong. This time I asked her if she was okay and what was going on that she wasn’t finishing her homework and getting sections wrong in her homework. She broke out in tears crying and saying that she wasn’t understanding some of