ENG paper

The Early Roots of Empathy Analysis

Children empathy is a key human ability to prevent bullying. Empathy refers to the ability of a person to understand and also share the feelings of another. Children bullying is facilitated by the lack of empathy whereby the bullying child does not consider the feeling of the bullied child thus they inflict physical and emotional pain without caring about the other party ("Building Empathy Within Those Who Bully" 582).

In the current world, parents, as well as teachers, are not teaching children about empathy hence children are dominated by the spirit of individualism and lack of empathy. Teachers and parents should be encouraged to teach their children about being empathy so that death, injury and emotional torture subjected to the bullied child are prevented. Neuroscientists, psychologist, and educators have been concerned about the trend of children taking their life as a result of bullying such as the case of Phoebe prince a 15-year-old-boy who committed suicide after he was bullied by fellow students. Scholars have identified that there is something that should have been done to prevent the suicide by either parents or teachers ("Building Empathy Within Those Who Bully" 583). Psychologist, educators, and neuroscientists encourage parents to considered teaching their child about empathy from an early age so that they can also determine the feelings of the other party before subjecting them to bullying.

Empathy is something that people are inherently born with. For instance, infants tend to cry when they see another child crying. Crying is an indication that the child shares the pain of the other by crying too due to empathy. However, lack of teaching children to uphold the empathy has resulted to the disappearance of empathy among children. Besides, empathy is not only found in human beings buts also in some animals such as chimps. For instance, chimps have a tendency of protesting unfair treatment whereby they refuse to accept treats they have attained together if some of them are not recognized. In addition, children about age 14 month tend to help adult accomplish the task they are struggling with even them the child is unable to do it. They demonstrate their willingness to help. These examples are indicating that empathy is inherent on human beings hence there is a duty to cultivate it so that bullying among teens can be eliminated.

Parent plays an essential role in the development of a bullying child. Most bullies’ children have a background of being neglected during their childhood whereby the parents neglected the child as they were busy with their daily activities. Lack of close bond with parent enables the child to develop mistrusts and lack affection to anyone hence they become insecure. As a result, they develop a defense mechanism as they respond to their insecurity and vulnerability they experienced during their childhood in unmet emotional need led to the development of antisocial behaviors such as violence and aggression. As a result, they are likely not to develop their empathy appropriately.

In conclusion, empathy is an essential human ability that facilitates the prevention of bullying in human life. Lack of empathy has facilitated current children to develop a feeling of self-interest over others. Lack of empathy lead to non-cohesion and mistrusts such that a person lack of reasons not to cheat, steal, lie or murder another person. Failure to teach children about the empathy increase risk of developing sociopath in the society. There is a need to teach children how to care about other people feeling so that they prevent their pain encountered. Parents and teachers play an essential role in the development of empathy among children. The life encounters of a child determine their future behavior hence parents and teachers should consider enhancing the behaviors of a child by teaching them about empathy so as to prevent cases of bullying.

Works Cited

Szalavitz Maia, “How Not to Raise a Bully: The Early Roots of Empathy.” A Guide to Writing with Reading: Evergreen, edited by Susan Fawcett, Cemjc, 2014, pp. 582-883.