Morality and Our Little Ones | The BodyMind Connection
You may have witnessed a one-year-old stepping up to help out an adult, even a stranger, who is struggling with a task such as opening a box. In a person of any other age, this would be seen as an act of altruism. In a baby, however, this act is likely to be viewed as ‘cute’ or possibly even annoying or inconvenient. However, in the baby morality studies at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, babies and toddlers were found to consistently demonstrate kindness and unselfish concern for others. In carefully designed ‘morality play’ puppet shows babies aged 5 to 21 months overwhelmingly preferred the ‘good guy’ over the ‘bad guy’.
The older babies also demonstrated a more complex ability regarding justice. In addition to preferring ‘good guys’ to ‘bad guys,’ they preferred puppets who punished the ‘bad guy’ over puppets who rewarded the ‘bad guy.’ These studies concluded that babies make the same judgments about goodness and badness that adults make. In fact, “In the end, we found that 6- and 10-month-old infants overwhelmingly preferred the helpful individual to the hindering individual. This wasn’t a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy,” says Yale professor Paul Bloom, in The Moral Life of Babies.
Bloom tells about one toddler who was asked to take a piece of candy from either the ‘nice’ puppet or the ‘mean’ puppet, in effect ‘punishing’ the puppet. Like most of the other toddlers in the study, he took a piece of candy from the ‘mean’ puppet, and then continued the punishment by reaching over and bonking the ‘bad’ puppet on the head!
The baby morality studies at Yale defy many assumptions about infant awareness. In the Yale “Baby Lab,” babies demonstrate a rudimentary sense of justice as early as five months of age. The very concept of the morality of babies is kind of startling — it seems almost preposterous. But consider the well-known occurrence of newborns crying in response to hearing another baby cry. This is not a reflex to a particular pitch that prompts a baby to cry, because she won’t cry if she hears a recording of herself in tears. Rather, this seems to display a primitive sense of compassion. These studies, to me, represent one of our greatest hopes for solving the formidable problems of the world today. As Dacher Keltner tells us in the title of his book, we are Born to be Good.
Parents want to raise children who are principled and have good values. Yet in a culture that often promotes greed and depersonalization, and places materialism over a meaningful life, it can be challenging to parents who want to encourage strong, moral values. You don’t have to look far to find evidence of exploitation for profit. Kids are bombarded with external messages that physical beauty equals happiness, eating unhealthy food is a good thing to do with friends and sexiness is a part of childhood.
Fortunately, kids are also filled with unconscious messages that speak to their innate sense of right and wrong, and these need to be called to attention. BodyMind awareness gives children continued access to these messages and helps bring them to greater consciousness. An understanding of morality is important but often is not enough to help kids avoid slippery situations.
Compassionate crying as a newborn, judging and preferring good behavior over bad at five and six months, unprompted kindness at a year old, all imply that a sense of right and wrong is present at birth, or ‘wired in.’ In other words, moral values are a part of the human body. In very young children, they exist only as visceral responses. They have feelings about right and wrong, but they do not have beliefs or information about right and wrong. This is a foundation for the more mature morality you will help him develop as you raise and socialize him.
Modern neuroscience teaches us that thought follows emotion. Ideas and beliefs about ethics must be well thought out, but they start with gut-level responses. Because his sense of right and wrong is already wired into his central nervous system, tuning in to his body will help your child with moral and ethical choices throughout his life. It will help him to stay true to his values. He will respond to moral dilemmas with greater clarity, strength, and integrity.
When 6-year-old Evan came home from Kindergarten one day, his mother, Cheryl, could tell something was wrong. At bedtime, as Cheryl was settling down to read him a story, Evan admitted that he had told his class a terrible story about his family that wasn’t true. Cheryl brought several parenting skills to the conversation with Evan, including asking, “What was going on with you that you told your class a terrible lie?” Or, when Evan was clearly filled with remorse and felt awful about himself, Cheryl might have said, “I remember once when I told a lie…. I felt absolutely awful about it. Everyone makes mistakes, and this is an opportunity to learn what kind of choices you want to make.”
As they talked about what happened, one of the things Cheryl asked Evan was how his body felt as a result of his lie. “Bad,” he said. “It feels bad. Right here,” and pointed to his solar plexus. “And here,” pointing to his tummy. “Yes,” Cheryl agreed, “It feels really bad to tell a lie.” The next day, after Evan made amends with his teacher and his classmates, Cheryl brought his attention again to what his body felt like now that he had told the truth. “Better!” Evan reported. “Much better,” he sighed. By underlining the comparison for Evan, Cheryl brought attention to the role the body plays in choices her child makes. When he told a lie, his body felt bad. When he told the truth, his body felt good. Obviously, there were other dimensions to the conversation that were necessary as a result of this situation, but this comparison is a key to sorting out ethical dilemmas.
Comparing how he feels when he tells the truth with how he feels when he does not, is a skill that Evan will build on throughout his childhood — particularly if this type of comparison is repeated often. If Evan’s parents continue to underline and support the feelings in his body, then when Evan is confronted with difficult situations on his own, such as peer pressure to engage in risky behavior, he will automatically include his BodyMind awareness when he decides how to respond. This is an invaluable skill that will help him to make better choices in the future.
Parents care about raising children who value the important things in life including health, happiness, friendship, honesty, integrity, and kindness, over superficial appearances, winning at all costs, cheating, greed, and indulgence. At the same time, parents feel pressure to push their kids to succeed, to get good grades, to excel in a minimum of two extracurricular activities, and learn at least one foreign language. Whew.
You can make the argument that it is necessary for your child to be a high-achiever in order to get into a good college and to stay super-busy to keep out of trouble. You can also drop into your body and see if this feels like the best choice for your child. Pay attention to the response in your child’s body, too, when you create her extracurricular schedule. You can also ask your child, “What does your body feel about learning another language?” Including the body in this conversation will help parents weigh these decisions.
At certain stages of development, your child may well act out hurtfully and may enjoy some of the feelings associated with that behavior. A mother in one of my workshops told me, “I know that if I ask Aisha, my four-year-old, ‘How do you feel after throttling Julia?’ she’s going to say with full conviction, ‘I feel great!’” It is true that overpowering and hurting Julia, who had made Aisha mad, gave Aisha a sense of vindication from striking out, and feelings of power and a mastery of her aggression. This is an age-appropriate experience. However, at the same time that Aisha may derive pleasure from powerful feelings of striking back, at four she is also capable of compassion.
When your child is in the throes of ‘great’ feelings of conquest, ask without judgment what her body feels like. Be genuinely curious. It’s a very interesting question. It can be useful for her to compare with her feelings later, once she has calmed down, and the two of you have talked about her behavior. Try to find out what prompted her to throttle her friend. Obviously, something happened that she wasn’t equipped to handle in a good way.
Dr. Lisa Kahan, a Seattle child psychologist, and psychoanalyst suggests that when you discuss what happened, it is best not to mention that your child wanted to hurt someone. Dr. Kahan suggests saying, “You had angry feelings. You were so frustrated, but I know that you can express your frustration in others ways. I’ll help you. We’ll think of alternatives to hitting.”
When she calms down, ask her again to tell you what she notices in her body. In the hopeful event that she apologizes to Julia and the two make up, help bring her awareness back to her body to see what it feels like. You can make the comparison for her, “When you were still angry with Julia, your body felt just great and strong. Then you felt sad that you hurt her and you weren’t playing together. Now that you’ve made up, your body feels better, calmer. Isn’t that great? Your body changes a lot.”
We have all had experiences of deriving pleasure from cruelty of some sort. Making fun of someone because of a difference, for example, is one way we may try to feel superior. Feeling superior doesn’t feel good in a positive way. It feels good in an insidious and guilt-stained way. The guilty part will likely outlast the good part.
Comparing and contrasting the feelings in her body will help your child recognize that acting with kindness and integrity feels better physically, and will help her to choose her behavior accordingly. She will reflect on the feeling in her body when faced with a moral choice and will find reliable, ongoing guidance for behaving ethically and making positive choices.
