MeganRitter

I would agree that the children in the O'Connor stories we've read thus far don't really display much empathy... But I don't think you should write off all children as egotistical machines so quickly, especially in literature.

Ever read C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia? Lucy, one of the four most important characters, is a young child... Yet throughout the story, she (and her brothers and sisters, too, in fact) demonstrate empathy for the creatures that inhabit the magical world in the wardrobe.

One of my favorite books, Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, includes a young female character who shows selfless love and affection for several other characters -- even going so far as to risk her own life for the sake of a greater cause. Of course, she doesn't fully understand the gravity of the situation, but she does know she's putting herself in danger for someone else.

And there are plenty of other examples, too; sweet little children are used a lot in both fantasy and romance genre fiction.

I think there are plenty of great kids in literature. I grew up with Anne of Green Gables, who was just as sweet as she could possibly be.
But I think O'Connor portrays children much more accurately. There are always exceptional children in the real world who are darlings, but I think many of the wonderful self-sacrificing children found in literature are inaccurate idealizations.

The pyschologists are wrong. There have been countless times where one of my kids (Ages 2, 3 & 8) hurt themselves, and the others, even the youngest, leans in, puts his little chubby hand on the other's shoulder, and wells up too in a pure show of empathy. Kids in general pick up on distress and suffering a whole lot more than I think you are giving them credit for. The problem with the kids in this story was that Bailey was a big wuss who let them get away with backtalk and rewards them for acting like idiots in the car. "John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney", then Bailey does exactly what they want! Not the way to raise empathetic kids! Bailey is a miserable mama's boy who's not even enough of an adult to stand up to his little brats.

Excellent point, Brenda. Giving in to a child in order to avoid a temper tantrum is a sure-fire way to teach them that the way to get what you want is to have a tantrum -- especially in public.

When my son was little, and he did something like reach for a hot stove, my wife would say, "No thank you!" instead of just barking "No!" The result was that when he got older, if he should happen to have a tantrum in the grocery store or the shopping mall, he would scream, "No thank you! No thank you!"

Yes, he was having a tantrum, but because he sounded so *polite*, passers-by were more likely to find the scene amusing.

When we showed Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang to my son for the first time when he was about two, he started crying during a comical scene when Caractacus Potts (an absent-minded inventor) runs around with a lit rocket strapped to his back. He cried because he thought "The Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang daddy" was in trouble. And the other night when my kids saw one a boy die in one of the Harry Potter movies, my 3-year-old cried for a half hour.

When my kids (ages 3 and 8) are tired or hungry, they have a much harder time behaving. The younger one is still experimenting with ways to manipulate her surroundings. She's recently discovered fibbing, and the other day instead of eating her cheese string she threw it away in the garbage when we weren't looking. She's doesn't yet have a moral database that she can rely on to weigh the consequcnes of her actions, and she's overwhelmingly concerned with the here and now, rather than anything long-term.

O'Connor did a good job of showing how kids model the adult behavior they see around them.