Catherine Gueguen, pediatrician, became known to the general public thanks to two reference works published by Editions Robert Laffont in French: “For a happy childhood – Rethinking education in the light of affective neuroscience” and “Living happily with your child” . She recently co-authored in French “Developing psychosocial skills at school. Let’s dare non-violent Communication” (Edition Canopé, national education, 2023).

You insist that parents and professionals must mother babies. And this of course echoes our efforts to explain the importance of touch, but also of voice and gaze in our relationships with children. Can you tell us more? And what does this have to do with soothing?

Empathy is work on emotions

It is the entire attitude of the adult that is fundamental. That is to say, it is first up to adults to understand what empathy is. And I say again that empathy is work on emotions. If we are not empathetic towards ourselves, we will not be able to be empathetic with children. The more empathetic we are with ourselves, the more compassion we have towards ourselves, the more it also protects us from burnout.

You should know that at the moment there is a lot of burnout among parents and among childcare professionals and very often it is because they are hard on themselves and think that it is possible to be perfect all the time, but it is impossible: we all make mistakes. They generally have little empathy and compassion for them. Compassion and empathy for oneself is the first protective factor of burnout. It’s work on our emotional skills, that is to say it’s about understanding our emotions, our needs and knowing what our emotions are for. They are fundamental.

Then you have to have compassion when you make mistakes. You saw that I started by saying it. I started by saying that, when adults have a word that they should not have, a gesture that they should not have, we must have compassion, saying to ourselves: “For millennia, we have always acted like that, so I’m going to have to get rid of all that.”

It goes a long way to developing social and emotional skills. At the moment, I don’t know if you aware, but there is a whole program in France to develop these psychosocial and socio-emotional skills. And all adults who interact with children must have training to develop this empathy. Otherwise they cannot be empathetic with children, and understand children. It is primarily up to adults to have this training. And this caring attitude is going to be very important, if it is true. If an adult pretends to be caring, children sense it right away. So for children to develop harmoniously, there will be the tone of voice, there will be the look, there will be the touch – a respectful and warm touch towards children.

Attachment theory

The little ones are born with the innate, vital, fundamental need for attachment which is to create a bond with the person who takes care of them and who can comfort them, protect them and give them emotional closeness in case of distress. The role of the adult is to respond to this need for protection.

To develop harmoniously, children need to have affectionate ties with at least one person who takes care of them in a consistent and lasting way: who protects them. It is the basis of emotional security to which they turn in case of alarm or distress, seeking physical and emotional proximity which brings them appeasement and comfort, then, gradually, the strength and desire to explore the world around them.

Several people can make up this home base, always with a main attachment figure who are generally the parents. When the main attachment figure is absent, a professional in nursery, etc … can provide children with this secure attachment.

Adults console, cuddle, and comfort children through respectful contact that does not confine them. It allows to them to be free as soon as they no longer need comfort. Very often we do not understand this theory of attachment, and we believe that we must cuddle them at any time. But children need to be cuddled when they need it, specifically when they are in distress or feeling unwell. Otherwise, you have to let them free.

You talked about adults needing to have empathy. If this issue is clear, can it nevertheless be difficult for adults to free themselves from the conscious and unconscious education that they have received?

Training to develop empathy in adults and work on emotions in children

It’s extremely difficult, which is why training is needed to develop empathy in adults. When faced with children who behave inappropriately, adults’ first reaction is often to get upset, become angry, and want to punish. So there is a whole lot of extremely important work, because we know that at present talking to toddlers about emotions will improve their development in terms of their emotional regulation, empathy, emotional behavior, mutual aid and language.

I will give you an example of an Italian study which is very interesting and which was carried out with 2 year olds. This researcher took 2 groups of children who listened to the same story as an adult read to them. There is a group of children who then move on, and go to play. A group of children is asked to talk about the emotions they feel about this story. Then, they are asked about the emotions of the characters in the story and to identify their helping or non-helping behaviors.

In children who have had this emotional work, this will change their development. They become empathetic, they will have considerable development of language and helping behaviors. Whereas children who have only listened to the same story, without working on their emotions will not have an impact on these elements. Currently all studies around the world say that for toddlers, we need to do this work around emotions. This is fundamental for their development.

Why? Empathy is working on emotions. We know that it is empathy which will allow the overall development of the brain. Both the intellectual brain and the emotional brain, which allows us to have satisfactory relationships and which allows us to be in contact with our emotions . Affective and social neuroscience places enormous emphasis on the work of emotions. Currently, the French government is implementing this by deploying a 15-year plan to train all adults in charge of children to develop their emotional and social skills. This is the great contribution of affective and social neuroscience.

Today we hear challenges to positive education. Is there a real disagreement on the merits, or is it because this notion has sometimes been misunderstood?

For many adults, talking about their emotions is an admission of weakness

It wasn’t me who talked about positive education. It was journalists who gave me that label. I am discussing the scientific discoveries that researchers are making around the world today. This new education is based on the fact that we must be empathetic with children. We have to develop their emotional and social skills, and no longer humiliate them. This is so-called positive education. So it bothers a lot of adults because they weren’t raised like that. Adults were not at all raised with the habit of talking about their emotions. For them, talking about their emotions is an admission of weakness. They don’t understand why we need to talk about emotions.

So it’s very, very complicated for us French people who are in a country that is more about rationality. This is a very big misunderstanding. In June, an education specialist from the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” interviewed me. She said to me “But what is happening in France? We journalists would never dare to interview someone who advocates humiliation of children, because isolating a child, locking him in his room, is humiliation. » In France, we have a lot of work to get out of this habit of humiliation and punishment. More than in Anglo-Saxon countries, where there is education that is much more positive.

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