It might seem like kind of a trivial thing, but I think you can tell a *ton* about a person from how they interact with children. When you see Harris (and before her, Obama) interact with children or young people, you see a lot of what psychologists call "mirroring."
Mirroring is a fundamental part of child-rearing. The kid widens their eyes; you widen your eyes. The kid laughs; you laugh. What this teaches kids is that they are agents in the world. They can communicate their mental state & others will recognize & respond. Basic stuff!
It's most important when they are little babies, just learning about the world, but it's never *not* important. Even when they get older, it's incredibly important to emphasize that they have agency, that their mental states are significant, that they matter.
One of my favorite things about Obama was his obvious delight at, and skill with, kids. Here are a bunch of pictures of him mirroring.
Mirroring is a surefire way to engage a kid. But here's the thing: to mirror, one must exercise *empathy*. At a very basic level, one must be able to project into the child's perspective -- to imagine a perspective other than one's own. To most people, it's just instinctive.
But a pathological narcissist like Trump is quite literally incapable of this kind of empathy. When all your psychic resources are devoted to propping up your fractured, disordered ego, you simply can't look past yourself. In a real way, you *can't see other people*.
To Trump, other people are only reflections of himself, threats or boosts to his ego. He sees them entirely through the lens of what they do (or don't do) for him. He's incapable of empathy. (It's horrible; I'd feel sorry for him if he'd leave us the f alone.)
And the thing is, children can't do anything for him. They are not threats -- they can't dominate him -- but they also offer no advantage. They are, in his world, nothing. Irrelevant. That's why you can't find a picture or footage of Trump interacting in a healthy way with a kid.
That's why, when you *do* see a picture of Trump with kids, he looks confused or impatient & the kids look unhappy. He literally doesn't understand it, doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing. What use is it to him? How does it help him?
Anyway, I got to thinking about all this because Harris & Walz both have Obama's same ability in spades -- the ability to imagine & respond to children's mental states. To empathize with them. To feel their emotional "temperature" & respond appropriately.
In other words, they are decent human beings. Trump is not. The children know. </fin>
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