If you're a parent of small children you've probably had the experience whereby your darling cuddly infant stops being the cutest thing you (or anyone else) has ever seen and more or less instantly becomes a red-faced squalling thing that you just feel like shouting at - and, unless you're superhuman, do, at least occasionally, shout at.
I've become interested in this strange transition and what a Buddhist take on it might be. What seems to me to be happening with both extremes is an assertion of the self of the parent over the self of the child concerned. Let me explain.
When we go all gooey over our children and sneak furtive glances around us to make sure that other people are doing the same, the chances are that, mixed in with our genuine love for and pride in them, there is a degree of projection going on: it's as if the child's function is to be cute so that we can bask in reflected glory. In other words, the child becomes an extension of us (which, some might argue, is the point of having kids), a means of presenting ourselves to the world, of perpetuating our own self. I've heard it said that evolution has engineered babies and small children to be cute in order to enhance their chances of survival, and that may be so, but there are attendant disadvantages. We forget that the child is a person in its own right rather than an adjunct to our personality. What goes on is a failure of empathy: a failure of our faculty to feel and identify with the experience of another. Empathy arises when we transcend our limited self to reach out imaginatively to other selves. The defensive walls that we erect out of ignorance are breached - at least to some extent, at least for a time.
The same thing applies in the contrasting situation: when, before our eyes, the cute little thing turns into a screaming monster. Again, what is happening is a failure of empathy: the child becomes an object that is preventing us from having what we want, possibly peace and quiet or to be looked up to and admired as a model parent. The walls of the self go up: frustrated craving leads to an eruption of anger and ill-will, which, if we are lucky might translate into nothing more than a few obscenities stifled by a pillow or the kicking of a few inanimate objects; if we are less lucky - or in less robust mental states - it might manifest in angry words at high volume - or, heaven forbid, worse. Afterwards, of course, when the rage has been spent there will probably follow a realisation of the awfulness of shouting at one's own children and moments of genuine empathy when we see the effects of our actions: a frightened and unhappy child whose needs at that moment are most decidedly not being met.
True empathy is probably the preserve of a Buddha - a being who has definitively and permanently seen through the illusion of the fixed, separate self, whose natural state is to identify completely and without reservation with other, non-enlightened beings enslaved under the tyranny of fixed self-view. The natural response of such a being to the happiness of another - perhaps to the carefree play of the child - is one of sympathetic joy: the happiness that arises when others are happy - but without a trace of the self-interest that parents experience in relation to their children, albeit in a subtle and not immediately apparent form. By the same token, when the enlightened mind encounters suffering, it responds with compassion, in the full and unlimited awareness of the suffering of another being which, when all is said and done, just wants to be happy. It's as if the Buddha's boundless self can comprehend all the other selves that he meets, surrounding them with love and compassion.
So, in a way, you can look on empathy as a middle way, transcending craving - for perpetuation of one's own self or recognition from others - and aversion, the violent rejection of an object that is stopping us having what we want. If we can develop empathy, we will respond to the other person in the dynamic - in this case, to the child - with awareness and understanding of their desires, fears and motivation - and avoid, at least sometimes, the worst excesses that come with fixed self-view.