How to Teach Empathy to Children

Empathy needs the ability to imagine that somebody else has a different inner life, and that ability arrives gradually rather than being present from the start. Knowing roughly when changes what is reasonable to expect.

Roughly when it arrives

Before three: children are affected by others' distress but cannot separate it from their own. A toddler who brings their own comforter to a crying adult is doing something real and is not yet taking a perspective.

Three to five: the beginnings. They can identify that somebody is sad and can sometimes work out why, though they will assume the other person wants what they would want.

Five to seven: a genuine shift. Children can hold that somebody else knows something different from them, or believes something false. This is the foundation of real perspective-taking.

Seven and up: empathy for people not present, for groups, for situations they have not experienced. This continues developing well into adolescence.

So a four-year-old who takes a toy from a crying child is not callous. The machinery is not finished.

What builds it

Being empathised with. The largest factor by some distance. A child whose feelings are consistently named and taken seriously develops the capacity to do it for others. A child whose feelings are dismissed learns that feelings are not important information.

Pretend play. Taking a role requires holding a perspective that is not yours for a sustained period. This is the most concentrated perspective-taking practice most children ever get, and it is voluntary.

Stories. Narrative gives direct access to what somebody else thinks and wants, including when the reader knows something the character does not. Ask what a character thought and why, and what they might do next.

Naming the effect, not delivering a verdict. "He is crying because that was his tower" gives a child the information they need. "That was unkind" gives them a judgement about themselves and nothing to work with.

Repair rather than apology. Rebuilding the tower, fetching the ice pack, doing something for the person. A forced sorry teaches the word; repair teaches what the word is for.

What does not build it

Shaming, which produces a child focused on their own discomfort rather than the other person's. Forced apologies delivered under pressure. And lecturing about how somebody must feel, which a child can repeat back without any of it landing.

The uncomfortable part

Children learn most of this from how they see the adults around them treat people, including people who cannot do anything for them. Waiting staff, strangers, the person on the phone.

A household that is warm to guests and short with each other teaches something specific, and it is not what was intended.

Empathy is caught more than taught, and what is caught is how people in this house treat each other on an ordinary Tuesday.