Teaching children empathy happens through everyday moments, not lectures. How empathy develops with age, what selfish behaviour means and practical tips.
In the park, your four-year-old son won't get off the swing; a little girl waiting her turn behind him has started to cry. "Look, your friend is upset," you say, and your son shrugs and carries on swinging. On the way home a question keeps going round in your head: "Is my child becoming selfish? Where did I go wrong?" Many parents feel a similar worry at moments when their child seems indifferent to someone else's feelings. Yet empathy is not a ready-made trait we are born with; it is a skill that develops over years and can be supported. Teaching children empathy is much more than telling them "Share" or "Say sorry"; it means accompanying them first in recognising their own feelings and then in becoming curious about another person's inner world. In this article we talk about how empathy develops with age, what selfish-looking behaviour may mean, and how you can nurture this skill at home.
What Is Empathy and How Does It Develop in Children?
In its simplest definition, empathy is being able to understand what someone else feels and respond to that feeling in a fitting way. Psychology speaks of two core components of empathy:
- Emotional empathy: Feeling someone else's emotion to some degree within yourself. A baby starting to cry when the baby next to them cries is one of the earliest examples of this.
- Cognitive empathy: Being able to understand another person's point of view mentally; grasping that they may think, want or know something different.
These two components develop at different speeds. Young children can be affected by someone else's sadness, but they need cognitive skills to make sense of that feeling and know what to do. This is why empathy develops step by step as the brain and social experience mature.
Teaching Children Empathy: What Can You Expect at Each Age?
Ages 0–2
Babies respond to other people's feelings from a very early age. Around the age of one, a child may hold out their toy to someone who is crying; but this is usually based on the assumption that what comforts them will comfort the other person too. In this period, the distinction between "mine" and "yours" is only just forming.
Ages 2–4
This is a period when a child's own wishes are very strong and egocentric thinking is naturally in the foreground. A child may notice that someone else is upset, but when this clashes with their own wish, their own wish usually wins. Finding sharing hard is typical of this age; we address this in detail in our article on a child who won't share.
Ages 4–6
At around the age of four, children begin to understand that others may think and know differently from them. This is an important turning point in cognitive empathy. A child can now make cause-and-effect connections such as "Ayşe is crying because I broke her pencil." Even so, when they are tired, hungry or angry, they struggle to use this skill.
Ages 7–11
In the school years, empathy becomes more complex. A child begins to understand that a friend may be smiling on the outside but sad on the inside, and that different people may react differently to the same event. The concepts of fairness and justice grow stronger.
Adolescence
In adolescence, abstract thinking develops, and empathy can expand towards people they don't know, different cultures or social issues. At the same time, adolescence is also a period of increased self-focus; these two tendencies can exist side by side.
Why Does a Child Seem to Behave Selfishly?
Behind many behaviours that look like a lack of empathy there are in fact developmental or emotional reasons:
- Developmental egocentrism: Young children see the world from their own point of view. This is not a character flaw but an ordinary stage of development.
- Emotional overload: A child struggling with their own feeling, for example disappointment or anger, cannot find the space to notice someone else's feeling.
- A lack of words for feelings: A child who can't name their own feelings also finds it hard to recognise someone else's.
- Shame and defensiveness: A child who realises they have upset a friend may adopt an indifferent attitude because they can't cope with guilt and shame. A shrug is sometimes a way of saying, "I don't know what to do."
- Modelled behaviour: Children imitate the ways of relating they see at home, on screen and around them.
Knowing these reasons lets us see which skill is still developing in a child instead of labelling them "selfish".
What Can You Do at Home to Teach Children Empathy?
First show empathy for their feelings
The most powerful way to teach empathy is to let a child experience it. A child whose feelings are understood and accepted learns to understand other people's feelings through this experience. When your child is angry or sad, first reflect their feeling: "You didn't want to get off the swing because you'd only just started. That made you cross." A child who feels understood opens up to someone else's feelings far more easily once they have calmed down.
Name feelings
Naming feelings in daily life enriches a child's emotional vocabulary: "Grandad's voice shook; I think he was moved", "Your brother was disappointed when his tower fell down." Talking about what characters feel while reading a book or watching a cartoon is also very effective: "How do you think the rabbit feels now? Why?" The ability to recognise and regulate one's own feelings is the foundation of empathy; our article on emotional regulation in children offers detailed suggestions on this.
Read facial expressions and body language together
Making different facial expressions in the mirror, guessing what people in photographs might be feeling or playing games such as a "feelings chair" develop a child's ability to notice emotional cues. For young children, games like these are both fun and instructive.
Ask curious questions
After a conflict, rather than blaming the child, invite them to be curious: "Why do you think your friend cried?", "How would you feel if you were in her place?", "What can we do for her now?" These questions exercise the child's ability to shift perspective. What matters is asking them not in the tone of a punishment or a lesson but with genuine curiosity.
Teach repair instead of forced apologies
The instruction "Say sorry right now!" often turns into an empty "Sorry". An apology said without the child understanding what they did and what the other person feels teaches not empathy but an escape formula. Instead, first allow time to calm down, then ask, "Your friend was upset. What could you do to help her feel a bit better?" Rebuilding the knocked-down tower together, drawing a picture or giving a hug is much more meaningful when it is a repair the child has chosen themselves.
Set an example
Children watch very closely how their parents treat others. Carrying an elderly neighbour's shopping trolley, thanking the person at the till, phoning a relative who is ill, or saying "Maybe they're in a hurry" instead of getting angry in traffic are lessons far more effective than verbal advice. Seeing you try to understand your partner's point of view when you have a disagreement also gives a child a powerful model.
Create opportunities to help
Empathy grows stronger when it turns into action. Experiences such as making a get-well card for a friend who is ill, putting one of their own toys into an aid parcel being sent to an earthquake-affected area, leaving a bowl of water out for street animals or reading a book to their grandmother over the phone give a child the chance to notice other people's needs and feel that they can make a difference.
Nurture curiosity about difference
Teaching children empathy covers not only understanding the feelings of the people close to them but also being open to those who are different from them. Reading books about children from different cities, cultures or living conditions, talking about what a new classmate might be feeling, or being curious about the daily life of a peer with a disability broadens a child's world. Answering questions such as "Why does he talk like that?" with curiosity rather than judgement teaches that difference is something to be understood, not feared.
Empathy is learned not by telling a child "Think of others", but by their own feelings being understood again and again.
Parenting Attitudes That Make Empathy Harder
Some well-meant parental reactions can, without anyone realising, make the development of empathy harder:
- Belittling feelings: Sentences such as "Is that worth crying about?" or "Don't exaggerate" teach a child that feelings are unimportant. A child whose own feelings aren't taken seriously may struggle to take other people's feelings seriously.
- Shaming: Labels such as "How selfish you are!" or "I've never seen a child as naughty as you" lead a child not to change their behaviour but to develop a negative belief about themselves.
- Comparing: The sentence "Your sister is so good at sharing, why aren't you?" increases rivalry between siblings.
- Harsh punishments: Fear-based discipline turns a child's attention away from the other person's feelings and towards their own punishment.
Empathy at School and in Friendships
Empathy directly affects the quality of a child's friendships. A child who can read others' feelings joins in games more easily, resolves conflicts more easily and builds longer-lasting friendships. The school environment is an important arena where empathy is tested and developed.
When you talk with your child about how the day went after school, it is valuable in this respect to ask not only about marks or homework but also about what happened with their friends. A question such as "Who was happy in class today, and who looked a bit sad?" directs the child's attention towards the people around them. Through small, repeated conversations like these, teaching children empathy becomes a natural part of everyday life.
If you are getting feedback that your child is constantly excluding, mocking or hurting a classmate, it is important to take this seriously and address it in co-operation with the school. To understand the reasons behind bullying behaviour and learn how a child can be supported, you can take a look at our article on when your child is the one bullying.
When Should You Seek Professional Support?
Empathy develops with ups and downs throughout childhood, and most children develop this skill with time, role models and guidance. In the following situations, however, talking with a professional may be helpful:
- If your child shows marked and persistent indifference to other people's feelings for their age
- If they deliberately harm other people or animals and appear to feel no remorse
- If there are marked difficulties in making eye contact, reading facial expressions or understanding social cues
- If they constantly have problems making and keeping friends
- If frequent feedback about aggressive behaviour or bullying comes from school
These signs do not on their own mean a diagnosis; but it is worth having the child's social and emotional development assessed by a professional.
How Are Empathy and Social Skills Addressed in Therapy?
In the assessment process, the aim is to understand the child's emotional awareness, emotional regulation skills, social relationships and communication patterns within the family. Behind a difficulty with empathy there may be a developmental difference, a heavy emotional load or a difficulty the child is going through themselves; making this distinction is the basis for deciding on the right support.
In the process of child and play therapy, the child has the opportunity to experience the perspectives of different characters through puppets, figures and role play. The therapist reflecting the child's feelings in an accepting way supports the child in recognising their own feelings and, over time, opening up to other people's feelings as well. With older children, perspective-taking, problem-solving and social skills work can be done drawing on the cognitive behavioural approach. In sessions with parents, how emotion-focused communication at home can be strengthened is addressed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is empathy innate, or is it learned?
Every child is born with a certain potential for empathy, and differences in temperament can affect this potential. But how this potential develops depends to a large extent on the relationships the child experiences, how their feelings are met and the role models they see around them.
My child is very gentle with animals but cruel to their sibling. Is this normal?
Relationships between siblings involve intense feelings such as rivalry, jealousy and sharing parental attention; this is why a child may struggle to show their sibling the empathy they can show in other situations. This does not mean they lack the capacity for empathy. Giving each sibling one-to-one time and reducing rivalry usually helps.
My child is very sensitive and deeply affected by other people's sadness. What should I do?
Some children feel other people's emotions very intensely, and this can wear them out. It is important to teach these children the difference between noticing someone else's feeling and taking that feeling on entirely. Making room for them to talk about their feelings, exploring ways of calming down together and, when needed, getting support from a professional can help.
At what age should I start teaching my child empathy?
The foundations of empathy are laid in infancy, through a parent responding sensitively to a baby's crying and smiling. Naming feelings can begin at around two; perspective-taking questions become more meaningful from about four or five. So this is not an education that starts at a particular age but a process that continues throughout childhood.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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