PK through 1st grade
The ability to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings helps people thrive as family members, citizens, and workers. Perspective-Taking shows you how to cultivate this skill, in part by focusing your child on the effect of their behavior on others.
Key Strategies
- Help your child feel known and understood. Try using the Empathy Reflex. First, describe to yourself the emotion you think you see in your child. Second, make a guess about where that emotion is coming from.
- Focus your child on the effect of their behavior on others. When your child behaves in harmful ways, they may not understand the impact of their actions on others. Take time to point it out. “Hey, you kicked my leg. That hurt me!”
- Promote collaborative problem-solving. Show your children how to work with each other to figure out solutions to conflicts. Teach them how to use “I” statements: ”I feel frustrated when you ignore what I say.”
- Talk frequently about how a wide variety of different people feel. Ask lots of “I wonder” questions focused on people’s feelings: “I wonder what Aunt Beth is feeling as she moves to a new home?”
Additional Resources
Book: Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, Ellen Galinsky,
Book: UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in our All-About-Me World, Michele Borba
Perspective-Taking