What age do children show empathy?

Question

Just wondering what age a child shows empathy. For example, they hurt another child and then feel bad or guilty for doing it.

Answer 1

There is no definitive age when a child "shows empathy".

Answer 2

First let's define empathy as the ability to put yourself in another's place and feeling his or her feelings.

Sympathy or the ability to soothe others can develop as early as 1, when children notice and try to soothe another crying child.

By age 2, children are beginning to understand that other people have different feelings than their own. They become sensitive to the cues that other people are feeling sad, angry or hurt. They will attempt to help the other person. This is the beginning of true empathy.

Because children tend to be egocentric until about age 6, younger children will be uneven in their empathetic responses, but they will have them. In addition, they tend to be more empathetic towards people they know.

At age 6, children are fully able to do "perspective taking" and can understand and respect the feelings of others.

Answer 3

It's not age, it's a matter of the child.

Answer 4

MissBehavior is spot on, but I have also found it can vary a little on how the children's parents act around people who are ill or injured, children are great mimics of those around them, especially their parents/carers and siblings.

When my daughter was about 18 months of age, she'd bring a bowl (a tiny one lol) and her blanket to me, when I had a migraine and she would also pat, cuddle and give me kisses to make me better, which is so cute, but she was mostly mimicking her father, and if she dropped her doll she would say sorry, and cuddle it before bringing it to me for a kiss, to make it better.

We also taught her from an early age that if you hurt someone, you must apologize as it hurts people feelings as well as physically.

Answer 5

"To empathize with someone is to understand what he is feeling or, more properly, to understand what you would feel like if you were in his situation. It is an extension of self-concept, but it is far more complex. It requires an awareness that others think of themselves in ways that are both similar to and different from the way you do, and that they also have emotions they associate with those thoughts and images.

Unlike intelligence and physical attractiveness, which depend largely on genetics, empathy is a skill that children learn.

Toddlers sometimes show behavior that is closer to true empathy in their first efforts to connect another person's discomfort with their own. When a two-year-old sees his mother crying, he may offer her a toy he's been playing with or a cookie he's been nibbling. He is giving his mother something that he knows has made him feel better when he has cried. It is unclear, however, whether the child understands what his mother is feeling, or is simply upset by the way she is acting, much in the way a puppy will come up and l**k the face of someone who's crying.

By the time a child is about four years old, he begins to associate his emotions with the feelings of others. While one child says he has a stomachache, some four-year-olds may come over and comfort him."

you can read more about how to teach empathy at the link below...

http://www.drkutner.com/parenting/articl...

Answer 6

maybe as a child grows older he can be sympathized,..but when child becomes a man ..especially having a lot of personal experiences..then he can then Empathized