Early empathy? Your baby's awareness of other people's emotions

Since they were born, your baby will have responded to their own discomfort by crying,^[1] but as they become more aware of other people you might see them begin to respond to the emotions of others.  

Simply feeling

Your baby will gradually understand their emotions and the emotions of others through experiencing how the people around them respond to them, and they will learn to regulate their emotions by being helped to regulate.^[2]  

Some areas of the brain continue to develop and change for many years to come, with areas linked to reasoning continuing to develop into adulthood. So, your baby won't think about how they feel, they will experience their feelings in a simple way at first: they will feel happy or sad, uncomfortable or comfortable. But your baby will not have the complexity of experiences that you might have or that they will develop later on.^[3] 

Empathy or awareness?

Your baby will not be able to empathise with others for some time; empathy involves sharing emotions, being concerned and taking another perspective,[4] and this takes a long time and lots of experience.  

However, your baby is capable of sharing emotions. Babies respond to their mother’s emotional state when in the womb and will have been responding to interactions with the people caring for them since they were born.^[4]  

Your baby may cry when they hear another baby cry, and researchers suggest different reasons for this response. It could be that this is an early sign of empathy, so they are sharing the emotion felt by the other baby or perhaps it is that they find the sound of a baby crying distressing, so their response is linked to their feelings.^[4] 

What is clear is that as your baby develops, they will become more aware of how other people feel and, when they are older, they will seek to comfort others when they are upset.  

Responding and being responded to

Your baby’s response to another baby’s cry may or may not show that they are feeling concerned for the baby, but it does show that your baby is aware of those around them. They are building their brain through relationships with others and starting to understand themselves through the way that they are responded to by those around them.^[3] 

Learning to understand by being understood

Over the months ahead, your baby will continue to develop their understanding of themselves in relation to those around them.  

They will be interested in interacting with familiar people and as they develop physical skills and are able to make sounds they will use movement, sounds and smiles to initiate interaction.  As they interact with others, they will learn about themselves and about other people.  

Your baby will learn about their emotions and how to regulate their emotions by being supported to do this by others. Your baby’s experience of their emotions being recognised and understood by the people around them will help them to develop empathy, as they learn to understand other people by being understood themselves.  

References: 

[1] Crowley, K. (2017) Child Development. A Practical Introduction (2nd edn). London: Sage.  

[2] Conkbayir, M. (2017) Early Childhood and Neuroscience. Theory, Research and Implications for Practice. London: Bloomsbury.  

[3] Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why love matters. How affection shapes a baby’s brain. Hove: Bruner-Routledge. 

[4] Addyman, C (2020) The laughing baby: The extraordinary science behind what makes babies happy.  London: Unbound.