Understanding and sharing feelings – why empathy is hard for your toddler

Before your toddler can understand how other people feel, they need to understand their own emotions – and know that other people have different thoughts, feelings and ideas. So, what exactly do we mean by empathy and how does this develop? Quick spoiler: it's complicated and takes a long time!  

Empathy is more than just knowing how someone feels – it is also understanding their emotions from their point of view.  

Empathy involves your toddler recognising a feeling or emotion in someone else that they have felt before – they don’t need to have shared the experience but do need to understand the feeling. They will feel a common bond with the range of feelings of an experience or situation that might provoke these emotions. 

To take another person’s perspective, your toddler needs to have had a range of emotional experiences themselves. 

Even after they have this reference point, it will take time and experience for your toddler to understand how this might translate for other people, and then to have an understanding of how to use that knowledge to connect with someone. 

Empathy is often considered to be a single ability or innate trait, but research often breaks it down into three separate behaviours: 

Emotion sharing (I feel) 

Empathic concern (I care) 

Perspective-taking (I understand) [1] 

Ways you can support your toddler’s developing empathy 

When you recognise and name your toddler’s emotions you help them to understand how they feel.  You don’t always need to make them feel better – there will be times when they’re sad, angry or frustrated, and you can’t change that.  

When you try to understand your toddler’s point of view – even if, from your adult perspective, it seems unreasonable – you show them how empathy works. 

We aren’t suggesting you join them in tears and shouts when they just want a different cup, but that you acknowledge that to them, in that moment, that cup (or whatever) is important. And although it might be the cup you’ve got, you understand that they feel sad. 

Reference: 

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