Not So Egocentric After All

Conventional wisdom tells us that young kids, particularly in the preschool years, are little ego-maniacs, expecting their needs to be met without regard to others. When Johnny grabs a toy from his classmate, we have a tendency to say, oh well, he just can't understand that his classmate might want that toy too.

But researchers like Ross A. Thompson, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, have been discovering that empathy and perspective-taking are not just developmental milestones that we have to wait for children to reach. They can be developed with the help of an engaged and skilled parent or teacher using language and story-telling.

"For all the years that we have thought about young children as being egocentric it has really masked our ability to see how early this ability [of empathy] emerges and how important early social experiencese are," Thompson says. New research, he explains, is showing us how adults can help young children "attain a sense of what the other person's point of view is."

Thompson makes these comments on a new podcast, posted on the Body, Mind and Child radio network, that also includes myself and Ellen Galinsky, co-founder of the Families and Work Institute and author of Mind in the Making. Take a listen!