Understanding others and showing empathy

From around age 4, children begin to understand that others have different thoughts, interests and feelings. This helps them build stronger relationships.

Neurodivergent children may show empathy in different ways. For example some:

• are highly sensitive and may avoid emotional situations
• may share long stories about similar experiences to show they understand but may lack emotion if their speech is not varied
• may express empathy through actions rather than words

You can support this development by:

• helping your child choose gifts or cards for others
• talking about what others might enjoy or feel
• involving them in family activities like shopping for birthdays

One way of checking on your child's awareness of other people's likes and interest is to see they can choose a present well.

If a homemade Mother's Day card has dinosaurs drawn on it and you don't like dinosaurs, then perhaps their development in awareness is not quite there.

However, even if your child is not speaking, and they draw something you really like on the card, you can be confident that this type of thinking is developing.