A child’s inability to understand a situation from another person’s point of view is called “perspective taking”.  Perspective taking allows us to feel what it would be like to be in the other person’s shoes during a situation.  It requires you to put yourself in the other person’s position and imagine what you would feel, think, or do if you were in that situation.  When you are able to imagine a situation from someone else’s perspective, you can gain a better understanding of someone else’s motives or change your own behavior so you don’t offend someone.

Often, children need help developing perspective taking.  This is especially true for children who have language delays or social communication impairments, such as autism.  This page will break down what types of perspective taking skills a child should have at different ages and will give you perspective taking activities for each age.

Inferencing as a Tool for Perspective Taking

Have you ever seen 2 babies in a room and when one starts crying, the other starts crying too? That’s because babies don’t know that someone else’s discomfort is not their own. They don’t have the ability to take the perspective of someone else. We call this theory of mind (meaning that the child understands that other people have other perspectives than their own). Babies don’t have theory of mind yet.

Around 2-3 years of age, children start to gain an understanding that each person is experiencing different things. During the preschool years, we should see a child start to show concern for others who are upset. They may show concern for someone who is crying or try to do something to help that person.

However, at this stage, children still often confuse their own perspective with others. A preschooler may think that since she likes ice cream, everyone likes ice cream. This may lead to actions like giving someone who is crying a favorite toy because the child knows that would cheer him up if he had it himself.

Here are some ideas of what you can do with preschoolers who are not yet showing signs of understanding that other people have different perspectives and feelings than we do:

During these years, the child’s perspective-taking skills should continue to grow. The child should develop the ability to guess what people are thinking or feeling based on their behaviors and understand their motivation for certain behaviors.

Keep in mind that this is still happening at a very simplistic level. For example, if the child you’re working with watches another child hit his teacher, the K-2nd grader should be able to guess that the child hit his teacher because he was mad. He probably wouldn’t be able to tell you though that the other child was frustrated because the task that the teacher asked him to do was too difficult.

During these grades, children begin to develop the understanding that everyone sees situations from a different perspective and that people may therefore misinterpret what’s going on. For example, the child will understand if you explain to him that when he walked up to his friend and hit him on the back, he meant it as a greeting but his friend interpreted it as anger.

Children in these grades also begin to understand that a person may be hiding his/her true feelings. For example, they would begin to understand that if a child said “I’m okay” but still had tears in her eyes, she may not really be ok but she just wants others to think she is.

At this point, children continue to fine-tune their ability to take the perspective of others and understand someone else’s thoughts, feelings, and motives. They continue to develop the skills we’ve mentioned previously but in more complex ways.

These children are also beginning to understand that people often have multiple motives for their behavior and sometimes those motives are conflicting. For example, the child may understand that a teenager may be tempted to smoke because it will make him look cooler (peer pressure) but that he may be reluctant to do so because it is unhealthy and gross.

At this point, these young adults begin to understand that a person’s culture and environment impact their personality, behavior, and perspectives. They begin to see how we are all a product of our environment and that past events and present circumstances all affect how we see the world. For example, young adults may begin to see that a person who has always been discriminated against is more likely to assume he’s being discriminated against than someone who has never known discrimination.

These young adults are also beginning to understand that people may not always be fully aware of why they act the way they do. They may be acting a certain way because they were brought up that way or they are repressing some feelings that they don’t want to deal with.

Making social inferences goes right along with perspective taking.  Download our making inferences therapy kit below to help a child learn how to better read a situation.

Inferencing as a Tool for Perspective Taking

How to Teach Inferencing and Other Abstract Language

Sources:

http://www.education.com/reference/article/perspective-taking-theory-mind-different/

https://jillkuzma.wordpress.com/perspective-taking-skills/

Hi, I’m Carrie! I’m a speech-language pathologist from Columbia, Missouri, USA. I’ve worked with children and teenagers of all ages in schools, preschools, and even my own private practice. I love digging through the research on speech and language topics and breaking it down into step-by-step plans for my followers.

Fun Fact: I play the cello.  I took lessons for cello and piano for most of my childhood, though I’m way better at cello than I ever got a piano.  I also taught myself guitar as an adult.  I have a super fun bright blue electric guitar that I get out every once in a while and play around on.  And then I curse the fact that since I don’t play consistently, I don’t have my callouses built up.

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