Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik at the University of California at Berkeley says infants are empathic from the time they are born. An infant identifies with other people, but this empathic behavior is not a conscious action. Infants who hear other infants crying are more likely to start crying themselves. This reaction may have a precursor of emphatic behavior, but it is also a reaction to the sound of other infants crying.
A toddler shows sign of trying to comfort a crying baby but he does not understand that other people can have other beliefs that are different from his own. By the age of 3, a child has developed a sense of care and compassion. Once a preschooler understands that someone wants something, he tries to help her get it. A preschooler gives a toy or food to a person who is upset. Empathy is best learned at a young age by having caring parents that treat a child with respect when he is frightened or misbehaving.
To empathize requires awareness that we all think in similar ways. A child also needs to have emotions linked with those thoughts. A 4-year-old may come over when someone says she has a stomachache. Some children do not know exactly how to react when someone is in pain, and they may react in a "surprising" manner by lashing out toward the other child. A young child needs to learn to show empathy instead of getting upset when someone is in pain. Psych Central says the aggressive child has not learned to deal with her developing skills in feeling empathy towards others.
In kindergarten, children can talk about how to act in certain situations. This is a sign they can imagine how they would feel and react if certain things happened to them. During the first years in school, students learn to take other people's feeling into account and they can discuss situations from other people's point of view. Talking about empathy is a less effective way of modeling empathetic behavior. Psych Central says it is never too late to help a student learn to act in an empathic manner.