How Develop Perspective Taking in Kids

The perspective taking indicates the ability of kids to understand thoughts, feelings and their own prospects and those of others and parents/ educators can promote its development.

The role of parents/ educators takes on particular importance in the development of interpersonal skills, since they are the first identification figures and the first models of empathic response. There are inevitably individual differences in the development of perspective taking that depend on the lived experiences and, in particular, on the relationship between parents / educators and the child .

Credits Pixabay

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Perspective taking implies being able to distinguish what individuals know about themselves in a given situation (how they think, feel and behave) and what others know about that situation.

Perspective is also the ability to represent oneself as distinct from others, the development of a Theory of Mind to realize that others possess beliefs and thoughts and the explicit recognition that mental states and others' perceptions may be different from their own. The development of such skills of perspective taking appears critical for the emergence of positive social competences such as empathy , cooperation and acts of altruism.

Credits Pixabay

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The components of the perspective taking

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The perspective taking is a multidimensional construct, as it includes several components: emotional, cognitive and perceptive.

The emotional perspective taking: consists of making inferences about the affective state of others by putting oneself in the other's shoes and basing one's answers on such inferences. It is understood as the ability to understand the emotions of the other and refers to being emotionally competent.

The cognitive perspective taking:
Is defined as the ability to understand the thoughts and beliefs of others.
This type of perspective taking involves trying to understand what the other person perceives and knows about a certain stimulus, incorporating the point of view of the other in his own experience.

Perceptive perspective taking:
It mean the ability to understand that other people, occupying a space different from their own, see things from another perspective and therefore have different points of view.

Importance of perspective taking for children

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• The perspective taking is essential for the development of the ability of kids to interact significantly with one another, and for adequate social functioning.
  Predicting how to behave in social situations is favored by this ability that allows them to consider the actions of others from their point of view

• For referring to the relationship between language, perspective taking and the theory of Mind.
  Which in fact facilitates kids development of the ability to simulate the point of view of others, since conversation implies a constant exchange of different points of view and favors the imagination in kids assumption of another's point of view.

Credits Pixabay

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Things parents / educators should Note

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The parents / educators who recognize and consider the most intimate feelings, intentions and thoughts in relation to the behavior and are based on disciplinary styles based on communication and negotiation rather than punitive, provide children social model perspective taking and promote their understanding interpersonal, while abusive parents /educators pose a threat to the development of perspective taking skills and their children tend to be more at risk of being rejected by peers.

The family context of many children who live in conditions of maltreatment (for example, conditions of neglect, physical abuse) is mainly characterized by the lack of support elements, affection, empathic models and appropriate ways of managing interactions that are considered important variables in the development of a coherent sense of self and the ability to understand the feelings and perspectives of others

In fact, those parents / guardian who raise children in a non-responsive and violent context can not promote communication exchanges. In these children it is limited the opportunity to form an affective attachment with other reference figures and peers, since abusive parents tend to isolate their families from the rest of society, thus depriving children of the possibility of creating relationships.
Given the characteristics of these contexts, children who live there tend to form insecure and conflictual relationships with their parents and they risk developing an appropriate sense of differentiation between themselves and the other with respect to their "normal typical" peers.

Credits Pixabay

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Conclusion

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Possessing perspective taking skills is essential in order to achieve adequate social functioning. The experiences lived by everyone in their family context affect the development of these skills. It is therefore important for parents / educators to keep what has been described in order to encourage and promote the development of such cognitive, emotional and perceptive abilities in children . Despite the difficulties that children can present grown up in contexts characterized by psycho-social discomfort, it is however important to underline that an appropriate training and evaluated according to the specific situation allows improvements to occur and allows to develop those skills that are lacking in these children.