Normal behaviour for a 7 year old?

[AlexandraEiffel]

Is this 'normal' behaviour for 7 year old?

My 7 (nearly 8) son seems to have zero understanding of how others might feel. So if he does something unkind, and we ask him 'how do you think that makes x feel?' he looks at us baffled like we are asking him to explain the law of relativity. We can say 'how would you feel if x did y to you?' And he will manage a 'sad' but its pretty much as if he knows that is the correct answer, no real connection. We can talk through similar scenarios, and discuss how we might feel, then try and get him to apply it, but nothing. It is as if he has no awareness that other people have feelings, and doesn't care anyway, and if it loses him friends, he doesn't care about that either (yet he does get upset when friends don't want to play what he wants with them, so he does see some benefit of friends).

Is this 'normal' for a 7 year old boy? Was your 7 year old boy like this but changed as he got older?

I have an almost 7 year old boy.

This issue was flagged with him when he was around 3, that he had no empathy and its something we had to start working with him then at that point (advised and helped by his speech and language therapist).

He gets this trait from his father who still has absolutely no empathy for anyone. Ds now has way more empathy than his dad does.

Empathy can be taught. There's lots of social stories and websites if you Google.

Thanks.

His dad is really kind else I would suspect a connection. Although he does wonder whether he was the same at the same age.

We do talk about it a lot, but it's like he just doesn't get what we are saying. He was talking about giving presents earlier, and we asked how do you think that would make the person feel, he replied 'happy' but when we asked what else (excited/loved/grateful etc) he said 'sad' like he's guessing the answer.

My DS is 7 and we are concerned about other areas of his behaviour, possibly SEN or ASD. That being said, he does understand this kind of thing. He has a younger brother and can understand when he is upset, will try to cheer him up etc.

Is he an only child?

@AlexandraEiffel he sounds very confused, rather than ask him to guess the feeling, it might be better to tell/ point out feelings to him for a while to help him understand.

Tell him about your feelings throughout the day and point out feelings of characters on TV in his favourite programmes, if you're reading a story with him pause and talk about the feelings of the character and why they would feel that way. This kind of thing helped ds to understand, along with social stories as a PP said.

Reinforce what you think the feeling is. he'll learn from You

''This present will make James Happy''

''Fighting with James will make me sad''

''Throwing your toys makes me feel cross''

Keep reinforcing , he'll learn.
if he really doesn't know , how can he give you an appropriate answer?

Thanks. We can try. We do talk about it seemingly endlessly and I thought he would get it by now, but looking at stuff about empathy suggests maybe it is more of a taught thing.

He does have a younger brother and can sometimes be really kind to him, sometimes mean too. And I've seen him look after him if others are mean too.

Books, especially picture books are brilliant for teaching empathy. "She looks cross" "He looks sad"
I think she feels sad. Etc. Talk about the story as you are reading it.