A simple shift that may help young people develop empathy, take responsibility, and move through conflict more quickly
Recently, I was talking with a seasoned administrator at another school about something we are both noticing more and more in children: they can get stuck in conflict. A friend says, “I’m not your friend anymore.” Someone doesn’t save them a seat. A child feels excluded from a game or hears that someone was talking about them. The hurt can be entirely real, but instead of processing and moving through it, children can remain there for days, weeks, or even long months, replaying what happened, retelling the story to friends and adults, and becoming increasingly certain and entrenched in their own interpretation of events with much focused blame on the other person.
We have made important progress in how we respond to children’s emotional lives. We listen more carefully. We validate feelings. We teach children to advocate for themselves, establish boundaries, and recognize when someone else’s behavior has affected them. I would not want to give any of that up. But I wonder whether, in our effort to help children understand and advocate for themselves, are we spending enough time teaching them how to understand others?
Changing the Model
The administrator told me that her school has begun experimenting with a surprisingly simple change in the way adults facilitate conflict. Traditionally, when two children come together to work through a disagreement, they do begin by each telling their own side of the story.
In the administrator’s revamped approach, each child begins by trying to tell the other person’s side and how they might be feeling. The other child listens and either validates or corrects what has been said, until they feel understood. Then they switch.
Consider two sixth graders. Maya tells Olivia at lunch, “I’m not your friend anymore.” Olivia is devastated and tells several friends what happened. By the end of the day, those friends are angry with Maya too, and the conflict has grown well beyond the original interaction. Without something to interrupt the cycle, a moment that lasted only seconds can become a conflict that follows both girls for days—or even weeks.
So, when the girls sit down for a facilitated conversation with an adult, we want the girls to focus on the other person’s experience first. So Maya is asked to begin with what she believes could be Olivia’s experience: “I think Olivia felt really hurt when I said I wasn’t her friend anymore. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I said it in front of other people, so she was probably embarrassed.”
Olivia responds, “Yes. And I was confused because I didn’t even know you were angry with me.”
Then Olivia tries to understand Maya’s experience: “I think Maya was angry because I sat with Sophie at lunch after I told her I would sit with her. I think she thought I was ignoring her on purpose.”
Maya corrects her: “I didn’t really think you did it on purpose. But you had done it the day before too, and I thought maybe you didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.”
Before either child has defended herself or explained why she was right, each has had to leave her own story for a moment and enter the experience of the other person.
The administrator told me that this small change has made a significant difference in their conflict conversations. Children are moving through disagreements much more quickly and seem less likely to remain entrenched in blame. Instead, they are moving into empathy and understanding.
Trying it at Home
So I decided to try it at home. When my own children were in conflict recently, rather than beginning with the familiar Peace Table approach of each sharing her own feelings and needs, I asked each of them first to tell me what she thought had happened for her sister. What did she think the experience was like for her? What might she have been feeling?
I was struck by how quickly the energy changed. Once the attention shifted away from themselves, even briefly, they articulated things they hadn’t been seeing before. Each recognized and quickly and correctly named the experience of her sister, and was able to name the feelings that went with that experience. They each quickly realized the impact of her own behavior. And without my asking either of them to apologize, they both did—organically, as they described what the experience had been like for the other.
That made me wonder whether there is something important here.
What Might Be Happening?
Research gives us some clues. Perspective-taking is the cognitive side of empathy: the capacity to understand that another person has thoughts, intentions, emotions, and an interpretation of events that may differ from our own. It doesn’t require us to agree with that interpretation, only to recognize that it exists.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General examined forgiveness in 185 children and adolescents. Children with stronger theory-of-mind abilities—the capacity to reason about other people’s mental states—were more likely to forgive. The researchers also found that children were more likely to forgive people who apologized. Read the study in PubMed
Other research suggests that perspective-taking can affect conflict itself. In an experimental study of adolescents discussing conflicts with their mothers, prompting cognitive empathy—the deliberate effort to understand another person’s perspective—reduced conflict escalation and increased listening among adolescents who were lower in perspective-taking. The researchers suggested that cognitive empathy may help adolescents gain some distance from the emotional intensity of a conflict and become more able to hear another person’s point of view. Read the study in PubMed
That is remarkably close to what I saw with my own children. Asking them to begin with the other’s experience interrupted the instinct to focus immediately on advocating for and defending themselves, and ultimately created a great deal more empathy and harmony.
Maybe We Are Starting Conflict Conversations in the Wrong Place
Think about what usually happens when a child comes to us upset. We ask, “What happened?” and “How did that make you feel?” We listen and validate, all with the best of intentions. But by the time two children actually sit down together, each may have told their own story several times: what happened to her, what the other person did to her, why she is angry, and even why she was right. Then we put two children together and hope they will suddenly become curious about each other. I have found it takes a very long time for children to get to a place where they are really understanding each other, and it is hard to make that kind of time for conflict resolution in a busy classroom environment.
So what if we reverse the order?
To be clear, this approach is intended for the ordinary conflicts of childhood: friendship ruptures, misunderstandings, insensitive comments, disagreements, broken promises, and hurt feelings between children and adolescents who are able to participate relatively equally in the conversation. It is not the place to start when a child is still overwhelmed or highly emotional; children need to feel safe and regulated before we ask them to take another person’s perspective. And it is not an appropriate response to real bullying, harassment, coercion, abuse, or situations with a significant power imbalance. In those circumstances, asking a child who has been harmed to begin by explaining the other person’s perspective could minimize what happened or place responsibility for resolving the situation on the wrong person.
But in the everyday conflicts that are part of learning to live among other human beings, perspective-taking may be exactly the skill we need to strengthen to make a meaningful difference for these children. The goal is not to talk a child out of her own experience or persuade her that the other person was right. It is to help both children hold two realities at once: I can understand what happened to me, and I can become curious about what happened for you.
Putting Perspective Taking Into Real Life Practice
The structure is remarkably simple. Before either person explains or defends their own position, ask each child:
*What do you think happened for the other person? How do you think they felt?*
The other person then responds: “Yes, that’s what it was like for me,” or “That’s not quite right. Here’s what you didn’t understand.” Once the first person is understood, they switch roles. Only after both children have attempted to understand the other’s experience do they talk about their own, consider what responsibility each might have, and decide whether an apology or repair is needed.
We don’t yet have research showing that this exact other-person-first structure produces those outcomes, and I don’t want to claim that we do. But we have good evidence that perspective-taking matters in conflict and forgiveness, and what I have seen so far makes me feeling hopeful that this can make a meaningful difference not just in day-to-day conflicts in schools, but in helping children build the skills of empathy and responsibility that are the cornerstones of strong societies and the key to our future.
If this is new to you, the next time two children are caught in an ordinary interpersonal conflict, wait until everyone is calm enough to think and then maybe try beginning somewhere different: “Before you tell us what happened for you, tell us what you think happened for the other person.”
I would love your feedback on this method. We are, as ever, better together!
