“My son just started preschool, and he absolutely refuses to share toys—or actually, anything—with the other kids,” a parent described during one of my Parenting Preschoolers workshops. “It’s like he doesn’t care about anyone except himself. It drives me crazy, and I worry he’s never going to be considerate of others.”
Another parent nodded. “For my daughter, it’s like the world revolves around her and her needs. She can be so selfish, as if none of us have needs.”
There were more nods around the room. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. Or the second.
What they were talking about was egocentrism in its purest form, a normal part of a child’s development despite the fact that it drives parents crazy.
So, why are little kids so egocentric?
A matter of survival
From the standpoint of evolution, you might say that being self-centered is a pretty good thing—that is, for yourself—because it helps you survive. It’s why baby birds shove the competition out of the nest.
For little kids, they’re usually not fighting for the extra scraps of food, but for a little more attention and love. If you’re exhausted at the end of the day, your child doesn’t feel much empathy for you because he feels his own needs so strongly. For the young child, feeling connected to a caregiver is a matter of survival.
The limitations of age and empathy
Kids are also naturally self-centered due to the limitations of their small, developing brain: when an infant is born into a completely new and perplexing world, she has to figure out everything for the very first time, filtering it all through her sensations and her own experience.
Put another way, she can only understand things through her own eyes.
Her developing brain doesn’t have the ability to see things in complex ways. In fact, the ability to take on another person’s perspective starts at around age seven—yes, preschoolers can be empathetic and understand that other people have feelings, but they’re not fully grasping the other person’s emotional and intellectual experience.
A child’s awareness of others develops over time. For example, young toddlers can’t really play with kids their own age. They sort of bumble about, interacting when near each other, but it’s not with an intent to do something together. In time, they move to parallel play in which they play beside each other, but not necessarily with each other. And then, at around three, with their growing awareness of their peers and desire to connect, kids start experimenting with cooperative play. They are still terribly egocentric, but it’s this desire to make friends which eventually helps them temper their own desires as they recognize the needs of others.
Figuring out power
In preschool, sharing becomes an issue as preschoolers struggle for ownership, whether it’s over a toy or how to play a game. Preschoolers are all about negotiating, trying to make friends and figuring out how to relate. While they badly want to interact with their peers, they’re not so adept at compromising or accommodating what a peer wants to do.
At this age, they’re trying to figure out the extent of their own power. Can they have the toy? Can they control the game? Can they control other kids? It’s a natural thing to wonder about, and they’re experimenting to find where the limits are with their peers and others, including you, their parent.
It’s not that they’re power-hungry. Yes, they like to be in control, but this isn’t quite the same thing as intellectually having power. It’s not about power for power’s sake—which is more the concern of corporations and countries. Instead, knowing that they’re little people in a big world, preschoolers are trying to understand where they fit in and how much control over others—and themselves—they actually have.
In another words, while they are egocentric, they’re also trying to understand the rules of the game.
When things start to change
For the next few years, the preschooler will be struggling to balance his own needs with the needs of others. He is still egocentric, but now he’s starting to grasp that other people have differing, even opposing needs. He’ll begin to learn how to temper his own desires so as to retain friends, understanding that compromise and negotiation tends to keep friends whereas pushing one’s egocentric desires tends to elicit things like, “I hate you! You’re not my friend.”
Kids are developing social skills, and this continues into elementary school. Then, at around ages seven to nine, something shifts; their brain becomes more able to think abstractly, and this allows them to put themselves in other people’s shoes: they can now take on another person’s perspective, which is quite the opposite from being egocentric.
Yes, they still have strong desires, but with the ability to understand someone else’s experience, they don’t behave—or think—in the same, egocentric ways.
What does this all mean for parents of young kids?
In “Egocentrism, Part 2” we look at a specific situation to see what parents can do, especially when a child’s egocentrism starts to create unhealthy narratives.
You may also be interested in reading the corresponding story, “Revenge,” which illustrates how a child’s egocentrism affects not only what he does but the very surprising and unhealthy narratives that result from this egocentrism.
Related Posts
Revenge
A boy, a baby brother, and a close call that lasts a lifetime.
Egocentrism, Part 2
In Part 2, we look at how egocentrism can create unhealthy narratives in little kids, and what parents can do.
