Shimmy is an active 5th grader. His rebbi tells me, “Shimmy is a very smart boy; however, he has a real problem. He is constantly fighting with other boys. I see him grabbing things from other boys and throwing their belongings. If someone mistakenly does something to him, he gets back at that boy. The boys complain to me all the time that Shimmy fights with them. I tried everything with Shimmy. I explained to him very clearly that the things he does annoy the other boys. Shimmy just denies doing it.”

Why Some Children Struggle to Consider Others’ Feelings

This is common with children on the autism spectrum and those with other behavioral or social challenges. They have trouble seeing other people’s perspectives and thinking about their feelings. They may act in ways that alienate others, and have trouble connecting the dots to learn that they need to be considerate of others, if they want others to be considerate of them.

Building Trust Through a Shared Project

The first step is to develop a strong and trusting connection with the child. Tapping into Shimmy’s interests would be a good way to start. To help Shimmy, my focus was to develop a trusting relationship with him. Once he could trust me and consider me an ally, he would be more willing to take guidance from me.

I learned from Shimmy that he likes to build things. I do too. I told Shimmy that I love woodworking and that I built many wood projects in my home. Shimmy was really interested. “Why don’t we work on a wood project together?” I said. Building a project together would serve as an opportunity to develop a relationship with Shimmy.

I suggested that we build a bookcase together for his classroom. The next session I brought Shimmy the pieces of wood to assemble the bookcase. Shimmy was overjoyed with the woodworking project and the tools I brought.

When children are highly motivated and engaged, we can challenge and encourage them to go beyond their comfort zone. I planned various ways to use the wood project as a teaching opportunity to help Shimmy start considering other people.

Shimmy’s difficulty thinking about and considering others was quite striking. He would just grab things from my hand without asking and bark orders at me to help him. It was as if I wasn’t a person in the room with my own experience of what was happening. After assembling the main structure for the bookcase, Shimmy was really proud of his handiwork and announced that he is going to keep the bookcase for himself!

Teaching a Child to Consider Someone Else’s Feelings

For another child it might be OK to allow him to change his mind and keep it, but Shimmy needed help learning to consider other people. Shimmy and I had planned to make the project together for his classroom. Now he was unilaterally deciding to keep it for himself, without even consulting me or taking me into account. I was going to challenge Shimmy on this, and see if I could create for him a mind shift to consider my feelings.

Rather than looking at Shimmy’s difficult behaviors as problematic and disruptive, we can view them as great teaching opportunities.

The next session I challenged Shimmy, and said, “I don’t want you to keep the bookcase for yourself. We agreed that it’s going to be for your classroom.” Shimmy immediately protested that he had worked so hard on the project, so therefore he should get it. I then challenged Shimmy with my main point, “You don’t care about me? What about me? I worked hard buying and cutting all the wood for the project.” Shimmy was having a hard time giving in, but he was starting to acknowledge that my feelings were also important.

I wasn’t going to force Shimmy to give the bookcase to his classroom, since this specific behavior wasn’t my goal. It would have been acceptable if he ended up keeping it, as long as he took my feelings into account and came up with a compromise such as paying something towards my expenses. My goal was to work on the root underlying his difficult behaviors, rather than change a specific behavior in a specific setting. For Shimmy, teaching him to consider my feelings would lead him to think about his classmates’ feelings too. Then, on his own, he would realize that he needs to reduce his aggressive behaviors towards them.

It was difficult for Shimmy not to take the bookcase for himself. We kept up the discussion about who to give it to for the next few sessions as we continued building the bookcase. For the therapeutic benefit, the longer Shimmy insisted on keeping the bookcase for himself, the more opportunities I had to challenge his thinking and get him to reflect. Normally, Shimmy refused to discuss anything about thinking and considering other people’s feelings. However, because of his strong desire to keep the bookcase, I was able to keep the conversation going. Each time I challenged him to consider my viewpoint, I was creating an opportunity for him to pause and think, and this is how real growth happens.

What Changed for Shimmy

As therapy progressed with these and other similar teaching methods, Shimmy began improving his relationship with his classmates. He no longer antagonized them thoughtlessly, and when provoked he responded less aggressively. These gains came as a result of an internal change in Shimmy’s thinking. It was his decision to improve. We were just encouraging him in this process.

Stories in this series are based on real accounts, but many details have been altered to protect the subjects’ privacy.

If this story feels familiar, you can read more about our approach or get in touch to talk it through.