What age do typical children show remorse?
Just wondering after a hard weekend. My dd is going through a real tough stage of being mean to her brother...and my husband and I. It really breaks my heart to hear her say she hates me. She does not seem bothered by any of her behavior. That bothers me a lot too...
Sam is 8 and he feels remorse; as in *I'm sorry I'm getting in trouble*. He does not seem to sit around feeling bad for something he's done. It was a tougher week than usual here. Sam was really mad at me about something and he was acting out, having meltdowns and even hitting me which is super unusual. He couldn't talk about it for several days but I finally managed to get him talking and turns out his biological father spent the weekend denying Sam all the things he has come to expect from his father for the past 4yrs - unlimited computer, tv, junkfood - telling Sam his mother didn't want him doing these things anymore. No wonder my son was mad at me. We talked it out and things are a much better between us. Today when I pointed out his earlier behaviour he couldn't really remember it, certainly wasn't bothered by it, and couldn't see any point discussing it. Sam does show much more empathy now than he did 6yrs. The birth of his brother opened up a new world for Sam. I can see immediate remorse in his face if he accidently hurts Alex, but not if he hurts him while trying to defend his lego.
As for *typical* kids, my 2 yr old shows more remorse than Sam did at that age.
Mama to Sam 8yrs PDD NOS OCD ODD PPD and Alex 2yrs
My son is 8, and I think his feelings of guilt or remorse depend on his own experience/perception of the situation. If he feels affronted in any way, that feeling takes the forefront and he holds onto that feeling like a dog to a bone, instead of letting go of that feeling and considering the other person's point of view. He is generally capable of empathy and remorse, but it seems he has to be calm to access those feelings and take the other person's perspective.
Here's what I was able to google up about typical development:
"There is evidence that children begin to appreciate the emotional consequences of bad behavior considerably earlier. By the time they are two-years old, children show signs of guilt and shame when they do something wrong (Barrett, ***; Zahn-Waxler, ***; Kochanska, ***). In one experimental paradigm, experimenters give toddlers a toy doll that is rigged to fall apart when they play with it. Two-year-olds show signs of selfconscious distress when such “mishaps” occur. For example, they avoid eye-contact, they squirm, they hang their heads down, and they cover their faces. Such negative feelings may help children acquire mastery of the moral conventional distinction, which begins to appear shortly before the third-birthday. Smetana and Braeges (1990) found that children at that age regard moral rules differently than conventional rules, judging that the former are more generalizable than the latter (e.g., more likely to be followed at other schools). By fifty-four* months, the moral-conventional distinction is very well entrenched. Children come to recognize that moral wrongs are more authorityindependent and more serious than conventional wrongs."
"At slightly older ages, children become very sensitive to the effects that bad behavior has on others. Arsenio (***) described a series of bad behaviors to kindergarteners, and then asked them to pick facial expressions that capture that the victims and observers of those behaviors would feel. Kindergarteners reliably choose facial expressions of negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and sadness. Interestingly, kindergarteners expect that the perpetrators of moral transgressions will feel happy. This is called the happy victimizer effect (***). Presumably, they think victimizers are happy because their misdeeds achieve intended goals. For example, a person who steals some candy will be happy to have obtained the candy. Kindergarteners do not judge happy victimizers to be any more reprehensible than victimizers who show remorse (***; ****)."
"They begin to regard happy victimizers as worse than remorseful victimizers by the time they are eight-years-old* (***). This is an important developmental milestone. It indicates that eight-year-olds do not merely have norms about how people ought to behave; they have norms about how people ought to feel. Happy victimizers commit two wrongs: one in their conduct and the other in their attitude."
Source: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/phi663/PrinzECM-Exc erpt.pdf