Childhood can be described as a world of small wonders, such as first friendships, first arguments, and first efforts to unravel what another person may be thinking or feeling. Beneath these commonplace instances is more. A deeper, slower transformation of the development of empathy. Classrooms, playgrounds, story circle gatherings, and the buzz of the day are the spaces in which children are learning to decipher the emotional landscape of others, stretch their imaginations outside of their skin and learn how each mind engages with the world in its own unique way.
But empathy is more than a moral notion passed from a loving teacher. It is a developmental process, guided by relationships, contexts, and the knowledge children have of others who are not like them. Nowhere is there more potential than in the emerging field of neurodiversity education that refuses to maintain the idea that all children learn, feel, and communicate in the same way. When children are taught that difference is not a mistake, instead a form of what it is to be human, they become transformed emotionally, moving from fear to understanding, to close the gap to develop connection, and to be curious instead of stigmatising.
Read More: The Psychological Impact of Peer Education on Neurodiversity in Schools
What Empathy Really Means for Growing Minds
For children in the process of development, empathy is the ability to identify and respond to the feelings of others, which can become increasingly complex throughout development, from early emotional contagion to intentional perspective taking. Developmental empiricism makes a distinction between affective empathy, the automatic sharing of another person’s feelings, and cognitive empathy, the interpretation of another person’s mental state (Bulgarelli et al., 2023).
By toddlerhood, children are beginning to give comfort and assistance in their interactions, marking an important developmental change associated with the emergence of intentional prosocial behaviours. By middle childhood, children understand the distinction between themselves and others when thinking or feeling an important development key to perspective taking (Frontiers, 2025). These skills contribute to and direct how children interact, cooperate, and work through social dilemmas.
We expect structured settings to promote these skills to grow together. School-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions have demonstrated positive impacts by providing systematic practice for recognising and responding to emotions, for developing social awareness and fostering emergent prosocial behaviour (Hosokawa et al., 2024; Silke et al., 2024). When empathy is introduced as a concept taught intentionally–through stories, discussion, and collaborative opportunities–its emotional understanding can become more flexible and emergent when shared among children.
Comprehending neurodiversity enhances these capacities. Misunderstandings happen not necessarily as a result of unkindness, but due more to unfamiliarity with neurodivergent means of communication or sensory experience. Delivering an accurate and strengths-based account of autism to typically developing students about their intellectual peer is known to properly reduce stigma and gain acceptance (Davidson et al., 2023; Tsujita et al., 2023). Teaching through a means of experience what is unfamiliar helps construct understanding.
Given this, empathy is not just a learned behaviour but an evolving capacity. When children are taught minds engage in thinking in diverse ways, their own emotional intelligence deepens, and they become more generous with their responses to differences.
Read More: Social Emotional Learning
Why Teaching Neurodiversity Changes Children’s Emotional Worlds
Teaching neurodiversity reshapes children’s emotional lives by reducing misunderstanding and exclusion. Rather than attempting to “correct” neurodivergent children, this approach focuses on adapting school environments to foster acceptance and emotional safety (Chen et al., 2023). A key mechanism is stigma reduction. Many misinterpretations of autistic behaviour occur because peers lack explanatory knowledge.
When children are taught the reasoning for their sensory sensitivities or communication differences, those behaviours are reframed as normative variations, instead of purposeful variations (Davidson et al., 2023). Breakthrough programs that engaged sensory experiences with video-based exposure have been shown to reduce negative attitudes and overall negative perception, for it was found that the positive attitude remained for weeks after the experience (Shin & Lee, 2021).
Neurodiversity education is also an important facilitator of perspective-taking. Activities that incorporate differentiation and highlight strengths have demonstrated a better understanding of diverse contrived and social patterns (Silke et al., 2024). Empathy becomes an action-oriented driver of prosocial behaviour and, using structured methodology, programs such as Activating Social Empathy have demonstrated that increases in empathy will predict marginal gains in emotional efficacy, social responsibility and other helping behaviours (Diemer et al., 2023).
These changes help make school more predictable and socially supportive of neurodivergent children. Many students who are autistic have said that traditional classrooms are overwhelming; when their peers are aware of their sensory and communication differences, school is safer and more accessible (Chen et al, 2023). SEL programs that are integrated into learning spaces of inclusion also support emotional regulation and reduce internalising and externalising behaviours (Hosokawa et al, 2024). Thus, teaching neurodiversity changes the climate of classrooms by replacing judgment with understanding and including all children more fully.
Read More: Understanding and Supporting Neurodiversity in the Classroom
What the Research Shows
Across studies, there is a common theme: teaching children to understand minds that are different from their own increases empathy in sustained and inclusive ways. The Activating Social Empathy (ASE) program reported that adolescents who participated had higher empathy, thus mediating increases in prosocial behaviour, emotional efficacy and social responsibility (Silke et al, 2024).
SEL programs for younger children see similar positive results: for example, the Fun FRIENDS anti-bullying program with preschoolers decreased aggression, impulsivity, anxiety and withdrawal, demonstrating the impact of early and continual emotional education (Hosokawa et al, 2024). Scholarly literature on neurodiversity education consistently indicates significant effects on stigma reduction.
For example, an autism-sensory-perception intervention utilising simulated experiences and personal video testimony to combine mind and body experiences promotes reductions in negative attitudes up to six weeks after the intervention (Tsujita et al., 2023). A virtual acceptance program focused on autism intervention over five weeks demonstrated increased knowledge, attitudes, and intentions about autistic peers and that knowledge and attitudes can be measured a year later (Davidson et al., 2023).
Furthermore, verbal instruction coupled with explicit behavioural-analytic approaches using modelling, prompting, and reinforcement can promote empathetic responding to autistic children, which is generalizable across social activities (Schrandt, 2009). Taken together, these findings provide evidence that empathy is easily taught. Children’s emotional intelligence can become more inclusive and lasting when children learn how different minds sense, process, and communicate.
Read More: Parenting with Neurodiversity: Nurturing Diverse Minds
Bringing Neurodiversity into the Classroom
The Neuroinclusive School Model (Chasen et al., 2024) inherently proposes a shift from correcting children to reconstructing environments so that children who think in nonlinear ways are regarded as natural differences.
1. A Foundational Shift
Teaching peers why autistic children behave differently reduces stigma and fosters acceptance. Sensory simulation paired with video contact significantly decreases negative attitudes (Tsujita et al., 2023), while virtual acceptance programs strengthen knowledge and positive behavioural intentions (Davidson et al., 2023).
2. Elements of a Neuroinclusive Classroom
- Social Environment: A positive culture that gives language to strengths and celebrates differences and active learning about autism builds community and belonging in the environment. Research evidence indicates education awareness policies contribute to social acceptance of autism in the school setting (Davidson et al, 2023).
- Physical Environment: Low sensory and well-organised classes lead to engagement and emotional regulation. Lowering sound and visual distractions reduces sensory overload, and visual aids to model or provide expectations (Kapp et al., 2020).
- Activities & Routines: UDL is flexible and allows for options to choose materials, pacing and formats for activities (CAST, 2018). Staying consistent in routines and providing advance information alleviates stress.
3. Interventions and Professional Support
Empathy can also be intentionally taught. Behavioural-analytic techniques have been shown to improve children’s empathic responding with autistic children, and school-wide SEL initiatives have demonstrated positive influences on empathic understanding and prosocial behaviour (Schrandt et al., 2009; Silke et al., 2024). The continued inclusion of children with autism requires more support for teachers, as lower confidence was found in teachers who have low preparation (Norwich & Eaton, 2023).
Read More: The Beauty of Neurodiversity: Celebrating Our Unique Minds
The Road Ahead
The establishment of inclusive education is often too difficult or impossible to achieve because of insufficient training and resources for teachers, and the failure to develop policy structures for additional assistance. (Florian, 2014; Symes & Humphrey, 2011). Most of the work surrounding empathy has been done in a Western context, and more longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the longer-term implications of school-based intervention programs on children’s empathy (Taylor et al., 2017).
Research on autism-acceptance intervention needs to be conducted with larger samples and collect perspectives from more autistic individuals (Gillespie- Lynch et al., 2021). Lastly, early childhood study researchers need to foster a better methodological approach to examine aspects of empathy and emotional contagion (Decety, 2010). Neuroinclusive conditions shift the load from the child to the context. Modifying both sensory and social environments counters barriers that neurodivergent learners experience in greater proportions, which creates psychological safety (Doyle & McDonnell, 2022).
Children who receive accurate information about autism are less negative towards autistic peers and show more sympathetic responses to autistic peers (Jones et al., 2021). There are evidence-based interventions, which can actually develop empathy. Programs to Activate Social Empathy work to improve emotional competence (Segal et al., 2017), or early intervention SEL programs such as Fun FRIENDS work to improve both internalising and externalising behaviours (Pahl & Barrett, 2007).
Teaching neurodiversity reduces stigma by providing a strengths-based perspective and experiential learning opportunities (Jahromi et al., 2023; Chen et al., 2021). Research on virtual programs also supports changes in children’s attitudes and identifies positive qualities of children’s autism with respect to memory and higher attention to detail (Fletcher-Watson et al.,2022).
Read More: Empathy through Exposure: The Emotional Impact of an Inclusive Visual Campaign
Conclusion
If empathy starts as insignificant, an infant crying in response to another infant’s distress, its development is reliant on the kind of world we construct around children. The evidence is strong: schools that systematically teach emotion, when schools modify their environments to present sensory and cognitive diversity as respectful, when we give children a language system to make meaning of minds disconnected from their own, empathy and understanding will occur more than simply increase.
It widens. It becomes flexible, durable, and inclusive. Neurodiversity education provides a quiet revolution by replacing the old narratives of deficit with stories of variation and reminding children that difference is not in the way of connection but rather one of its most compelling invitations. In sensory-aware classrooms, strengths-based pedagogies, or humanising programs, children learn to look at each other from the stance of a shared humanity, not through a lens of foreignness.
The research provides some positive and hopeful realities: empathy can be taught, stigma can be unpacked, and understanding can be added. Every lesson in compassion, via SEL activities or neurodiversity modules or real-life everyday interactions with opportunities for relateability, will factor in the emotional architecture children carry with them into adolescence and beyond.
In the end, the promise of neuro-inclusive education is that it not only supports neurodivergent learners but also transforms the moral fabric of childhood altogether. It prepares a generation to approach difference with curiosity rather than fear, care rather than judgment. And in doing so, it offers the faintest whispers of what a kinder future may feel like: a world where every child learns not just how another feels, but how another experiences the world of being human.
References +
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• Schrandt, J. A., Townsend, D. B., & Poulson, C. L. (2009). PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN HOMES 13 TEACHING EMPATHY SKILLS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 42(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2009.42-17
• Silke, C., Davitt, E., Flynn, N., Shaw, A., Brady, B., Murray, C., & Dolan, P. (2023). Activating Social Empathy: An evaluation of a school-based social and emotional learning programme. Social and Emotional Learning Research Practice and Policy, 3, 100021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2023.100021
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• Tsujita, M., Homma, M., Kumagaya, S., & Nagai, Y. (2023). Comprehensive intervention for reducing stigma of autism spectrum disorders: Incorporating the experience of simulated autistic perception and social contact. PLoS ONE, 18(8), e0288586. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288586
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