"Do you ever scratch your head and wonder why other people just don't get it? Imagine your aging parents playfully teasing your child at Christmas. Your child doesn't like it, gets frustrated, and asks them to stop... but they persist. You have asked your parents to honor their grandchildren's wishes and stop with the teasing, but they just won't stop. They scoff at your efforts to control them and assert that they are not doing anything wrong."
"Imagine your adolescent college student needing help with a class or with registration. They ask for your help in a frustrated tone. You try to help, but they won't let you look at their computer screen, touch their phone, or read their paper. They get even more frustrated and yell at you because you are not helping them right. You have told them many times that you can't help them unless they give you access to their materials, but they just continue to fume at you."
Research on perspective-taking shows why others struggle to see different points of view. Common family examples include aging parents teasing a child, an adolescent refusing help, and conflicts between young adults and parents over autonomy and household contributions. The core difficulty often stems from low capacity for reflective functioning and weak empathic attunement. Reflective functioning is the ability to perceive another person's worldview, bring that perspective into awareness, and reflect it back through words and actions. Identifying the source of perspective-taking deficits allows targeted responses and practice to better understand even very difficult people.
Read at Psychology Today
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