Just thought I’d share a little trick I’ve used a few times now to help children who can’t understand that someone else might have different priorities to them and therefore might feel differently about the same situation. It has been really useful in particular for high functioning ASD students in their relationships with peers, teachers and family members. Here’s how it works:

1. Get the child to list some values they feel strongly about (either that it matters a lot to them or they really think it’s not important) eg friends; being able to make your own choices; having a clean room etc. Get them to rate each one out of 10.
2. Make a list of values they think the other person might have and then rate each of those out of 10.
3. Create a scenario where the weight of those values might contrast eg Mum wants the child to clean their room. Having a clean room is a 1/10 for the child but 8/10 for the Mum. See the problem now?
4. Extend it further by creating equations adding multiple values together and then contrasting again e.g. for the child clean room is 1/10 but having Mum not cranky is a 5/10 so that makes it more important than just the room.

You can even use a visual scale for this if you like so that the child can see how “full” the value scale is to see how important something is for someone. Enjoy!