Devoloping children can't comprehend other peoples or animals ect feelings, without a clear sign of distress?
What age will a devoloping child recieve empathy or is it something we learn or born with? Can empathy be taken away from a child with devoloping if she or he is abused? So is it just experiment for children devoloping to hurt other animals to deterimen between life or death or is just a child being curious?

It's very disturbing to see a child be intentionally cruel, but I believe I witnessed such behavior this week when I took my 17 month old granddaughter to the mall. I let her enter a play area where many children were climbing on large cartoon characters built for just this purpose. I watched her very closely as she is quite small for her age and didn't want her to be run over by other children. I became aware that a young boy of about 6 years old, following her all around the play area. Wherever she went, he would follow. At first I thought he must like babies. But I watched more closely and realized that he was making mean faces at her, sticking out his tongue etc. I continued to watch as he would look around to see if anyone was watching, and would put a foot out in an attempt to trip the baby. I approached closer, as he was unsuccessful in his attempts and he continue to follow her. As she climbed off a toy, he walked up behind her and used his body (not his hands) to push her down and walked off as if it didn't happen. I saw it coming and tried to stop him, I told him "that wasn't very nice"...he looked surprised to be caught and quickly ran off to a different toy. However, he continue to watch her from a distance, and if she approached a toy he was on, he would look around to find me nearby. I found his behavior disturbing in that he seemed to intentionally find the smallest child there and "stalk" her. He knew what he was doing was wrong because he kept looking to see if anyone was watching him. It was obvious to me that he had done this before, especially the way he used his body and not his hands to push her down. He actually attempted to make his behavior look like an accident!

Is this normal behavior in a child? I am a mother of 4 and grandmother of 3 and have never seen that type of behavior in mine or anyone else's children until this.

Thank you,