I might be massively overreacting here. I am in what can be for all intends and purposes considered a mostly conventional home situation. My kids have parents around who live together and give them attention constantly. I have 4 and they all have different personalities. My youngest daugher is 8 and would be considered 'high maintenance'. She makes things difficult at times. My son is 5 and is rambunctious, enjoying the idea of fighting and swords and good guys/bad guys, superheroes. You get the idea. Last night my daughter was brushing her teeth and my son was in there with her. I heard her let out a yelp. I went in and she was holding her leg. I asked what happened and she said my son slammed her foot in the cupboard door. I sent him to his room.

Afterwards I spoke with my daughter about how hard he did. She said he leaned his whole weight into her leg. I went and talked to him about it. I'm big on conversations... He sort of muttered that she was kicking the cabinet, bouncing the door open and it bothered him so he did that. I asked him if it's okay, does he know it hurts her, and does he want to hurt her. He said no, no he knows it's not right. He wasn't sad, he wasn't upset, he just wanted to move on. I tried a couple more times to try and explain the gravity of how wrong it was, even comparing it to a thing a bad-guy would do. He said 'can we brush my teeth now?' out of options I told him to apologize to my daughter and he did, and she explained it really hurts. She was limping for the rest of the night.

We finished up the night; his punishment was he didn't get a story for bedtime which hurts me because I love our routine but I had to do some immediate punishment. I asked if I should be grounding him and he said yes and I said why. He said because I was rude. None of this was with any emotion... I am worried about his empathy now. I'm going to have to monitor him and see how he does but I'm concerned. Probably more than I need to be but he's always so good and just shuts down the few times he gets in trouble.