Your toddler is a complete, self-centered psychopath. He does not understand that you have your own mind. He does not understand that your eyeballs look at things. To him, you are an elaborate banana that moves a lot and can help him.
That is not a flaw in his character. It is a stage of his development, and it has a name.
Theory of Mind
Around four to five years old, a genetic expression fires and a child gains the machinery to understand that other people have their own minds, their own consciousness and their own point of view. Before that switch, he cannot perceive it. When he covers his eyes, he believes your eyes are covered too. When you point at something, he looks at your finger.
No amount of explaining gets him there early. The machinery either has grown or it has not.
Empathy is an instinct
Empathy is not learned. It is an extension of Theory of Mind: the ability to simulate what someone else is feeling and relate to it. That is a developmental process, not something a parent installs through reward and punishment.
This is why the modern focus on punishment, discipline and moral lectures misses the mark. Theory of Mind is the foundation of morality. Without it, there is nothing for the lesson to land on.
Punishing a brain that hasn’t arrived
Most fathers are punishing a brain that has not arrived yet. Stop needlessly disciplining young children, and stop worrying so much about their morality. A lot of what looks like bad character in modern kids is distress: irritability, aggression and an inability to settle, the signs of a child running on empty.
Children take the culture of the territory
The idea that hours of parental investment install values is mostly defunct. Children adopt the culture of the territory they live in. An immigrant family can spend years teaching the culture back home, and the child still grows up local. What surrounds a child shapes him more than what he is told.
A father’s one job
A father’s real job is to give his sons massive confidence. The boy who wins and holds territory learns the tools to protect it and to act honorably. The boy who loses often and has nothing is the one whose future deserves the worry. Stop with the paranoia about values, and build a son who wins.
Theory of Mind keeps growing
Theory of Mind keeps developing as a man ages, and some people never reach an advanced form of it. A father who cannot see his children’s perspective, and where they are in their development, fails to connect with them, and they grow up feeling misunderstood.
Morality is built in
Morality is baked into the cake. It is fundamentally an instinct. A father who understands this does not need to punish his children to make them moral. He knows they are that way by developmental decree, and he spends his effort where it counts.