Watching The Breakfast Club With My Teens: A Lesson in Empathy and Perspective-Taking

Mini Sprout
18 hours ago
4 min read

I watched The Breakfast Club with my teenager kids last weekend.

Five high school students from very different social groups—a brain, an athlete, a rebel, a popular girl, and an outsider—are forced to spend a Saturday together in detention.

At first, they clash, judge one another, and hide behind stereotypes. As the day unfolds, honest conversations reveal their fears, pressures, and struggles at home and school. By the end, they realize they share more in common than they expected and leave with a deeper understanding of themselves and each other, challenging the labels that once defined them.

(Since it was made in the 80s, I actually had to translate some of the language for them!)

At the end of the movie, I asked them, “Do these stereotypes still exist nowadays?”

My son said, “The typecasts are pretty much the same nowadays.”

Yes, indeed.

Different decade.

Same habit of labeling.

But what stood out most wasn’t how different their lives were from teens today—but how familiar their problems felt STILL.

Underneath the stereotypes, the characters were all dealing with very real struggles:

• Parental expectations and fear of disappointing adults

• Family conflict, emotional neglect, or lack of safety at home

• Pressure to perform—academically, socially, or athletically

• Peer pressure and the need to fit in

• Loneliness, even when surrounded by people

• Identity confusion—not knowing who they’re allowed to be versus who they really are

Sound familiar?

These pressures didn’t disappear with Walkmans and payphones or got reinvented with iPhones and AI.

They’re still very alive today—just louder, faster, and more public.

Now it’s grades posted online.

Social media comparison.

Group chats that never turn off.

Images of “success” and “perfection” curated 24/7.

And fewer safe spaces to fail, rest, or just be human.

What changed everything in the movie wasn’t someone fixing these problems.

It was the human-to-human connection.

When the characters slowed down, shared their emotions, and listened without interrupting, something shifted.

They realized they weren’t alone.

They discovered they had more in common than they ever imagined.

That’s emotional skill-building in action.

• Emotional awareness: When the students stop posturing and begin naming what they actually feel—fear of failing, shame about family situations, anger at constant pressure—we see the moment when Bender admits the abuse at home, Claire talks about loneliness behind popularity, and Brian reveals the crushing weight of academic expectations. Emotions are finally named instead of hidden behind labels.

• Perspective-taking: As each character listens to another’s story without interrupting or correcting, their judgments soften. The jock hears the brain’s fear of failure. The popular girl hears the outsider’s pain of rejection. They begin to understand lives that once felt completely foreign.

• Empathy: Empathy shows up when mockery turns into silence, then into care—when the group reacts not with jokes but with concern to Brian’s confession about considering suicide. Different behaviors, same emotional pain, finally recognized.

• Connection-building: By the time they sit together on the floor, share personal stories, laugh, and write the letter together, defenses have dropped. They are no longer representatives of stereotypes, but people who feel seen and safe enough to connect.

These skills matter just as much today—if not more.

Today’s kids are navigating constant comparison, public mistakes, and nonstop pressure, often without the language to explain how they feel.

When we help them move beyond labels and into emotions, we give them tools to connect instead of judge.

Empathy doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone or condoning every behavior.

It means understanding, and that behavior is shown through communication.

Perspective-taking is a life skill.

Connection is built through emotional safety.

Empathy grows when we slow down long enough to listen.

What The Breakfast Club shows by the end is powerful:

When the labels fall away, what remains is shared experience.

Different roles.

Different coping strategies.

But the same core needs—to be seen, accepted, and understood.

That’s where empathy begins.

Teaching empathy doesn’t mean minimizing bad choices or harmful behaviors.

It means helping kids recognize that behavior often grows out of pressure, fear, or unmet needs.

Perspective-taking is a life skill.

Empathy is a practice.

Sometimes, the real difficulty isn’t what to say or how to say it, but how to start.

When direct conversation feels intimidating, lighthearted interaction and play can create a safe space where emotions naturally surface and are understood.

Using a board game like the one we’ve created, Empower Empathy™, which uses play as a medium, clearly shows that:

Empathy doesn’t have to begin with a deep conversation. It doesn’t require lecturing or perfect answers.

Simply participating together, playing together, giving a little space, and sharing the experience allows dialogue to gradually emerge—and heart-to-heart connection to slowly take root.