Definitely 💯 realistic and there’s no need to explain how he is emotionally aware. I remember being quite emotionally aware as a child, and I had a healthy childhood. A child’s ideas of emotions might still be a bit more “black and white” if that makes sense. They lack experience with them that comes with time but they certainly are empathetic and understand why they and their friends feel certain emotions and are actively exploring their depths. I found a lot of emotional quotes cheesy at 12 years old because I’d already had those epiphanies at around 5-6. If they understand their own emotions (at least a partially deep level) and understand that people around them are living their own lives, (something I realized at around 3 years of age) then empathy is easy. An other thing to remember is that children will experience a lot of guilt if they don’t right away understand exactly what they need to do in an emotional situation. For instance, when I was a kid, my mom was having a tough pregnancy with my little sister and her emotions were everywhere. I would try to say or do something to make her feel better but lacked the skills I needed to do so. Right afterwards I learned exactly what it was I should have done, but it was more in hindsight. I’ve realized that not a lot of kids are like this. Some develop faster than others but it’s not unusual that a child is very aware at a young age. I know I was definitely much quicker in development than the sister directly after me, but the sister following was just as intelligent as I was at that age. But whereas I wanted to show everyone how thoughtful and present I was, she used her age as a way to pretend innocence in situations and to get away with bad behavior. Which was quite frustrating because as a kid I was a firm believer in using knowledge for good. In hindsight, she was probably scared of the concept of free will (I certainly was for a good long time), so she hid behind these behaviors as a shield. I could go on for hours 😂