In Chapter 3 of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, what does Atticus mean when he says you never really understand a person "until you climb into his...

In Chapter 3, Atticus notices that something is bothering Scout as they walk onto the porch for their nightly reading session. Scout laments to her father about her rough first day at school and begs Atticus not to send her back tomorrow. Atticus says,

"if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view---until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (Lee 39).

Atticus is teaching his daughter a lesson on gaining perspective. Earlier in the day, Scout assumed Miss Caroline understood everyone's family background from Maycomb, which led to a misunderstanding between Scout and her teacher. Atticus explains to Scout that she needed to take into consideration that Miss Caroline was new to Maycomb, and Scout couldn't expect her to understand everything about the Cunninghams on her first day. Atticus uses the analogy of climbing into a person's skin and walking around in it as a way to explain to Scout how she should look at situations from other people's point of view. His analogy is essentially the same thing as the common idiom, "walk in someone's shoes for a day."

Scout picks up on this lesson rather quickly and begins to develop her perspective as the novel progresses. In Chapter 7, Scout decides to leave Jem alone after he returned from the Radley house and stayed moody for a week. Scout says,

"I tried to climb into Jem's skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon" (Lee 77).