Very sensitive 7 year old and friendships

[KrankyKracken]

My DD is 7 1/2. She is a confident, fun, mostly cheerful and lively little girl most of the time. But she is very sensitive - things that her friends might feel a bit sad or disappointed about she still gets big emotions and often tears. So far she seems popular - has lots of friends and has a large group of friends she plays with. However, I do worry that her sensitivity will cause her issues with friendships as she gets older - she said today another little girl in her class (not particularly one of her friends) said to her she was always crying. And I can see it will start to get annoying for her friends.

I am struggling to know how to handle this - I definitely think she does need to learn other ways to handle her emotions for her own sake but it feels hard to teach her that without telling her there is something wrong with feeling her emotions.

I have in the past tried talking to her about other ways to handle her emotions - counting to ten, walking away and then maybe talking things through with me at home later. But it doesn't really seem to be making any difference, except now I just end up feeling guilty because she says "I know I shouldn't have cried."

Today when she told me what the other girl said about her always crying I wasn't sure what to say! I just told her that while we shouldn't be unkind to other people, the other girl had maybe had noticed something that other children might also notice, and it might be good to practice some of the things we have talked about to avoid always going straight to tears. I said as a grown up sometimes things upset me, but I can't just burst into tears at work all the time. I also talked about the boy who cried wolf, and how if she cries over every little thing it's very hard for people to know if there's a genuine problem.

Any tips on how to handle this better? Is she likely to grow out of it? She's such a lovely little girl, and I don't want it to start impacting on her friendships.

Have you spoken to her Teacher about this yet @KrankyKracken? If other DC are commenting on your DD being emotional then perhaps the Teacher has noticed and has some suggestions?

Would a book like this help too?

I actually don't think there is anything wrong with being a guide to calibrate your child's emotional responses. People worry too much about 'gaslighting' but explaining that their upset over something minor isn't appropriate isn't invalidating their feelings it's you showing them what the scale is so they can build their resilience.

I think getting her to start thinking about why she's upset will help and perspective taking i.e. what are the other girls thinking, why did they say xyz that upset me? Was it personal or just random?

Luke not agree more.

You know, I am absolutely coming round to this way of thinking. I used to worry so much about not giving her the message that she shouldn't be sad etc, but she hasn't learnt at all that some responses to sadness are disproportionate. Like so many things in parenting it seems hard to get the balance right.

This morning she was playing with her little brother, they were struggling to agree on some details of the game, she was offering various compromises but he wasn't really wanting to compromise (not sure he was really that fussed about the game at all to be honest). She ended up running to me in tears saying "I'm trying to compromise but he won't".

I ended up feeling quite exacerbated and saying that we just talked about this yesterday, we don't need tears for everything which I know wasn't the right response either. I just worry so much that this is going to start impacting on her friendships.

Thanks l'll have a look!

I think she will grow out of it. My son has a friend like this, and there was a point about 7 where his frequent crying did attract negative comment, but he's through it now at 9.

With the brother situation you can delve into it "why do you think he won't compromise?" Answer probably being either he's little and needs to learn over time of he's a selfish prick. Either way you explain that crying isn't helping and sometimes the best solution is to walk away or change game.

I do remember reading an article about not gaslighting your child when they're scared and I thought it was stupid. The idea was that if you're child is scared of a monster under the bed you spend half an hour listening to their feelings and validating that it's ok to be scared. No, sorry, an adult needs to provide the calibration of scariness. Monster under the bed, not scary, it's a ridiculous thing to be scared about (cos monsters don't eat kids they only eat cheese) and it's fine to say this.

Thanks that's good to know, I suppose to some extent I can talk through things with her at home but she has to come to a decision for herself that she doesn't like people commenting on her crying, and she needs to do something about it. It's hard because you want to save them from friendship issues/negative comments but she is her own person and I do have to guide her but also let her learn her own lessons. Easier said than done sometimes!

Thank you. Yes I think at home. I need to preempt the crying and encourage her to walk away before she gets upset, and then hopefully she can learn to do this at school.

And I think you are right, if I don't tell her that crying because she has curly hair and her best friends both have straight hair (an example from last week!) isn't a little bit overdramatic then who will?!

Could you do something at home like a scale of one to ten on a wall chart? And then when she gets upset at home you can ask her where it sits on her chart. I’d let her set the terms of what’s a 10 and what’s a 1, but I’d be clear that 10 should be the absolute worst thing she can imagine happening and 1 should be a default of “this is absolutely fine”.

I’d model it myself as well, if I was cross/upset about something which happened I’d say, oh I’m very fed up, I feel like this is a number 5 so it’s not really for crying about but I would like to tell someone and have a cuddle. DD can you give me a cuddle please? Then I’d move swiftly on so you’re showing her it’s ok to briefly feel your feelings but it doesn’t have to consume the next 45 minutes.

I must admit with my 7yo DS I’ve always gone for the, come on quick cuddle move on approach and he’s quite a level headed sort BUT he has a lot of friends who are girls of the same age and there’s definitely 3 or 4 who lean towards the extremely dramatic, tears, life is over routine so it might just be the age!

There's various guides and lesson plans and things for scales of problems - big problems/little problems, or a scale from glitch through little, medium, big, giant, up to emergency. That's more for a wider how to scale your response to a situation so e.g. a teacher isn't being shouted at to help just because a pencil snapped. But maybe you could adapt that for specific levels of upset. Someone not sharing with you is a little upsetting, grazing your knee is medium upsetting, etc and explore with her what she thinks she should do at each level.

I really like this idea! It's usually quite short-lived and she moves on pretty quickly if she doesn't dwell on it, and just the process of deciding how upset she feels and labelling it might help her to move on. We can practice on the chart at home, and then hopefully she might try in her head at school.

From someone who has always had ‘big emotions’ and cries a lot, she may never grow out of it.

I’ve always been like this, honestly I hate it and my tears are frequent and involuntary, I’ve just learnt to live with it and if it makes others uncomfortable then that’s a problem for them not me.

You could look into counselling, I’ve always believed it could’ve helped me when I was much younger but it wasn’t possible at the time. I have lots of friends and a wonderful relationship with DD and DH, if your DD’s friends are kind and appreciate her for who she is then it won’t really matter if she cries a lot or doesn’t.

I think she will grow out of it, she's maybe just a bit emotionally immature. We had a similar issue with my son (although his response was anger based) and found a diary for him to process emotions and also a happy journal worked quite well, theres some good kids books on emotional regulation too that you could google to then read and discuss with her. There were some good metaphors in one for him, one that stuck was;
Everyone makes mistakes, feels bad/sad/mad, has things happen they didn't plan. However, your response is the only thing you can control. Try dropping an egg, when it falls, it smashes, bits go everywhere, it no longer even is an egg. When a bouncy ball gets dropped/falls, it uses the experience to give it motivation to fly back up and carry on. You can choose to respond like an egg, or a bouncy ball, which one feels better long term? Which one would you like to role model?

Even now if I see him getting worked up over something I can just say "you're a bouncy ball" and he stops and resets himself. I also find that once they've calmed down (so in this case when she's stopped crying) try and help her use words to describe how she felt, so was she frustrated/sad/cross/lonely etc and get her to process and understand that, and then discuss what she could've done differently (I could have explained to my brother that I was getting frustrated and then I could've told him if he didn't compromise too, then I wasn't prepared to play with him). Hopefully if she can begun to articulate and problem solve how she's feeling, she might not need the tears to communicate it. That way you're also not ignoring the feeling, you're just teaching her to communicate how she's feeling in a more mature way. Sometimes feelings cards/words can help expand her vocabulary if she needs a bit of help with that (there's a book called My Big Feelings that helps with this too, or Colour Monster).

I think one of the worst things you can do is invalidate her feelings. You don't have to molly coddle her, but acknowledging the issue is the way to go. Some people are more sensitive to things than others, as a sensitive person with a mother who told me to suck it up it did nothing to help me. I had been terribly bullied at school it has affected my mental health to this day and I never felt I could talk to anyone about it since I felt no one cared. Sometimes just a hug will make it better. Try to be positive, but recognise she may just be different from other people.
You are telling her how to manage her emotions by what you consider to be social norms. Tell her it's okay to be upset or angry or happy and that emotions are perfectly normal and to try to stop them isn't healthy. By saying ignore it or walk away you are reinforcing that her feeling are invalid and don't matter. This could be making it worse. By invalidating her emotions you are saying it's not okay and when it does become too much for her it may make her feel guilty or like she's doing something "naughty".
I'm in no way having a go at you, as we all do it. My son was very sensitive. When he got older and was an adult he told me.I didn't help and made it worse because I put my own coping mechanisms onto him when we are very different people.

Really tough one, I remember being at school with a girl like this and she was ALWAYS crying. I don't think there was a day that went by without some sort of emotional breakdown. We went to different secondary schools so I'm not sure what she ended up like as a teen/young adult.
I totally understand your concerns around her friendships.
It would interesting to speak with the teacher and see if she notices it and what suggestions she has.

I agree with the importance of calibration here. There has to be balance between showing compassion to your child for their emotions and preparing them for life where people might not be so tolerant. It is important to distinguish between the emotions which are always ok and the behaviour and reactions that might not always serve her well.

You don't have to invalidate. You can say "I understand you're upset, here's a hug, but this thing you're upset about isn't something that you need to be THIS upset about and most people wouldn't be, so let's explore that..."

I love this idea

My DD is exactly the same. After my friend said to me to validate the feeling but not the behaviour I now say to my DD: "it's ok to feel sad but let's not let our feelings get too big." We work on not letting the emotions get too big and some of that is by her telling someone how something makes her feel and talking it through. We name as many feelings as we can so she can explain how something makes her feel. A lot of the time it's actually frustration that makes her cry. It's baby steps but I think it's working. One of the four areas of Emotional Intelligence is about being able to manage your own emotions and I don't think we talk about how to do this enough in a way that is still honouring the feeling itself.

She’ll grow out of it. She’s 7. This term ‘big emotions’ seems to have taken hold, for some reason. Now, people are concerned that something is wrong if their child cries or gets angry a lot. There’s a very dark side to ‘resilience’, contrary to today’s ‘positivity’ narrative. Maybe think about your own reaction to your daughter’s emotions and why you’re so concerned.

Well I mostly think I'm concerned because it's been mentioned a couple of times by other children at school and I don't want it becoming something that hampers her friendships. I do see your point, and to some extent I probably need to let go of what I can't control - if other kids start saying something she needs to decide to react differently because she doesn't like it, it's out of my control. But there have definitely been some useful tips here on how I could teach her some better coping mechanisms without invalidating how she is feeling.

We had lots of tears this morning because she was struggling with two of her spellings - we quite often get this with school work. I am very patient if she finds stuff hard and we absolutely don't put pressure on her with school work so I don't really know where it comes from, she just really hates to find anything hard. I said to her we should take a break from practising them as she's not going to get anywhere when she's that upset. Initially she got even more upset about stopping, but then she went and read in her room for a bit, and when she calmed down we had a chat. I tried to delve a bit deeper into why she's that upset about finding school work hard - I think she must just be a bit of a perfectionist and gets frustrated with herself. So I tried to talk about how making mistakes can feel frustrating but we can use that frustration to work hard and practice things we find hard rather than just crying and getting very emotional. I talked about the egg and the bouncy ball a PP mentioned and she liked that! And we had a go at making a scale for how upset something makes her, and talked through a few things that has happened recently and where they might be on the scale. And she made herself a little pot where she can write down something that made her sad and put it in there.

So hopefully an approach of giving her more space to explain why she feels so upset, but encouraging her to find better ways to express it will be better. Rather than me just catastrophising that no one will want to be her friend and reacting in a less measured way myself!

This sounds like rejection sensitivity - associated with neurodiversity. Does your daughter have any other traits like inability to focus, impulsivity, getting very focused on specific things or interests? I'm ADHD and was always crying as a child, it's emotional dysregulation. Even now I cry a lot as a reaction to things - and here's something else, it's not usually sadness, it's anger and associated frustration at not being able to express it, or being misunderstood. I learned at an early age that girls/kids shouldn't be angry and that it wasn't an acceptable response! So it had nowhere to go and I'd just cry. Still happens now if something/someone makes me angry and I can't express it.