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.

It's an interesting point, her ability to focus has always been poor although I don't know if it's abnormally so for her age if you see what I mean! But for example for Sports Day she ran into the girl next to her because she was watching another race rather than concentrating on what she's doing. I wouldn't say she's particularly impulsive or gets fixated with special interests though.

But I can't see her having any kind of neurodiversity really though, and I'm pretty certain the school wouldn't think so. Apart from the emotional outbursts she's very content and thriving at school, and (again apart from the crying!) she is very social, always makes new friends when going somewhere new and socially seems very typical of girls her age.

Op how’s your daughter now is she improving? I am asking because I too have a very sensitive daughter and she cries about little things. She has many friends at school and is doing really well (working at greater depth at all subjects). The school report did highlight that she has a sensitive nature and she can work on her resilience. What does your daughter’s teacher say? Have they suggested anything which is constructive? Would be good to know.

I would definitely say it is a bit better, we used some of the advice on here and did a lot of talking about feelings and reactions, and how it's OK to feel stuff but we have to learn to manage our reactions. I would say she is still more emotional than her friends, and when tired or busy I think the tears come back a bit but it is better mostly I think.