I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”
He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.
But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.
I’ve found that if a child is capable of having a conversation (that is, old enough to speak and express themselves, not injured or upset so badly that they literally cannot stop crying, and not behaving violently), then 90% of the time their reason for being upset is legitimate, or at least understandable.
Please remember that this also applies to teenagers and preteens, they might be acting like a knowitall who doesn’t give a shit, or a first class jerk, but chances are fair they feel like shit for one reason or another and adults just chalk it up to teenage angst instead
Almost every time you see someone, child, teen, or adult, who is having some emotional meltdown over something minor, it’s a “straw that broke the camels back” situation.
Kids and teens may have bigger reactions or it may take less to overwhelm them, but it’s important to remember that they are still people and it’s hard being a people.