Why Do Kids Cry Over Unexpected Social Moments At School Events? A Teacher’s Real Story
The gym smelled like buttered popcorn and lemon-scented floor wax the night of our 8th grade graduation prom. I was leaning against the bleachers checking off name tags when I noticed Lila, the last student without a pair for the opening grand march dance. She’d come in that afternoon after school to help me hang paper stars, had on a pink sparkly dress she’d borrowed from her older cousin, and new white sneakers she’d bought because the matching heels gave her blisters. I waved her over and told her I’d be her partner—no big deal, I always dance with whoever’s left. Before I could finish the sentence, she burst into tears.
I didn’t say anything for a minute, just led her around to the empty side of the concession stand, away from the crowd of kids adjusting corsages and yelling to each other across the gym. I pulled a crumpled paper napkin out of the popcorn bucket I was holding and handed it to her, and leaned against the counter waiting. After a minute she mumbled that she wasn’t crying because I was a bad dancer, she just didn’t want everyone to see her dancing with the teacher. “Everyone else is with their boyfriend or their best friend,” she said, staring at the scuff on her sneaker. “They’ll all know no one wanted to dance with me. They’ll think I’m weird.”
I’ve taught 8th grade for 12 years, and moments like this don’t surprise me anymore, but I still almost default to the wrong thing. My first instinct was to say “That’s not true, everyone likes you” or “It’s just a dance, no one cares.” I’ve said that before, to other kids, and all it does is make them cry harder. If you’re 13, everyone cares about this stuff. Your entire sense of self is tied up in what the 20 other kids in your homeroom think of you, and a prom dance isn’t just a dance—it’s a public announcement of where you fit in the social order.
Instead of arguing, I nodded. “That makes total sense,” I said. “If I was 13 and I had to dance with my middle school teacher in front of everyone, I’d be mortified too. I’m 38 and my dance moves are still terrible.” She cracked a little smile through the tears. I thought for a second, then said, “What if we change the story? Instead of me taking pity on you because no one picked you, you’re doing me a favor. You hung 50 paper stars for me last week when my back was hurting and I couldn’t climb the ladder. I owe you a dance. If anyone asks, that’s what we tell them. If they don’t ask, we don’t say anything. And if you still hate the idea, we can go sit in my car right now and eat the leftover brownies I have in my bag, and no one will say a word.”
She thought about it for a second, then wiped her face and said the story could be I owed her, but I had to promise not to step on her dress. I promised. We walked back out, and when the PE teacher joked that I’d scored the best date of the night, I told him Lila was collecting on a debt, and I’d been dreading this all week. Lila laughed. We danced for three minutes, I did step on the hem of her dress, and as soon as the song ended she ran off to join her friends—one of whom had paired with her visiting cousin from out of town, which is why Lila had been left alone in the first place. She stayed with her group the whole rest of the night, posted photos to Instagram that night, and didn’t seem upset about anything after that.
That’s the thing about these big emotional reactions kids have over small moments, that I wish more parents and new teachers understood. It’s almost never about the thing itself—it’s about the story the kid is telling themselves about what the thing means. Lila wasn’t crying because she had to dance with me. She was crying because she’d decided that being unpaired meant she was unliked, and dancing with me would confirm that to everyone. The worst thing we can do is tell her that story is wrong, that she’s overreacting. The best thing we can do is small, concrete things that don’t require rearranging the whole prom or giving a big speech.
First, just validate the feeling first, before you do anything else. You don’t have to agree that it’s a big deal, you just have to acknowledge that it feels like a big deal to them. Instead of “it’s nothing,” say “that would feel really awkward, I get that.” It takes 10 seconds, and it changes everything. Second, if you can, tweak the story instead of changing the situation. We didn’t find her a new partner, we didn’t cancel the dance, we just changed what the dance meant to anyone watching, and to her. Third, always give an out. If she’d wanted to sit in the car and eat brownies, that would have been a fine outcome. No event is so important that a kid has to push through overwhelming embarrassment to participate.
A week after prom, Lila dropped a folded note on my desk on her way out of school for the summer. It had a messy doodle of me stepping on her pink dress, and it said “thanks for not making me be the leftover girl.” I still have it taped to the edge of my desk, between a stack of algebra tests and a note from last year’s class. Lila’s still a kid who worries a lot about what other people think. She still gets nervous before presentations, she still sits out some group activities when she feels out of place. That’s just part of being 13, part of growing up. We didn’t fix all that in 10 minutes by the concession stand. We just got through one hard moment, one small step at a time. That’s usually enough.
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