How to Explain to a Toddler That Not Everyone Will Like Them: Gentle Parenting Tips for Real Life
The mulch by the playground slide was still warm from the afternoon sun when it happened. I was half-watching my 3-year-old Milo, iced coffee sweating through its cup holder in my hand, his socks slipping down to his ankles like they always do. He’d clutched his favorite dino-shaped dump truck all the way from the car, and when he spotted a boy his own age building a block tower by the sandbox, he trotted right over, holding the truck out. “Wanna play?” he asked. The boy looked at the truck, looked at Milo, and stepped back. “No. I don’t like you,” he said, and knocked the truck out of Milo’s hand before turning back to his tower.
Milo froze for a full 10 seconds, then picked up his truck and walked slowly over to me, his lower lip pushed out. He climbed up next to me on the bench and whispered, “Why don’t he like me? Was I bad?”
I’d spent the last three years drilling Milo on “be kind,” “share your toys,” “be a good friend.” I’d never once thought to prepare him for this. I almost blurted the first thing that popped into my head: Of course everyone likes you! That boy’s just being rude. But I caught myself. That wasn’t true, and it wouldn’t have helped him. If I said that, the next time someone didn’t like him, he’d think there was something wrong with him this time, right?
I wiped the crushed Goldfish crumbs off his chin and pulled him a little closer. I said, “That hurt really bad, didn’t it?” He nodded and buried his face in my sweatshirt, so I let him sit there for a minute before I said anything else. I tried to think of something a 3-year-old could actually understand, not big grown-up words. Then I thought about dinner the night before, when he’d pushed his broccoli to the side of his plate and said he didn’t like it.
“You know how you don’t like broccoli, even when I put butter on it and cut it up tiny?” I said. He peeked up and nodded. “That’s not broccoli’s fault, right? It’s just not something you like. Sometimes people feel that way about playing with other kids. It doesn’t mean you did anything bad. It just means that’s how they feel right now.”
He thought about that for a second, then asked if he could go swing. That was it. No big crying spell, no big lecture. But that moment got me thinking about how we often avoid talking about hard, ordinary things with toddlers, like we’re protecting them from something that’s already happening. Every time they go to the playground or story time, they’re going to run into someone who doesn’t want to play, or someone who’s mean for no big reason. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.
A week later, we got the next test at library story time. Milo sat down next to a little girl with a purple glitter shirt, and set his blue crayon down next to his paper. She snatched it up and said, “Blue is my color. I don’t want you sitting here, your drawing is stupid.”
This time, I didn’t rush over right away. I waited to see what Milo would do, but when he just sat there blinking, I walked over and knelt down. Again, I named the feeling first: “That was very unkind, and that hurts, doesn’t it?” He nodded. Then I told him what he could do, concrete, something he could act on: “You don’t have to stay here if someone is mean to you. We can go get another crayon and sit by me, or we can ask the librarian for help. What do you want to do?” He picked up his paper and followed me to another chair, and spent the next 10 minutes drawing a green dinosaur bigger than the whole page. I didn’t call the little girl mean, I didn’t go talk to her mom. It wasn’t that big of a deal, just one of those small unkind moments that happen every day.
Over the last couple months, I’ve worked out a few small, simple things that work, that any parent can do when this comes up, instead of panicking or lying to make it feel better. First, always name the feeling before you explain. Don’t brush it off by saying “it’s fine, don’t be sad” — it’s not fine to them, and if you dismiss how they feel, they won’t hear anything you say after that. Second, keep the explanation super simple, use something they already know. Comparing it to food or toy preferences works way better than big talks about friendship. Third, give them a clear action to take. It’s not enough to say “it’s okay” — they need to know what to do next. You can say “we can go play with something else” or “you can come find me anytime” or if it’s safe, “you can tell them you don’t like that and walk away.” Fourth, don’t badmouth the other kid. That doesn’t help anything, and it just teaches your kid that people who don’t like them are terrible, instead of that everyone has different feelings, and you just get to choose who you spend time with.
Last week, we were back at the playground. Milo walked up to a group of kids building a mud pit, and one of them said they didn’t want another kid joining. Milo just shrugged, turned around, and walked back to me. “Can you push me on the swing?” he asked. No hurt lip, no asking if he was bad. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting a little, I think, but he already knew it wasn’t his fault.
I know this is just the beginning. There will be bigger hurts, meaner words, birthday parties he doesn’t get invited to, fights with friends when he’s bigger. I can’t prepare him for all of that, and I can’t make every hurt go away. But starting small, when he’s little, talking about it in words he gets, that seems to work. It’s not about teaching him to be tough, or that people are bad. It’s just about letting him know that not liking someone doesn’t make anyone bad, and unkindness doesn’t have to be his problem to fix. Right now, that’s enough.
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