You have probably heard it a hundred times. A grandchild is told to clean up, or a sibling gets something they do not, or it is simply time to head home. And out it comes: “It’s not fair.”
It is easy to feel a little defensive in that moment. Or tempted to explain, in great detail, exactly why things are fair. But parenting experts say there is a much better path and it starts with understanding what your grandchild is actually trying to say.
It Is Not Really About Fairness
Deena Margolin and Kristin Gallant are the team behind Big Little Feelings, an online parenting resource with 3.5 million followers on Instagram. They work with parents and grandparents every day on exactly these kinds of moments.
When Margolin hears “it’s not fair” from one of her own kids, she does not take it at face value. “I always start to reframe it,” she told Parade. “My kid is telling me, ‘I don’t like how this feels, and I want you to understand why.’ So when I hear ‘unfair,’ I think, OK, this is an uncomfortable feeling. Let’s try to dig into what’s going on.”
In other words, the complaint is rarely about the specific thing in question. It is your grandchild’s way of saying that something feels big and uncomfortable and they want you to know it.
What Not to Say
The instinct many of us have is to make the case for why things are actually fair. Gallant says that approach tends to backfire.
“There’s nothing quicker to shut down what’s really underneath it than to go into the semantics of what’s fair and what’s not fair,” she explained. If a grandchild says it is not fair that they have to go to school, responding with “Everyone goes to school, what are you talking about?” closes the door on whatever is really going on.
The same goes for turning it into a back-and-forth debate about who got what and when. Margolin calls it getting “sucked into the courtroom of it” and it does not help anyone feel better.
What Actually Helps
Gallant recommends a response that opens the door instead of closing it. Something like: “That feels unfair,” or “I hear this feels really big for you. Tell me more, what’s going on?”
That small shift can change everything. Gallant shared an example of a child who said school was unfair and once a grown-up listened, it came out that a friend had not wanted to play with them the week before, and now they felt like nobody wanted to be around them. “It often had nothing to do with fairness at all,” she said. “It was just them trying to explain how big something felt.”
Margolin summed it up simply: “Let me see you and show you that I care, and I want to hear what you have to say. Please share your feelings with me.”
The Grandparent Advantage
As grandparents, we have something that younger parents are still working to build: patience earned over a lifetime. We have seen a lot of big feelings come and go. We know that most storms pass.
That wisdom makes us well-suited for exactly this kind of moment. Not to fix or debate, just to listen, validate, and stay curious about what is really going on behind those three little words.
Big Little Feelings describes their approach as giving families “simple, science-backed tools to handle big emotions, end daily power struggles, and create a calmer, more connected home.” That sounds like something worth passing on.
