When a child cries and refuses everything, a tired voice in us asks: why won't you understand — I'm tired, frustrated, and struggling too. Why won't you give me just a few minutes?
But the child isn't running an evil strategy against you. He or she is caught in an emotional storm that their nervous system is not yet developed to handle — so it feels like the child is giving you a hard time, when really the child is having one.
That shift changes everything. Believing the child is giving you a hard time makes you brace and want it to stop. Seeing that the child is having one lets you set your own problems down for a few minutes, lower your voice, and simply stay — because the child doesn't need you to win the moment, only to be the calm they cannot yet make for themselves.
And the same is true of adults. A sharp partner, a difficult friend, a colleague who lashes out — they are usually not giving you a hard time either; they are having one, because everyone carries a child inside them that still loses its footing. When you remember that, you stop bracing against the person and start meeting the storm with calm.