Children Are Tender-Hearted

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall"

Children, being innocent and unselfish, are easily moved by seeing someone else, or something, suffer. And because of their lack of experience, by seeing even an inanimate object appear to suffer. Even when they have thoughtlessly inflicted the injury themselves — which is how this can overlap with its opposite Kids Are Cruel. This particular child may often be kind, but even if they're a Bratty Half-Pint, they'll show a softer side. This kind of child may be an All-Loving Hero.

Tender Tears are common, as well as rather childish attempts to comfort.

Compare Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Sonic X: Cream is a Cheerful Child who is often concerned with others' safety. In "A Wild Win" in particular, Emerl has become violent from a Chaos Emerald's influence. Cream is worried that he's going to seriously hurt someone and is distraught that her friend has had such a drastic change in personality. When she has to fight him, she is clearly reluctant to do so. Soon, Cream is forced to kick Emerl into the water, which effectively kills him, and she and Cheese both sob over him.
• Tenchi Muyo!: Sasami, despite being hundreds of years old, still has the physique and mindset of a young girl about eight years of age. When Tenchi is supposedly killed in a space battle with Kagato, Sasami begins crying. But unlike most examples on this page, Sasami is linked to a Physical Goddess, Tsunami, and thus has the power to do something about it.

Comic Strips

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is often a Bratty Half-Pint who occasionally veers into Enfante Terrible actions; he's also surprisingly intelligent on certain topics, though he can't be bothered to do his schoolwork. But every once in a while, we get a reminder that he's still a six-year-old boy.
  • In one story arc, Calvin and Hobbes come across an injured baby raccoon and want to save him. Calvin rushes to get his mother to help and spends the whole night worrying about the raccoon. The next morning, Calvin's father sadly tells him that the raccoon didn't make it, and Calvin bursts into tears:
    Calvin: I'm crying because I know out there he's gone, but he's not gone inside me.
  • When Calvin's mother gets sick, he tries to do nice things for her like making her breakfast ("The eggs kind of burned and stuck to the pan, but you can probably chip them out with this chisel") and volunteering to read her a story. When she politely tells him that she just wants to rest, he feels like he's messing everything up and, near tears, sadly remarks "It's hard to be mom for a mom," prompting her to cuddle him and says that he's doing a great job.
  • Though the Christmas-themed strips inevitably centered on Calvin's Long List of demands from Santa, the Christmas Day strips themselves always showed him going out of his way to make sure Hobbes gets presents, too. Keep in mind that to everyone else, Hobbes is just a stuffed animal, but that never stops Calvin from including him in the Christmas celebrations and becoming furious when Santa "forgets" him.
• The cast of Peanuts often fell into this trope, especially Linus and Sally, who were canonically the youngest kids in the strip for decades. Linus in particular is famous for his extreme attachment to his blue blanket and his habit of patting birds on the head just to make them feel better. Even Lucy, an extreme grump, occasionally had moments of genuine compassion and kindness. In one strip, she remarks that "This is a tough world to get along in. I feel sorry for all the new little babies." When Linus points out that a child is likely being born at that very instant...
  Lucy: GOOD LUCK, KID, WHEREVER YOU ARE!

Eastern Animation

In Scissor Seven, when Dai Bo and Xiao Fei arrive on Chicken Island for the first time, they spot a young man washed up on the beach, bleeding to death from an open wound. Dai Bo, hating humans, refuses to help and walks away. Xiao Fei stays behind and starts jumping on the boy's chest in a cardiac massage like maneuver. Dai Bo reluctantly agrees to help, and they bring the young man to a doctor. This was how the two of them met Seven.

Films — Animation

• In Moana, when the titular character is a toddler, she protects a baby turtle and helps it reach the ocean. It's ultimately revealed that this action prompted the Ocean itself to choose Moana to restore the Heart of Te Fiti, as only someone with genuine compassion and kindness could look past Te Ka's monstrous form, see her suffering, and calm her down enough to restore the Heart.
• Upin & Ipin The Lone Gibbon Keris: Mat Jenin relays the tale of Mother Deruma to Upin and Ipin, of when she turned her disobedient son, Tanggang, into stone. The elderly mother wishes she could take back the curse, but she can only watch Tanggang's frozen body aboard his stone ship from a distance. When the twins try to comfort her and she starts spilling her sentiments and tears, the young boys can't help but tear up themselves.
• In Wakko's Wish, the young Skippy Squirrel is among the people who cry over Dot when she seemingly dies from getting hit by a cannonball.

Films — Live-Action

• The Neverending Story: Bastian sheds tears over the death of Atreyu's horse, Artax.

Literature

• In the Animorphs series, Cassie's position as The Heart of the team is often reflected in her love of all living creatures and hatred of seeing them in pain. Since her parents are veterinarians, Cassie already has medical training; in an Establishing Character Moment, her immediate response to discover the injured Elfangor in a construction site is to start trying to apply first aid, despite him being a blue-furred, four-eyed, blade-tailed alien. In another book, she nearly blows the team's cover while they're in the Amazon rainforest when angry Controllers start shooting every monkey they can find in an attempt to smoke out the group. Since one of the major themes of the series is the cost of war, Cassie's compassion for animals is often used as a reminder that the Animorphs, despite fighting terrifying aliens, are just scared kids who stumbled into an intergalactic conflict and became Earth's only line of defense by accident.
• Charlotte's Web: When Mr. Arable goes to kill Wilbur for being the runt of the litter, Fern stops him and tearfully begs him not to do so. She argues that just because he's a pig, he shouldn't be treated like a lesser being. Mr. Arable is touched and decides to spare Wilbur on the condition that Fern raise him as a lesson in responsibility.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Implied in "Dog Days"; an illustration shows a younger version of Tyler Post (who Li'l Cutie is based on) asking his father Bob if a green bean's parents will be sad if he eats it.
• Good Omens: Adam, despite being a bossy kid with a mischievous streak a mile wide, is noted to be "a soft touch for tears," and first meets Anathema when he hears her crying and goes to see what's the matter. He tries to cheer her up and offers to help with whatever's making her sad, which is the first major signal that he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Madeline: In the first book, the young girls are all sobbing as Madeline's taken to the hospital to receive an appendectomy.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin: Evangeline forms an Intergenerational Friendship with Tom and is easily moved by signs of suffering, which also help contribute to her sickly nature. She is always trying to help the slaves. When she eventually dies, everyone is moved to be a better person as a result.
• In the Warrior Cats book Thunder Rising, when Gray Wing takes his kits hunting for the first time, they're upset because they think the rabbit's mother and father will miss it if they kill it. Gray Wing has to explain that they can't take their hearts hunting if they want to survive in the wild.
• Where the Red Fern Grows: Ten-year-old Billy and his younger sisters are concerned about Old Dan when he is grievously injured by a mountain lion, and they are distraught when he eventually dies of his injuries. Later, Billy is worried about Little Ann when she's too depressed over Old Dan's death to even eat. He becomes even more devastated when she dies of sadness.

Live-Action TV

• Cold Case: In the episode "Beautiful Little Fool", Muriel, who was a small child at the time, refused to give up the golden clock from her father to sell after the 1929 stock market crash left her family broke. But then struggling Violet came and begged Muriel's older brother Nick to take in her child, who she said he fathered. Nick cruelly refused, even though Muriel knew they were still well-off enough to care for the baby. When she saw how sad and desperate Violet was, Muriel gave Violet her beloved clock to sell.
• The Rifleman: This was a trait of Mark McCain, who was often quick to bond with troubled characters and often tried to help them, even if the audience knew the character in question couldn't be trusted. One good example was when a trick shooter came to town to kill the Northfork's marshal as revenge for when a former, more corrupt town marshal had murdered the shooter's father and the town had done nothing. Mark had spent time with the gunman, and while he didn't condone the man's desires, he understood the gunman's resentment based on how he would have felt in the same situation.

Poetry

• Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring and Fall" is about a little girl feeling sorry for a tree that lost its leaves.

Web Comics

• In Erstwhile, the little boy's ghost appears content until he sees his mother crying — then the Tender Tears go on.
• In Sinfest, an infant Lil' E cried over the shooting of an angel.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: In "Bumbie's Mom", Skippy cries watching a parody of Bambi called "Bumbie the Dearest Deer" when the titular character's mother is shot by hunters. Slappy tries to calm him down by convincing him it was just a movie and she even takes him to see the actress who played Bumbie's mother to show him the truth.
• The Berenstain Bears: In the TV version of "Too Much Pressure", the car breaks down. Mama, who has been extremely stressed about having to take the kids to so many activities, breaks down sobbing, and Brother and Sister start crying out of sympathy.
• Bob's Burgers: Louise Belcher, generally under Kids Are Cruel, has this show up around cute animals such as polar bear cubs, puppies, and the class pet.
• In Jem episode "Scandal" when Synergy is reminding a cynical Kimber about who she truly is, she flashes back to a time a kitten of hers in childhood had gotten its paw caught in a mousetrap, which drove her to tears and reminded her of her sense of empathy.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • In "Stray Bullet", Bubbles the Animal Lover takes pity on an injured squirrel and gets teary-eyed over the fact that it may not survive (at least until she saves its life with Chemical X).
  • In "Coupe d'etat", the girls and the Professor cry when K.A.R.R. tearfully tells them that he just wants to be loved.
• Rugrats: In "Autumn Leaves", the kids mistakenly think a tree is sick when it's shedding leaves and are worried about said tree, especially Chuckie, who feels responsible for this happening because he spilled some juice on the tree.
• South Park:
  • In "Fun with Veal", the kids are upset to see that veal calves are kept chained up, but none of the adults seem to be bothered by it.
  • In "Kenny Dies", when Kenny is terminally ill, all his friends show varying degrees of concern for him, especially Stan, who can't bring himself to visit Kenny because he can't stand to see Kenny in such a state. Cartman, however, ends up zigzagging this; he weeps over the possibility that Kenny may be Killed Off for Real and initially uses aborted stem cells to save him, but he ends up using the stem cells to build a second Shakey's.
  • In "Major Boobage," Cartman gets a genuine Pet the Dog moment when the town starts outlawing cats because people are getting high off feline urine. Cartman takes it up on himself to shelter all of the kitties he can find (in a clear parody of Schindler's List) and keep them safe, even going out of his way to foster more cats than he can afford because he loves them so much.
  • In "Marjorine," the boys convince Butters to disguise himself in drag to sneak into the girls' slumber party and steal their cootie catcher, which they believe is a genuine way to see the future. Though the girls initially make fun of "Marjorine", they realize they went too far when "she" starts crying, genuinely apologize, and decide to give Marjorine a makeover to cheer her up.
• Why, Charlie Brown, Why?: Zigzagged; Linus and Charlie Brown are very concerned about Janice because she's gotten leukemia, and Linus is even shown shedding a Single Tear. Lucy, however, doesn't seem to give a damn about it when Linus tells her about it and just tells him to get her a glass of milk. She later comments that Janice probably got leukemia because she's a "creepy kid".

---