Kids don’t do polite filters. If a seven-year-old says you seem grumpy, take notes.

People manage what they tell you, softening or withholding based on what they think you can take. A child has not learned that yet, which makes the read unusually clean: no strategy, no history with you, just what they see. It is not always right, and it is uncontaminated in a way adult feedback rarely is.

When one of those blunt observations lands, resist explaining yourself to a seven-year-old. Just note it. If the same thing arrives twice from different children, or from anyone with nothing to gain by saying it, treat it as worth thinking about.