This is a story about a four-year-old girl who has, over the past year, developed a system of quiet grudges against specific adults for specific perceived slights, what her parents have tried and failed to understand, and what they have decided to do about it.

The four-year-old — I will call her June, because her mother chose that name during our first conversation, and because when I asked why, her mother said, “It felt like a name a person of significant integrity would have, and she is, apparently, a person of significant integrity” — is four and a half. She lives in Denver with her parents, both of whom I have interviewed and both of whom have asked to remain unnamed. Her father works in technology. Her mother is a nurse.

June is, by every account I have been given, a happy child. She sleeps well. She eats well. She has friends. She laughs, her mother has told me, “so much of the day that we sometimes have to ask her to be quieter.”

She has also been holding grudges.

The first grudge

The first grudge came to her parents’ attention in September of 2025.

The family had been at a farmer’s market. June had been eating a small pastry. A woman — an older woman, a stranger — had walked past and, in the way older women sometimes do to small children with pastries, said, “Oh, isn’t that nice, sweetheart.”

June had not responded.

June’s mother had, at the time, thought nothing of it. Small children do not always respond to strangers. This is normal. She had continued on with the shopping.

Three days later, at a coffee shop several blocks away, June had, from her stroller, pointed at a woman standing in line and said: “That is the pastry lady.”

Her mother had looked. It was, in fact, the same woman from the farmer’s market.

June’s mother said: “Yes, honey. Do you want to say hi?”

June said: “No.”

June’s mother said: “Why not?”

June, at three and a half years old, sitting in her stroller, said: “She said ‘sweetheart.'”

Her mother said: “Yes.”

June said: “I don’t like her.”

Her mother, according to her own account, laughed. She thought it was a small, funny thing. She has told me she remembers thinking: “Oh, my daughter has opinions.”

She did not, at the time, understand what she was looking at.

The barista

The grudge that made June’s parents realize this was a pattern involved a barista at a coffee shop about six blocks from their house.

The barista — a woman in her mid-twenties, with dark hair and a nose ring — had, in October of 2024, forgotten to give June the small paper cup of whipped cream that the coffee shop routinely gives to small children who come in with their parents. It had not been a big thing. June’s mother had asked. The barista had said, “Oh! Sorry, I forgot. Here you go.” The whipped cream had been handed over. June had accepted it.

June’s mother had thought that was the end of it.

June, at that time three years old, had not forgotten.

In the eleven months since, June has, according to her mother, refused to make eye contact with the barista every single time they have entered that coffee shop. She has refused to accept the whipped cream from the barista even when it is offered first, unprompted, before June’s mother has ordered. She has, on two occasions, when her mother has attempted to have her thank the barista for something, said only: “No thank you.” Once, when the barista said “Hi June, how’s it going?”, June looked at the barista, considered her for approximately two seconds, and said, calmly: “Fine.”

The barista, according to June’s mother, has noticed. The barista has asked, twice, whether she has done something to upset June. June’s mother, both times, has said: “Oh no, she’s just shy today.” The barista, both times, has looked unconvinced.

The list

June’s parents, at the point they realized this was a pattern, began — in what June’s mother has described to me as “a moment of desperation crossed with actual curiosity” — to keep a list.

The list is on the refrigerator. It has, at the time of this writing, seven names on it. Or rather, seven descriptions, because June does not always know the names of the people whose grudges she is holding.

The list, as June’s mother has provided it to me, is as follows:

1. The pastry lady. (Grudge duration: fourteen months. Grievance: said “sweetheart.”)

2. The whipped cream barista. (Grudge duration: eleven months. Grievance: forgot the whipped cream once.)

3. Mrs. Chen from next door. (Grudge duration: nine months. Grievance: unknown. June has been asked several times. She will say only that Mrs. Chen “did a thing.”)

4. The man at the veterinarian’s office. (Grudge duration: eight months. Grievance: was, in June’s words, “loud with his voice.”)

5. Aunt Marisol. (Grudge duration: six months. Grievance: told June that a drawing June had made looked “just like a real house.” June’s mother has told me she suspects the grievance is that the drawing was not, in fact, a house — it was, according to June, “a dolphin.”)

6. The lady at Target with the cart. (Grudge duration: four months. Grievance: unknown. When asked, June will say only: “She knows.”)

7. Uncle David. (Grudge duration: two months. Grievance: called June “Junie.” June has told her parents she prefers June.)

The grudges are, June’s mother has told me, “specific, unwavering, and — in a way that I am not sure I can convey — impressively consistent.” June does not become angry with the people on the list. She does not raise her voice at them. She does not refuse to be in the same room with them. She simply, quietly, does not engage with them. She does not make eye contact. She does not respond to their questions with more words than are strictly necessary. She does not, under any circumstances, accept small gifts or offerings from them.

She remembers who they are. She remembers what they did. She remembers, in the case of the pastry lady, faces she has seen exactly twice, fourteen months apart.

She is, her mother has told me, “keeping track.”

The conversation about the list

June’s parents have, over the past several months, made three separate attempts to have a conversation with June about the list.

The first attempt was made by her father. He sat down with June one evening and, gently, asked her about Aunt Marisol. He asked what Aunt Marisol had done. He asked if June wanted to talk about it. He asked if there was a way that June and Aunt Marisol could work things out.

June, according to her father, listened carefully to all of this. She thought about it. Then she said: “No, thank you.”

The second attempt was made by her mother, in a slightly different register. Her mother tried to explain to June that people sometimes did things that were not on purpose, and that it was important, when this happened, to forgive them.

June, according to her mother, considered this. She said: “I did forgive her.”

Her mother said: “Aunt Marisol?”

June said: “Yes.”

Her mother said: “But you still won’t talk to her.”

June said: “Yes.”

Her mother said: “I don’t understand.”

June said: “I forgave her. But I don’t have to talk to her.”

Her mother has told me she has thought about this exchange, in the months since, more than she has thought about most conversations she has had with adults.

The third attempt was made jointly, by both parents, at bedtime, in what her mother has described to me as “the closest thing we have to actual therapy in this house.” They asked June, gently, whether the grudges felt heavy to her. Whether they took up too much space in her small mind. Whether she wished she could let some of them go.

June, according to both parents, listened. She thought about it. She said: “No.”

Her father said: “Are you sure?”

June said: “I keep them in a small place.”

Her mother said: “In your head?”

June said: “Yes. In a small place. They don’t take up much room.”

The current state of affairs

June’s parents have, in the past two months, largely stopped trying to intervene.

They have concluded, they have told me, that June is not, in fact, being harmed by the grudges. She is not anxious. She is not fixating. She is not, so far as they can tell, unhappy. She is simply, in some way that neither of them fully understands, running a small private moral bookkeeping system that they were not invited into and that she does not appear to need help with.

Her mother has told me: “I have realized, in the past few months, that most adults I know are worse at this than she is. I have realized that most adults have not decided who they are willing to give their attention to and who they are not. Most adults just give their attention to whoever asks for it. My daughter, at four, has already decided. I am, honestly, jealous.”

Her father has told me: “I have started keeping a very quiet list of my own.”

The one grudge she released

There is one grudge June has, in the past year, released.

The grudge was against a woman at the pediatrician’s office who had, in June’s assessment, “not looked at her” during a checkup in July of 2024. June had held this grudge for approximately seven months. Then, in February of this year, at a follow-up appointment, the woman looked at June. She smiled at her. She said, “Hi, sweetie, how are you?”

June, according to her mother, looked at the woman, considered her for approximately three seconds, and said: “Fine, thank you.”

Then, apparently, she released the grudge.

Her mother did not know this at the time. She only learned about it three weeks later, when the woman came up in some other context and June, unprompted, said: “She looks at me now.”

Her mother said: “Yes.”

June said: “So I like her.”

Her mother said: “Okay.”

June said: “It’s okay.”

What this is

I have, in the months since I first heard about June, been thinking a great deal about the small private ledgers that people maintain against each other. We think of them, as adults, as a kind of failing. We say things like “I am trying to let go” and “I don’t want to hold on to that anymore.” We assume that the ledger is the problem.

June, at four and a half, has done what most of us do not do. She has kept the ledger. She has not been embarrassed by it. She has not tried to talk herself out of it. She has, quietly and without dramatic gesture, decided who she is going to give her attention to and who she is not. And she has, apparently, been happier for it.

I do not think there is a lesson in this, exactly. I do not think it would be useful for adults to try to be more like June. Most of us have too many people in our lives to be able to keep a working list. Most of us have professional obligations to be polite to people whose small perceived slights would, if we let them, accumulate.

But I have been thinking about the ledger, in the months since. I have been thinking about the pastry lady. I have been thinking about how much attention I give, on a given day, to people who have done things I did not, in the moment, entirely like. (For a related earlier piece about the small private ways children navigate the adult world on their own terms, see the Wattalife story about the 15-year-old who began invoicing her mother for emotional labor.)

June’s mother told me, in our last conversation, that June has recently begun asking, at the end of each week, whether anyone new “should be on the list.”

She has decided, she has told me, that the answer, from her, is going to be: “That is between you and them.”

She has told me she is not sure this is right.

She has told me she is going to do it anyway.

—

Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, taken a small piece of paper out of her desk drawer and written on it, in pencil, four names. She has folded the paper. She has put it back in the drawer. She is not going to do anything about the names. She is just, apparently, keeping them.