I am working on a story which has a couple of instances of an adult character being made small, pitiful and childlike to gain the reader's sympathy,and I think I have finally figured out what bothers me most about the tendency to do this sort of thing. It is not the bad characterization (which is more than annoying enough), but rather that it devalues some class of suffering. This disturbs me on a couple of levels. First, the sense that some suffering isn't worthy of emotional response, that you have to be a certain age (or gender, or race, or nationality or religion or whatever) for it to matter. Second, the corollary that therefore no need to do anything about it. The resulting lack of concern for others or willingness to try to improve one's own condition both distress me and I don't like seeing it reinforced, however subtly.