All incidents of crying that occurred in a preschool setting were recorded along with the responses of other children and teachers. After pilot observations had been carried out for 3 hours at each of 20 preschool and day care centers, detailed observations were made at a single site, four hours per day, twice a week, from late fall to mid-spring. The 37 children under observation ranged in age from 28 to 48 months. In the main study, 290 crying episodes were recorded at the rate of 2.1 per hour. Observations were coded in terms of causes of crying, peer responses to crying, teacher responses to crying, and context. Each child was rated on sibling status, length of time at the center, number of friends, and verbal clarity and fluency. Findings indicate that crying was an infrequent phenomenon that was responded to infrequently by peers. Responding to crying behavior over two-thirds of the time, teachers were much more likely to console a crying girl than a crying boy and tended to respond more critically to a boy crier than to a girl crier. When they responded, children responded like their teachers. Two-thirds of crying episodes were peer-related; positive, prosocial responses were more likely to occur when a child was crying alone than when interacting with a peer. (RH)