Alternatives for front shifting for small hands I'm looking into a hopefully short-term solution for my daughter's small hands for shifting the left/front. Current setup is Shimano Sora with triple on the front. She can shift the right side fine, it's just the front/left. We've already had the shop add the shims to bring the shifter levers closer to the bars, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that her hands are to small/weak to overcome the resistance of the derailleur spring (going from smaller chainrings -> larger...going large to small is no problem).

I'm trying to avoid changing out the whole drivetrain, and I want to retain as much of the existing gearing that she has.

Ideas I had: 


SRAM double-tap. Probably not viable as I believe it is double-only, and I think I would also need to use a SRAM front derailleur as well since the cable pull ratio is different.
Shimano TT bar-end shifter. Not sure these are available for triple?
Downtube shifter(s). Not sure about this one as the frame has an oversized downtube and no standoffs for shifter mounting.
You could run a bar end or downtube shifter in friction mode to accommodate a triple.

You can run a sram shifter with shimano FD, but they only work for double as you suspected. For the most part, FDs are dumb, it's mostly just the shifter that has all the smarts.