When a child cries

It's not so bad

Crying is a natural and instinctive expression of a painful emotion. It is not aggressive or threatening in any way, nor is it even demanding (though it is often interpreted by adults that way). When a child cries, they are not necessarily saying that a wrong has been done to them, nor that they are right, or even reasonable. It is a simple, immediate, natural and instinctive expression of an emotion which assails them. Moreover, it is a healthy and beneficial one. It does little if any wrong and does quite a lot of good. It’s the most basic way we have of dealing with painful emotions and its typical effects are a sense of release and relief. The characteristic feeling that usually accompanies crying is that of the sadness moving from within us towards the outside and away. If you let it take its natural course without interference it will do just that and then fade away. This is the meaning of having ‘a good cry’.

One of the greatest injustices that is done to children is indicating to them in some way or another that crying is wrong or undesirable in some sense and that it should be suppressed. A cry is the most natural, healthy and appropriate reaction to a painful event and should not be suppressed, because alternative responses are less effective and more harmful. Egging a child to stop crying causes the sadness to stay within them rather than melt away together with the tears. The suppressed sadness stays on and ends up having a less healthy and more lasting effect. In the absence of the cleansing effect of the proper natural grief expression there is a danger of converting the relatively simple and basic emotion of sadness into more difficult, complex and harmful emotions such as anger, frustration, bitterness and guilt. Rather than letting the sadness release in its natural way, it stays and ferments inside.

Crying children can disturb or even irritate people around them. This is an instinctive response that was probably designed by evolution to make it harder to ignore a crying child. However, on reflection, it should be clear how misguided such an instinctive reaction is. When a child cries they give you the opportunity to participate in their sorrow, to be sad together with them, to participate in it as much as one can. What the child most needs at that moment is sympathy, not anger or irritation. It should be viewed as a great opportunity for us to sympathize with an authentic sincere sadness, and there is great reward in this. We enjoy doing it while reading a story, or watching a movie or a play, so why wouldn’t we do it with our own children when it’s real? It may look to us sometimes as if what the child cries about is trivial, nonsensical, or unimportant. But think: is it so for the child? If it were, they wouldn’t cry. And shouldn’t what is important for the child be important to you just because it is important to the child?

We should use such opportunities to learn from our kids how to become authentic again. Why can’t we be sad the way they can? We would really all be better off if we could cry as freely like little children. It is a natural part of life and of our range of emotions. The mental metabolism of kids is very quick, and they are quick to recover. They would typically have a good cry and then move on. They are not naturally as afraid as us to be sad. We should also not be afraid of sadness, and we should not instill such fear in our children. We should allow ourselves to learn from our children how to be child-like again in the metabolism of our pain. A crying child should be seen as an opportunity to commune, to feel, to participate, and to learn. If you seize on this opportunity, you will be amazed at what the child will give back to

A strong emotion assails and overwhelms the child. What do you expect them to do with it? All the child needs is to be allowed a little bit of time to express their sadness and deal with it, perhaps with some sympathy on our side. In our misguided wish to stop the child’s cry we try to persuade them that they do not really have a good reason to cry. This rarely has the desired effect. Typically it will increase the child’s irritation and crying. The right response is the exact opposite: tell the child that they are right to cry; that what happened is very sad, upsetting and annoying. You will be surprised at what happens next; at how short the whole episode will be, how quickly the crying stops, and how fully your child will recover from it and move on.