The day’s going along swimmingly. Sun graces the trees, your household is actually running on time, and you’re getting to everything you wanted to without a hitch. Then it happens. One or more young people in your care begins to cry.
How do you feel? Some of us experience tension and anxiety. Some of us feel sad. Some get angry. One thing we adults tend to have in common about our reactions to children’s crying is that almost all of us want to find some way to make it stop.
As a parent myself, I have the greatest compassion for anyone in a crying child’s company who wants the crying, or other form of emotional release (“fussing,” etc.) to stop. We adults who take on the care of young people can easily get to running on empty, with unmet needs for peace, rest, and harmony. Especially at the end of a long day, a screaming or crying child can have us feeling at our wit’s end. So how to respond with care and compassion, and in a way that will deepen our relationship with the young person, rather than exacerbate either or both our compromised states?
The traditional take on young tears usually goes something like this: first, seek out what’s amiss in the physical realm—a dirty diaper, “colic,” or other physical discomfort. Crying, the story goes, means something’s wrong, and it’s our job as parents to correct it. Once physical needs have been met, try to stop the crying by any available means: distraction, soothing, shaming, threatening or punishing. After all, their “reason for crying” has already been removed or dismissed as invalid. Another school of thought says, once any physical needs have been met, leave the child alone, otherwise we risk “spoiling” them, or teaching them that they can manipulate us through tears. I myself have never quite figured out what it means to “spoil” a child by demonstrating love and responsiveness.
As parents interested in choosing consciously which cultural assumptions to reproduce and which to transform, my partner Alex and I have been looking carefully at such explanations of crying and the many responses to it. Our experience and study has shown us that crying usually helps to heal old or recent wounds, and that a certain amount of crying (or other form of emotional discharge) needs to happen to release the feelings around each hurtful event we have experienced.
The idea that we need to cry, and in fact would benefit from supportive attention while we cry as long as we need to, goes against what most of us, myself included, grew up with. We were told not to cry, ridiculed (as I was) or even beaten for crying. Even the most well-intentioned parents often erroneously equate the healing of the hurt (tears) with the hurt itself (which happened before) and so conclude that if they can stop the tears, they’ll stop the hurt. Because of this ingrained mythology, we’ve got a generation of adults trained to stuff their tears. I wonder if this is in direct proportion to the number of folks who depend on mood-altering drugs to get through their life?
If we are among the majority who learned to stifle our own “negative” emotions, our reactions to young tears may be due in part to evoking our own unmet needs to be listened to. Consciously or not, sometimes the little child inside us may recall all the times our emotional process was interfered with, and pipe up, Hey, I never got to do that, why should he!? I remember as a child being enraged that my little sister got to yell and scream, and telling my parents I didn’t think she should be allowed to behave that way—I never was. Whereas I was ridiculed and sent to my room for crying, she was only ignored. In my adult life, I’ve long since found many resources for getting supportive attention I need when I want to cry. I’ve also learned how to give this attention to others without getting so triggered. I’ve noticed that the more we adults can meet our own needs for emotional release, the better we’ll be able to be there for our kids. And, the healthier we’ll be, all the way around.
So, when our son Cainan wants to cry, if it’s possible, we find a comfortable place to sit down and listen to him. We don't try to stop him, distract him or soothe his tears away, (assuming all physical needs have been met), but simply hold him or stay near while he struggles and rages at all the frustrations that have been building up. He’s gotten to the point where I can ask him if he needs “a session,” and he can even request it himself. A session is when we set aside time to pay supportive attention to him while he cries, rages, struggles or otherwise lets us know how hard things have been.
When Cainan gets to really cry and rage and express himself until he is done—meaning when he’s not been interfered with, but rather allowed to move through his feelings at his own pace and on his own time—he’s such an amazing being to be around afterwards! He’s bright and cheery and full of loving expression. This is not behavior tailored to meet adult needs of fear of reproach, but genuine joy in life, because he’s been able to release the feelings he needed to, and thereby liberate the authentic zest all humans (who have not been interfered with) share.
Lately, however, we’ve been noticing that this approach, while an extremely valuable tool, may still overlook some things that may be very important to Cainan and other little ones. First of all, I’m not convinced that every hurtful event that happens to us carries a set amount of emotional release necessary to heal it. Experience with different approaches to healing has shown me that sometimes it is not the event itself, but our interpretation of it, that produces an emotional charge. If we get information to enlarge our perspectives, often the charge simply disappears.
To illustrate, imagine that someone very close to you promised they’d take you out to dinner on a particular day. The day before when you talk to her she tells you how much she’s looking forward to this dinner, she’s been wanting to introduce you to this particular restaurant for a long time. You wait and wait at the restaurant, and your friend never shows up. You call her, and she’s not there. You feel very upset—you’ve arranged your whole week around this, and now, nothing.
The next day, she calls you and chats merrily away as if nothing has happened, and tells you about how she went shopping that night and found the perfect plasma TV set. You’re just about to confront her, when you look at your calendar and realize that your date, in fact, was set for the following week. You had your calendar open to the wrong page! What happens to your upset at your friend? Chances are, it dissolves. Or at least most of the anger gets replaced by disappointment. What’s changed? Nothing! Your friend still didn’t show up. What changed was your story about the event, from, “She stood me up,” to, “I made an error.”
Other life events, admittedly, aren’t so clear-cut. However, we can still inventory the stories we attach to things. And, we can help our little ones do the same thing. When Cainan and Alex and I visited my cousin Eva and her son Asa, Asa, shut himself up in the dog cage with the dog. Cainan wanted to join him, and Asa got very upset. Eva later told me she had a discussion with Asa in which he revealed that he thought Cainan was going to take the dog away and sell it! She helped him understand that this was not going to happen.
I realize I had mistakenly assumed that only adults weave interpretations and get ourselves all tangled up in our thoughts and upset ourselves with our own stories. It turns out stories seem endemic to living things, including our tiny human progeny. Even dogs apparently have stories—Alex told me a dog training manual instructed humans to tune into and work with their dogs’ stories to develop better relationships with them.
So the second perspective on crying is, find out what the young person’s story is, and help them work with it. Cainan often cries when one or both of us leaves him with someone else. The other day, Alex asked Cainan if he was afraid Dada was not coming back anytime soon. Cainan said, “Yyyyeeeeeahhhhhh….” Alex told Cainan that the two of them would get to spend all of the next day together, which was true. Cainan got all excited. “All of tomorrow?” he said, with a big smile. In this way Alex helped Cainan to enlarge his perspective on the situation, contextualize the upset and get to live in a more hopeful reality.
The third perspective I’ve been working with, Nonviolent Communication, or NVC, posits that upset feelings come from unmet present-time needs, including those other than the basic physical ones I mentioned at the outset. For example, safety, trust, peace, joy, respect, and play. If we can tune into and communicate our understanding of what a person needs, even if we don’t get it exactly right at first, she’ll feel better, just because someone is attempting to tune in and understand. If we can help meet that need, positive feelings will come in to replace the negative feelings.
The NVC approach doesn’t exclude but rather embraces the others. For example,
sometimes a young person’s need may be simply to release emotion. Or, supplying the larger perspective to round out a young person’s story may fill a need for understanding.
In the case of Asa and the dog he suspected Cainan might sell, Asa may have been feeling anxious. He is not accustomed to being around other young people, so underneath his story about Cainan selling his dog might be a need for safety of his belongings and loved creatures.
So, the first question I’d like to see adults ask of crying children is, What Do They Need? Here are the possibilities I see for what a young person who is crying may need:
1) She has an unmet present-time need, other than to cry:
In this case, she has a need for something immediate, like food or water, or perhaps less tangible, like respect, comfort and autonomy. Young people’s human needs are exactly the same as adults.
What you can do: Guess at what she might be needing. “Are you feeling frustrated because your need for play has not been met?” Let her know her needs matter to you. See how you might help her fill that need.
Is she still crying? Maybe this is why:
2) She’s got an upsetting story, or interpretation, of what’s happening.
If you listen to a young person tell you about what’s happening, they may say something like, “Mama’s going away on a train and getting kidnapped!” or, “Those bad guys are gonna come set our house on fire!” Human imagination can create stories out of fears that cause even more upset.
What you can do: Elicit the story, reflect it back to him (without mocking or dismissing it), empathize with the feelings involved, ask about its source, and then provide whatever reassurance, empathy or information that may help him make sense of reality and feel safe again. Affirm his choice to share his feelings with you.
Reflect back: “So you think Mama’s going to go away on a train and get kidnapped?
Empathize: That sounds really scary! Are you feeling scared that Mama’s going to go away on a train and get kidnapped?
Ask about its source: Did you hear that story in the book Susan read you?
Provide empathy/information/empathy/information and so on: I know that’s a really scary idea! You know what? That’s just pretend. Mama is actually going to work in her office, nowhere near a train. And we haven’t seen any kidnappers in these parts since way before you were born.
Affirmation/Reinforcement: I get that you were really scared. I ‘m so glad you can tell me about this!
Is she still crying? Maybe this is why:
3) She’s frustrated at events earlier that day or week. Or, she’s releasing an old trauma.
Reactions to events during or even prior to birth can linger for a lifetime, as can early medical experiences. Little upsets can get stored up and, if not released in the moment, come out on the tails of something that appears unrelated.
What you can do: Listen to her. Let her know you’re listening to her, and that you notice she’s having “big feelings.” She may not know why, so, once you’ve established her needs are met and she has no scary story, don’t press her with questions like :”Why are you crying?”. Just let her have her “good cry” until it’s over.
Bottom line: Unless there’s an immediate unmet need, or upsetting story looming (and often even then, since those things can be catalysts), children need to cry, with supportive attention.
The best thing you can give a crying, or otherwise emoting child (or adult, for that matter) is supportive attention. The reason children “try to get attention” is that they need attention. Loving attention to them during moments of pain, as well as moments of pleasure reminds them they are lovable even when they are hurting. That’s when they especially need the attention to move through the hurt.
How to Be There for A Crying Child
Many of us may feel challenged to offer supportive attention without trying to make the crying stop. We may feel anxious. We may wonder what others are thinking, or whether we’re actually hurting our children by allowing them to cry. We may feel angry, or believe our children are trying to control us.
If you find yourself thinking things like, “She’s just trying to get attention,” or “He’s trying to manipulate me,” it may be a sign that your own unmet needs have you short on attention in that moment. In NVC, judgments always indicate unmet needs. If you can notice your own judgments rather than automatically believing them, you may be able to show up for your child, while at the same time, making the little child inside yourself a promise (and then keeping it!) that you will give him or her some attention and empathy later when there are fewer external demands (see list of suggestions below).
The more you can tune into and meet your own needs, the better you’ll be able to be 100% present for your child’s needs. In fact, the number one reason I have seen for parents and caregivers being unable to show up for their children in the way they would like is not any failure on their part as a human being, but a backlog of their own unmet needs.
The more we as parents and caregivers can keep the larger situation for parents in mind (we live in a world unsupportive of parents that is not of our making), continue to build our village, and prioritize meeting our own needs, the more we’ll be able to show up fully for the young ones around us.
To keep in mind:
If you’ve ruled out immediate needs and upsetting stories, your child is crying to heal a hurt in the recent or distant past. The hurt has already happened. By giving supportive attention while your child cries, you’re participating in the healing.
To do:
Have a list of ways to meet your own needs.
When you have a peaceful moment, make a list of at least three things you can do easily to replenish yourself. Here are some suggestions: Take a hot bath, call a trusted friend and get some empathy, take a walk in a park, spend some time with a loving pet, get a workout, get a massage, take some meditation time, write in your journal, have sex, get cuddles. During a moment when you feel taxed but still choose to give your crying child supportive attention, tune into what you need, make a promise to yourself to give yourself something to meet that need, and then keep that promise. That way if you’re running on close to empty, at least you know you have something to look forward to.
Develop a meditative practice for yourself while you are being present with your crying child. I usually start by paying attention to my breath. On my exhalation I imagine myself dropping deep down in a stormy ocean, way beneath all the rolling waves, to a peaceful place on the ocean floor where I can breathe and relax. From this place, I become an enfolding, accepting presence for my child. For you, it may be an image of a peaceful place, an enfolding parental figure or anything else that gives you peace and grounding.
“Acting Out” is Often a Sign That A Child Needs to Cry
I often have trouble when children (and adults for that matter) get “grumpy.” That is, they aren’t present and joyful, and at the same time, they are not dropping deeply into their feelings and releasing them through tears, rage, etc. I find that engaging the “act” doesn’t get where I want to go. For example if I react to or stop Cainan’s behavior for whatever reason, and then don’t give him any attention, I’ve begun a power struggle. He’ll try something else. And then something else. He’s trying to meet his need for autonomy, or play, or something else.
So, if possible, I start out with asking him what’s going on inside him. “It looks like you’re really enjoying cutting up that fabric, is that right?” If that’s not possible, I try to do the tuning in after setting the limit. “You didn’t like it when I took that scissors away, because you wanted to keep cutting up the curtain.” Sometimes, if he’s “grumpy” or “fussy,” i.e., complaining about one thing after another, I’ll ask him, What’s really going on, Cainan? Often he’ll exhale, come over to me and curl up in my arms. It wasn’t about the “act” after all. I feel relief and so does he.
This can get tricky—it’s hard to know when to take what a child (or anyone for that matter) says at face value when we suspect it may be a cover for a deeper need. We can use the tools of NVC to guess at the feelings and needs beneath, and if we’re on the right track, tears may well follow, or a redirection of the energy being put into the “act.”
Don’t Worry, Be Happy!
In U.S. culture, we live under an unspoken injunction to be happy. The more powerful our social position, the greater the pressure to appear as though all is well, and the greater the risk of stigma if one has inner difficulty as evidenced by depression, anxiety or other manifestations of “mental illness.” As children, we learned to judge and interpret our feelings from the adults around us: parents, teachers, caregivers and even strangers who give us messages like, “Be a good girl/boy!” “That’s not nice!” or “Smile—a happy face is so much more pleasant!” I see messages like this pasted all over child care environments, and I just want to scream!
After a lifetime of being told to be nice and smile regardless of what we are feeling inside, hearing a screaming, crying child can be very difficult. After all, we never got to fully express the depths of our pain before an adult tried to distract us, shake something in our face, or shame us. No wonder we can’t stand to hear unfettered screaming and crying. It can remind us how much we ourselves needed to scream and cry.
The good news is we can choose to replace the messages that to feel feelings is somehow bad, wrong or a sign of weakness or illness, with ideas that feeling feelings helps heal. In this way we expand our repertoire of tools to use with our young ones in every moment, and also widen our options for how to give attention to ourselves, our partners, our family, friends and coworkers.
The Rewards of Stripping off the Judgments, or “Meta-Pain”
Remember: The younger they are, the more likely are children to feel pain and unhappiness directly, i.e., without intervening “meta-pain,” i.e., the judgments, interpretations and stories that plague adults. For example, while a child may feel angry, sad or withdrawn, adults are more likely to feel feelings about those feelings. We get ashamed that we’re angry, and tell ourselves, “I shouldn’t be so upset with my husband.” Or we may feel anxious that we’re sad; “Oh my god, am I getting depressed like my mother? Will I, too, be consigned to a lifetime of tranquilizers and unfulfilled dreams?” We might feel frustrated at feeling withdrawn: “Dammit, I really ought to be more communicative.”
As an analogy, consider defecating. Most of us don’t obsess over the fact that, from time to time, we need to sit down and do the messy work of eliminating our body’s solid waste. We don’t dwell on the fact that it’s messy or smells bad, or judge ourselves for needing to poop, we just do. It’s part of life.
That’s how I’d like to see people treat crying. It’s not bad, it’s just part of life. Something that needs to happen. Of course it’s messy and takes time out of our day. But it’s time well spent, considering the alternative. Like pooping, it’s only when crying gets interfered with that we run into problems. Emotional sewage backs up and the results aren’t pretty. Crying keeps us “regular.”
A participant in one of our classes recently told of sitting quietly with her daughter while her daughter screamed and cried about wanting her beads exactly where they were rather than putting them away. After quite a long time of deep emoting, the two-and-a-half year old announced, “I’m tired and I need to go to bed.”
Time and again, I’ve seen young people—and adults—who receive supportive attention until they are done emoting, emerge with much greater joy, clarity, lightness and ability to meet their own needs and empathize with those around them.
So why do so many of us learn to suppress crying in this culture? I think it’s because the practice of dissociating from our inner world supports the habit of bowing to external authority. If all of us felt our feelings about the pain around us, we’d put down our computers, stop working ungodly hours to put money in the pockets of the top 5% of the population and insist on living lives that better meet human needs. From this perspective, I think allowing and encouraging adults and children to feel all their feelings helps bring about a more awake, conscious world.
From a more practical perspective, if we as adults get anxious and stifle, punish or redirect a child’s attention, their need to cry may get temporarily suppressed, but will likely resurface again later in yet more behavior we find difficult. If, on the other hand, we can treat the child like a precious being engaged in a sacred act, in other words, stay present with a child (or adult) while they feel everything they need to feel, we will have helped them to through a tough moment so they can be present again.
When You Can’t or Don’t Want to Give Attention
I want parents to receive far more support and nurturance than we get. When I think about unmet parental needs, I feel afraid sometimes to talk about children’s needs, because it’s so easy as a parent to perceive information about what children need as criticism.
Because spending time with young people can evoke such strong feelings, I want to encourage anyone who does, to get some time for themselves to get listened to, whether the listener is a friend, therapist, or email pal. Whatever works.
I also want to urge parents and caregivers to be honest with themselves about their own limits. If you give a young person attention you don’t have, they may be aware of it and have reactions, and you may wind up feeling resentful and somehow making them pay. Depending on what your available resources are, here are some things you can do: First, let the young person know that you care, and you cannot give them what they need right now. Next, suggest an alternative. “I would love to listen to you tomorrow.” “In two hours, I’m going to drop you off with X, and he will be able to listen to you, would you be willing to tell him the rest of your feelings them?” “Would you like to pound the couch/squeeze the teddy bear/run around outside?” Notice that the above are phrased as requests, not demands. Requests will more likely be agreed to, because the child gets her need for autonomy respected in the process.
The more relaxed and accepting of yourself you are, the more you can show that as much as you love the young person, you also love yourself enough to take care of yourself, the more the young person will trust and accept what you say.
This doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily get quiet if she’s in the middle of an emotional moment. If a child is loudly emoting and you’re having big feelings come up yourself, and the child is in your care, I find the best thing to do is turn inward, and pay attention to my breath, and notice each moment: “Now she’s tearing the cushions from the couch, and I’m feeling anxious <breathe>. Now she’s lying on the floor and I feel a little more relieved. <breathe>” Really, we only have to live our lives a moment at a time. Tantrums are temporary, and we can get through this.
If at all possible, please don’t:
- Send your child off to be by himself – An isolated child feels less secure and happy in the world, and may feel that even you are not there for her.
- Try to stop your child from crying – Once she is able to fully release her feelings, with your supportive attention, she’ll be much easier to connect with.
- Tell them, or tell yourself, they are “being manipulative” or otherwise “bad” – They are trying to get their needs met the best way they know how.
Think how you would feel if someone did these things to you in the very moment when you most needed support. Remember, no matter how small, young people are fully human and have exactly the same needs as you.
If you find yourself wanting to do these things, try self-empathy. Ask yourself what needs of your own are unmet, and make a plan to get at least some of them met. Good luck, and please share your stories with other parents and caregivers. Having a community of folks interested in reflecting on the parenting process will make all the difference in the world in how you feel day-to-day.
