Letting Tears Be

Why Do Children Cry So Much?

I wonder why it is that young children cry so much. What I mean is, in relation to all the other animals in the world. I know they cry because they are tired, or hungry, hurt, frustrated, or wanting attention, but when I walkinto a daycare room and am accosted by a chorus of wailing, I am always taken aback.

I take my children to the zoo often, and I have yet to notice a crying young monkey or baby elephant, never mind young antelope or meerkat. We may be always catching them on a good hour, after a satisfying nurse, but I doubt it. Human children just have a strong propensity to cry.
    
One of the first things well-meaning people do with new parents is give advice as to how to help a crying child. (These people are usually the ones with grown-up children whose babyhood is a distant and rose colored memory.) First, with a baby, check the diaper. Okay, now go down the list: hungry? Tired? Maybe a hair stuck between the little toes?

This quite rational approach relies on the child being as rational as the adult figuring him or her out. To a certain degree, bodily functions are pretty rational and predictable in children. The problem is when those babies grow out of infancy and start to have independent emotional lives which don't necessary match our program.  A parent very soon recognizes this is not just a little boy or girl, but a little person with likes, dislikes, memories, expectations, thoughts, feelings, and inexplicable behavior. 

It's the very crying of the little one which lets us know, like the ringing of a mindful bell, that he or she has full personhood and is ready to express it. 
    
Now I'm not talking about the volcanic eruptions called tantrums, which are over-the-top emotions needing special containment like a strong hug or, alternatively, a solo time-out. Rather, there are times when a child cries because that's just what he or she needs to do in the situation.

Crying Expresses Hurt

There's always a strong tug in my heart urging me to rush to my son or daughter whenever I hear them crying. I want them to stop - not because it grates on my nerves or hurts my ears (which it often does), but because I feel their pain as my own, and want them not to hurt.

Crying expresses hurt, and weparents don't want our children to hurt at all. So, at first glance, crying is a problem I want to get rid of as quickly as possible. There is, of course, another perspective which we understand, and that is of having a good cry. In this way, crying is the healing of the very hurt we may feel. 
     
Often children need to cry to heal their hurts. It's like kissing the boo-boo, which doesn't change the physical reality of the hurt so much, but it shows a care that contains it. Crying, in a sense, is a child's kissing their hurt.

There is nothing more tragic than a child who has been so neglected as to not register emotional pain through crying. Crying is an expression of emotional health, and before we rush to calm our children down, we should understand the crying.

I don't suggest leaving a crying child alone to take care of themselves, but at those times when our efforts are not successful, our child may simply be expressing a most natural need they need us to acknowledge. 

From Experience
    
My son had a crying bout last night. I tried to figure out what was going on, and he wouldn't stop crying no matter what. It must have gone on for at least half an hour, and when I asked him to calm down and stop crying, he replied out of his tears that he couldn't. Of course, telling someone all worked up to just calm down has the opposite effect.

I decided on another approach, that of being with the crying. I was going to sit through the crying and acknowledge it with my attentive presence. I didn't sit beside him with my book open, hoping to wait out the storm, but I chose to accompany him through his crying.

My presence said to him that it was okay - not that everything his okay so there's no reason to cry - but that it's completely alright to cry and cry.
    
At some point the crying subsided, and the happy child returned. I don't know why he cried for so long, and neither does he. It may have been triggered by something small, like my refusal to give him ice cream for desert, but it continued for no reason at all.

Sometimes no reason at all is the best reason of all. The way I ended up solving the problem of his crying was by not solving the problem; in fact, when I stopped seeing it as a problem, the problem disappeared.

What emerged in its place was a full-fledged human being expressing himself in the best way he could. After the crying lifted, he was relaxed, relieved even, and I would go so far as to say healed. He overcame his own struggle without my adding to it by opposition, or my short-changing his process by trying to "solve" it with a quick-fix distraction (I can hear myself: "Okay! Okay! Have some ice cream! But just stop crying already.) 
    
If there is a lesson that our children stand to teach us, it is how to have a really good cry. Go ahead.