Crying is a natural and essential part of a child's development. There are no "better" or "worse" reasons for a child to cry; every reason is valid and important. Each cry deserves support and attention from caregivers, especially for young children who can't calm themselves yet. Saying a child cries for no reason or is manipulative makes no sense. Here’s why:
Why Crying is Important:
- Attachment Tool: Crying helps us understand when a child needs our help.
- Communication: It’s one of the first ways a child can communicate their needs.
- Regulating Stimuli: Crying helps children manage excessive stimuli like sounds and images, allowing them to rest.
- Stress Relief: Tears release stress hormones, helping to detoxify the child's delicate nervous system.
- Emotional Health: As long as a child is crying to someone, they aren’t being harmed.
What Helps a Crying Child?
- Quick Response: Responding swiftly to their signals prevents their cry from becoming loud and distressing.
- Respect Their Emotions: Be present and respect the feelings they express.
- Physical Comfort: Hugging, rocking, stroking, massaging, or breastfeeding can be very soothing.
- Allow Crying: Give them the right to cry as much as they need.
- Emotional Availability: Be emotionally available to them.
- Naming Feelings: Help them understand and name their emotions.
- Seeking Solutions: Find ways to help them, and ask older children what they need.
What Harms a Crying Child?
- Expecting Immediate Calm: Expecting them to stop crying instantly can be harmful.
- Rejecting Their Emotions: Letting them know their crying is unacceptable.
- Isolation: Making them cry alone.
- Shaming and Scaring: Shaming, scaring, or belittling them.
- Invalidating Their Feelings: Saying "don't cry" or "calm down" dismisses their emotions.
- Negative Labels: Calling them names or implying they are bad for crying.
- Punishment for Crying: Punishing them for communicating their feelings.
- Questioning Their Tears: Asking "why are you crying?" suggests they need a serious reason to cry.
- Getting Emotional: Crying or getting angry at them makes them handle our emotions instead of their own.
- Quick Fixes: Trying to make them stop crying at any cost, like giving a pacifier or candy, instead of listening.
Why It Matters:
- Natural Reaction: Children can’t stop crying on command, and it’s hard even for adults. Unrealistic expectations can cause significant stress.
- Communication: Crying is a fundamental way children share what’s happening with them. Ignoring it can lead to trust issues.
- Emotional Balance: Emotional health is crucial for proper development. Neglecting their feelings hinders their growth into wise and mature individuals.
- Empathy: Children who are told crying is wrong may lose their natural empathy and become desensitized to others' pain. They might also accept mistreatment as normal.
- Language Development: Children who aren’t allowed to cry may have speech development issues later.
When Being with a Crying Child is Hard:
If you find yourself feeling angry, irritated, or helpless when your child cries, it might be because your own childhood cries went unheard or met with anger. Your relationship with your child can be a motivation to address these difficult parts of your past. Next time your child cries, sit calmly beside them and ask, "Do you need to cry? If so, you can hug me."
Understanding Over Training: Say NO to Sleep Training and "Cry It Out"
- Security: During sleep, children need to feel secure, which comes from the closeness and presence of a parent.
- Self-Regulation: Gentle bedtime routines help children learn to manage stress, regulate emotions, focus in school, and build good relationships.
- Learning Process: Falling asleep is a complex process, and children need support rather than being expected to master it alone immediately.
- Nervous System: The nervous system must learn a sequence of feelings that lead to sleep, which can’t be forced.
- Trust and Bonding: Helping children sleep peacefully builds trust and a secure bond that benefits them throughout life.
- Stress and Sleep: Leaving children to "cry it out" can cause significant stress, making it harder for them to sleep.
- Trauma Risk: Repeatedly ignoring a child's need for comfort can lead to developmental trauma, especially in sensitive children.
- Misleading Calm: A child who stops crying from exhaustion isn’t calm; they’re in a state of shutdown.
- Self-Regulation Issues: Sleep training can worsen self-regulation problems, leading to issues like anxiety, overeating, or concentration problems.
- Deeper Problems: Sleep training focuses on behavior, not the underlying issues that might need attention, such as sensory sensitivities.
By understanding and supporting our children’s needs, we help them grow into emotionally healthy and secure individuals. Let’s choose understanding and empathy over rigid training methods.
Sources:
- Natuli - Dzieci sa wazne
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Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development (Child Encyclopedia)
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National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) NCBI - The Neurobiology of Infant Crying (Edutopia)
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Psychology Today Psychology Today - The Benefits of Crying (Perfect Angels Learning Center)
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Healthy Children - American Academy of Pediatrics
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Zero to Three
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Parenting Science
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Harvard University - Center on the Developing Child Harvard University - The Science of Early Childhood Development
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University of Michigan Health
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The Mayo Clinic
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WebMD
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