Teaching Kids the Right and Wrong Way to Cry

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Like many people my age, I grew up listening to Rosey Grier tell me it was all right to cry. “Crying gets the sad out of you. It’s all right to cry. It might make you feel better,” the football star crooned into my mother’s living room countless times.

Well, as much as I still love Free to Be...You and Me, new research suggests that crying might not actually make you feel better. Common wisdom has long held that “having a good cry” provides a soothing sense of release. But now psychologists are arguing that this belief is, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy: because people believe crying is good for them, they tend to report positive effects from emotional breakdowns. In fact, as a review paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science argues, crying may be detrimental for some people, leading to more confusion and sadness. Turns out, there’s a "right" way and a "wrong" to cry.

Not surprisingly, the ability to cry in the right or wrong way as an adult has much to do with—you guessed it—how you were raised. (This would be a good time to remind yourself of Jon Stewart’s parenting words of wisdom: “it’s a chance to ruin somebody from scratch.”)

Some therapists believe that children whose parents react attentively and lovingly to their crying find tearful episodes more cathartic later in life. Kids whose tears are scolded or ignored are less likely to find crying soothing as adults; instead of seeking comfort or outside assistance in regulating emotions, they tend to cry as a protest to others. Since “Fix it!” is an impossible request when it comes to grief, this kind of crying only leaves people feeling more bereft.

So, Rosey Grier, looks like you were on to something after all….

Photo: current.com

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Your Kids Don’t Want to Vacation With You

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Oh man, I thought when I saw the title to this article—“My Interminable Flight with a Crying Child”—yet another uptight non-parent complaining about the indignities of being subjected to strangers’ children in public places. But it turns out that Chuck Cohen has some decent points—and he’s a parent himself.

I still maintain that I have little sympathy for Cohen’s complete intolerance for crying children on his plane (“Why should kids under the age of 2 fly free on airplanes? And if they do, shouldn’t we institute a decibel charge?”), since I happen to be of the school that believes going out in public means encountering small humans—and sometimes, they’re going to cry.

But Cohen may be on to something when he argues that toddlers cry on airplanes (and in the theatre) for a reason: they don’t want to go to London, or sit still in a dark theatre for two hours. They’d much rather play on the swing set in the backyard.

Still, Cohen’s insistence that kids—and the vacationing public—will be happier if they are left at home may be logical, but it’s not necessarily practical. Are parents supposed to give up vacationing all together until their children develop a sophisticated interest in London theatre and Yosemite falls? And what about the plane flights that are to Grandma and Grandpa's house?

Photo: Mom's Buzz

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Teaching Kids the Right and Wrong Way to Cry

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