They Didn’t Teach This Stuff in the ’80s . . .

On a recent night, I spent a little over an hour holding my child while she cried. 

I don’t intend to begin every article with a story about my kid, by the way. I know some of you are not here for that. There are a million very good reasons, and I respect every one of them.

And also . . . maybe some of you have children. Or were children. Or had mothers. Mothers who either did or did not hold you while you cried. Maybe some of you, like me, want to learn to hold yourselves till the feelings pass, which could mean forever. Because there really is so much to cry about, and avoiding sadness doesn’t work, it just makes your back hurt.   

OK, then. Back to crying on the floor. 

My child got frustrated over not being able to hold her ukulele the way she wanted to. She had a vision, she didn’t want help, but her body wasn’t cooperating. She threw the instrument to the floor, laid down next to it, and started whimpering.

I crouched down next to her. 

“Are you hurting?” I asked. 
“No!” she cried. 
“Do you want some macaroni and cheese?” 
“No.” 
“Apple juice?” 
“No.” 
“A hug?”
“Yes.”

I hugged her, and told her it’s OK to be sad.  And that’s when she really let it rip. 

Everything I read about kids and emotional intelligence says that if we have the time and the energy to let children feel their feelings, without trying to fix them, without freaking out, if we can let emotions run their course and also let the kiddos know that their feelings are OK and that they are not alone, that they learn to coregulate with us, and, eventually, to regulate their own emotions and, after that, to be a steady presence that others can to coregulate with. In other words, letting toddlers feel their feelings, without judgment, helps them grow up to be healthy kids and adults.

Of course, it’s really hard to hold a screaming person. I mean, physically—they writhe, they arch, they go stiff—but also emotionally.  

When we see someone in emotional pain, our own mirror neurons start firing, and we feel all that pain, too. Fearing it will never end, we just want it to stop. Cue the bribes, the distractions, and the rational appeals.

In Buddhism, compassion (karuna) is the boundless, divine heart quality that blossoms in response to our own or someone else’s suffering. In this tradition, compassion is said to have “neighbors”—other mind-states that can arise in response to suffering if we aren’t aware enough (or resourced enough) to meet suffering with an open heart. The far neighbor of compassion is cruelty, according to this teaching. I never got how cruelty could be a response to suffering. Like, what kind of monster would respond to suffering with more harm? 

I guess it’s easy to forget about the daily violence of grown-up life, in which we regularly shut down perfectly human emotions—like sorrow, like grief—or prevent them from surfacing in the first place.

As I held my toddler, I wondered how many of her tears were actually mine. The ones I thought I didn’t have time to feel. The least I could do, I thought, was to let her wail it out, asking occasionally if she’d like some water, a hug, or space—assuring her that it was 100 percent OK to express these feelings, and that I wasn’t going anywhere.   

I knew there was no way on God’s green Earth I would have been able to tolerate her tears if I hadn’t also been in the ritual of sitting in silence after she goes to sleep. Of holding my own weary, intermittently weepy heart and letting the cracks show. If only to myself. 

As I held my toddler, I wondered how many of her tears were actually mine. The ones I thought I didn’t have time to feel.

The parenting podcasts say these crying fits can last for ten to twenty minutes. Ours lasted seventy-five, but it wound down eventually. My kiddo asked for a wet wipe for her face, then for some mac and cheese, then for me to read from her current favorite book, Unicorn Day, while she ate. She looked at me from time to time, red-rimmed eyes big as full moons, eyebrows raised as if in a question. “I love you no matter what,” I answered out loud, kissing her on the forehead. 

I called my dad later that night after I put my sweet, emotionally regulated child to bed. We were both pretty sure that nobody let me cry on the floor for an hour while talking to me in soothing tones about how it was OK to be sad. They didn’t teach this stuff in the eighties. 

He said when I cried he would ask me, “What’s so funny?” and I would stop crying to yell that I wasn’t laughing, I was crying. At which point I was so indignant I forgot to be sad, which was something we could laugh at. And on to the next thing. 

Sometimes we have to distract kids out of their sadness—because we need to get them to school, because we have to work, because this is the only wealthy nation that doesn’t provide decent parental leave or adequate childcare, because family values?

I am grateful, though, for the rare occasions when I actually do have the time and the space to accompany her as she rides the giant waves of her tiny heart. And for everything it’s teaching me about cultivating my own inner loving parent, which I still so desperately need.

♦

The article was adapted from a piece that originally ran on Kate Johnson’s blog.