A child is crying: how to relate to this and what to do about it?

How to deal with crying baby? Inexperienced parents are afraid of crying a child: it is an accusation for them, that they are to blame for something. Lazy men get irritated by the crying of a child: “here, it’s bothering again!” Anxious women worry about crying: “What if something serious happened?” But smart parents treat the crying of the child carefully and calmly. Crying is not harmful to a child’s health.

In Japan there is a festival of crying children. Two sumo wrestlers take each child in their hands, stand opposite each other and try to make them cry. Whose child cried first — that couple won. If the children cried at the same time, then the one who cries the loudest won. If it was not possible to make the child cry, then the judge puts on a scary mask and starts to scare the baby. This competition has been held in Japan for 400 years. The Japanese believe that children’s crying drives away evil spirits, and also contributes to the fact that the child will grow up healthy.

Loud crying most often does not mean that something happened to the child, but that the child is healthy and cheerful. Wow, crying loudly!

Remember that crying is a natural breathing exercise, and, of course, make sure that he does not do this gymnastics excessively.

What is the most important thing to know about baby crying? Few people know that baby crying is not a natural, reflex reaction, crying is a learned behavior. Small children initially have only an inborn calling or displeased cry, from which crying is gradually formed (searched for by the child), with the help of which the child can control adults.

Children’s crying is once just informing parents about their needs and desires, and once it is a specially selected vocal effect on parents, exhaling into the voice of suffering (sob-sob) or rage, exhale after exhalation! The cry of a child is not just a sob, but specially (by evolution) selected sound vibrations that hit the psyche of adults as much as possible. After birth, children specifically select the intonation of crying so that it has the maximum effect on mom, dad, grandmothers, and so on. Most newborns make this selection, apparently unconsciously, older children often do it quite consciously.

A scene from life: a boy is sitting in a room, picking up the intonations of crying by ear: “Ah-ah-ah-ah …” “Uh-uh …” Found — ran to his parents with a roar!

If we get away from excessive detail, then there are only three children’s cries: crying-release, instrumental crying and manipulative crying. To explain their difference, consider a situation where a child ran fast, stumbled, fell and hit hard. I cried. If there is no one around, and the child is crying — most likely, this is crying detente. In crying-detente, no goals are set, it is crying simply because the knee hurts, it hurts in the soul, and if you cry, it seems to feel better. This crying is not meant for anyone, the child is crying here for himself. If the child hits, he is hurt and offended, and he runs crying to his mother so that his mother strokes her knee and regrets — this is an instrumental cry.

Instrumental crying, like crying-detente — honest crying, the child really has something to cry about. But if crying-detente is crying “for no one”, the child cries to himself, then instrumental crying has an external purpose: it cries to an adult in order to attract the attention of an adult and so that the adult helps the child. The child still does not (plainly) speak, and crying reaches the parents quickly. Here the child is crying to the parents. And how should you treat the fact that the child is talking to you? “You have to be careful about it, be careful.

It is normal to attract the attention of an adult with the help of crying, but to insist that the child wants it is not. When the parents approached the crying child and the child can say what he wanted from his parents, the crying should end.

Unless, of course, the child needs something from the parents. You need to calm down and say. And then — if you want, cry to your health!

The wording is simple and familiar to all experienced parents: “I see you are crying, something must have happened to you. I want to help you. Calm down and tell me what happened? When you talk and cry at the same time, I don’t understand you. Calm down first, then tell me!” Soon the children get used to it, they cry only “on business”, and when they need to say something, they say it to their parents calmly.

So, it is important to distinguish manipulative crying from honest types of crying, which is often constructed by a child from scratch in order to put pressure on parents (for example) and achieve their own. Attentive parents distinguish manipulative crying from honest crying without difficulty. If a child usually does not cry without serious reasons, but now he has hit hard and is crying, although he has no benefit from this, apparently this is honest crying. If a child traditionally and immediately begins to yell in crying when he didn’t like something and he needs something, apparently his crying is manipulative. Such crying must be categorically stopped — just as decisively as you stop children playing on the roadway, fighting with sticks and other things that are dangerous to children’s health. Since crying is not a natural response, but a learned behavior, anything learned can be unlearned. If you set yourself such a task, you will succeed.

Children do not cry out of fear, but because their parents help them in a difficult situation.

Children cry not from pain, but to attract attention.

Children cry when their parents taught them to.

Many things that adults are afraid of, children are not afraid of. When children fall, it is usually scary for parents, and children begin to cry when they fall only when adults have suggested this interesting entertainment to them.

Story: Here’s the story. I wouldn’t believe it myself. But I was there, and this is a true story. More Soviet times. My acquaintances, undergraduate students, had a very smart girl, Katya, who was beyond her years. Very calm. When she was offended, she cried so much! She knew how to cry then. When I felt it was necessary. And she was about a year old. She still couldn’t speak. Once in winter I climb the stairs in the hostel, and suddenly I see: right on the step of the stairs, face down and silently lies a body wrapped from head to toe in winter clothes. Boots, coat, hat. Familiar color and size. Katyushka!!!! That I managed to think the most terrible and terrible, while jumping up the stairs to her, cannot be conveyed! I jump up and down… Completely calm, serene and patient expression. A minute later, my mother came over. Turns out. she took her for a walk, but going up to the stairs, she remembered that she had forgotten something, and returned to the room, telling Katya to wait. And Katya, apparently, came too close to the steps — and fell. She fell and began to wait patiently. Because in her world, falling is not a disaster. Mom will come, pick her up, and they will go for a walk on the street … Yes, everything is in order with the girl: today she has already grown up, graduated from the university, and one can only envy her mental health.

It is clear that age-specific features must be taken into account. Up to a year, a child has only honest crying, but after a year the situation is more complicated: the child masters both instrumental and manipulative crying. If the child is crying just from pain, it is perfectly normal to pick him up, in his arms he will calm down faster. If the little one wants something and cries about it, calmly ask him what he wants, let him show you at least with his hand or the direction of his gaze: at the age of one and a half it is already time to teach children this. And if he yells, just getting his own way, don’t react to this or try to distract him — it’s wrong if the child gets used to commanding you.

When and how to allow girls to cry, parents decide in different situations in different ways. As for the upbringing of boys, there is more certainty here: what is normal for a little boy is wrong for a grown man. At the same time, talking with a child that it’s not appropriate for a boy to cry, of course, is worth it later, the topic “you are not a girl” is not relevant until 3 years old.

But returning to the topic of girls — what do you think, how to relate to crying in girls? Can they cry? How much? What for? According to my information, in the old days at the Institute for Noble Maidens, it was indecent for girls to cry. It’s just — bad form, as if you were from the peasantry. Fainting was allowed, but crying was not. And then educated girls did not cry, even when it was difficult and painful …

How are we going to address these issues today?

Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov

Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.