Sometimes we forget that children cry. That it’s normal. That it’s necessary.

We forget this when we’re tired, when we’re overwhelmed, or when their tears trigger something unresolved in us.

But crying is not a rebellion.

It’s not disrespect.

It’s not failure.

It’s a release.

Children cry to let go of tension their nervous system can’t yet process. Sometimes it’s from a scraped knee earlier in the day. Sometimes it’s leftover fear from a nightmare. Sometimes it’s nothing but the weight of growing too fast in a world that’s too loud and threatening.

Hormonal chaos, emotional overload, even quiet existential sorrow, yes, even in toddlers. All of it can flood them. And their outlet? Tears.

If you stop the tears, you don’t stop the pain. You stop the release.

And that pain doesn’t vanish. It sinks. It stores. It waits inside of them.

Then it leaks out through aggression. Defiance. Withdrawal. Night terrors. Accidents. Sudden cruelty. Uncontrollable outbursts that seem “out of nowhere.”

But they’re not out of nowhere. They’re from the emotional reservoir you wouldn’t let them drain.

And here’s something harder to admit:

A big part of the reason adults struggle with their children’s crying is because we haven’t processed our own grief, our own unmet needs, our own silent screams that never found release.

When our child cries, it pulls on the thread of our unhealed places. It stirs the fears we buried. The helplessness we never faced. The shame we swallowed instead of felt.

That’s why parenting is not just a job, it’s a mirror into our soul.

It shows us where we’re still unfinished. And it gives us the sacred pressure we need to grow up.

We don’t become real adults when we hit eighteen.

We become adults when we face ourselves for the sake of someone more vulnerable than us. For our children.

That’s why raising children, when done well, finishes what childhood didn’t.

If we punish or suppress their tears, if we tell them they’re not allowed to cry, or that certain feelings are unacceptable, we don’t teach them strength.

We teach them to go emotionally numb.

And that numbness doesn’t create resilient adults. It creates emotionally disconnected adults. Men and women who can’t access their inner life, who can’t form intimacy, who collapse or lash out under stress because they never learned to metabolize emotion.

Being emotionally dead is not a form of regulation. It’s a form of partial death.

Before we talk about how to respond to their tears, I want to give you something sacred.

A tool for you, the parent.

Because while your child is feeling their storm, you may be bracing against your own.

When the wailing rises, when the flailing begins, when the energy in the room surges like a tide…

You must become their anchor, not another bit of flotsam blown about by the winds. Let the energy of their storm surge around you, but not move you.

And here is the mantra I want you to breathe into your nervous system until it becomes second nature:

“Their cries may pass over me, but they will not pass into me. I will feel their pain, but I will not carry it. I will stay rooted. I will stay warm. I will stay clear.”

Say it again.

“I will stay rooted. I will stay warm. I will stay clear, because my children need me to be their emotional anchor.”

This is not a denial of empathy. This is emotional leadership. You are the calm in the storm, not because it’s easy, but because your child needs someone to hold the emotional ground while they fall apart.

They are not strong enough to handle your overwhelm as well.

So you must handle it. Do not fall apart. Do not react in anger.

Breathe. Ground yourself. Repeat the words. Let their pain pass through you like wind through a stand of willow trees. You do not have to stop their storm. You only have to not get lost in it.

So here’s what we do instead.

We sit. We open our arms. We say:

“That’s a big feeling. I’ll hold you while it moves through.”

For little ones, that means lifting them into our chest and letting them soak our shirt. For older kids, that means opening a lap, or a quiet corner, or a firm shoulder they can lean into.

When the storm softens, we ask:

“Do you know why you’re sad?”

If they can answer, we listen. If they can’t, we just stay near.

As they grow, we guide. We teach them to notice what the crying does.

“Does it feel better now?”

“Did the crying fix the broken toy?”

Not as mockery. As Socratic mirror.

We help them realize: crying is for clearing, not solving. Then we ask:

“Now that the sadness is smaller, what do you want to do about it?”

This is how we raise children who can feel without drowning, who can cry without crumbling, who can comfort others without resentment or panic. Who know that on the other side of grief there is happiness again.

We’re not here to silence their sorrow.

We’re here to father and mother their nervous systems.

To teach emotional digestion.

To model, through every quiet, sacred, unhurried moment, what it means to be human and whole. To feel but not be swept away in those feelings.

And if we do this well enough, long enough…

They won’t just stop crying.

They’ll keep growing, into whole, human-hearted men and women who know how to stand strong in life’s storms.