This is a topic that Dave and I have been discussing a lot recently, and I find our different approaches interesting. (Especially because we’ve both read all the same parenting books — it’s like certain pieces of advice resonated differently with each of us.)

For the sake of this discussion, I’m only talking about crying/sadness resulting from actual sad things happening. If a child fell off a chair or got barked at, or sad because Daddy is at work. Tantrums are a whole different thing.

Before I had kids, my approach to a crying child was OH GOD MAKE IT STOP. Or, “oh look! Is that Bear?! Is Bear doing a hula dance! So funny! Does Bear do pirouettes too?? Shall we find out?! Do you want a popsicle?” Absolute distraction, assurance that life was FUN all the time, please don’t cry.

In other words, don’t let the child feel sad.

Now that we have Bean, we’ve both wandered over into the side of letting Bean feel sad, but in very different ways.

Dave’s method is to take her aside, and calmly relate to her why she is feeling sad. “Bean is feeling sad because she fell off the chair.” He’ll say the same sentence in different ways until she calms down. You can see her processing his words, calming down almost immediately. The key is his quiet, calm tone.

This worked excellently during a recent flight where she began to pitch a fit over the seat belt rule. “Bean, are you crying because you want to sit on Daddy’s lap? You can’t sit on Daddy’s lap right now, you need to sit in your seat with your seat belt buckled because the plane is about to take off. After the plane is in the sky, we’ll unbuckle your seat belt and then you can sit on Daddy’s lap, but you can’t sit on Daddy’s lap right now because the seat belt light is on and that means you need to stay in your seat.”

Dave’s the first to admit that it works because she’s basically talked into complacency. Trying to concentrate on his words distracts her from whatever is going on. I have to say, it actually is highly effective. It’s like slipping her a Xanax, and I’m sure rows of people all around us were grateful for the calm Daddy in 14E.

So, my method is a little different, and likely stems from my early days teaching Bean how to sign. I’d wait and wait until something scary happened to teach her the sign for “scary.” I’d patiently wait until she hurt herself to teach her the sign for “hurt.” I needed her to be experiencing something so I could teach her the word to associate with it. (So that later on, she’d hopefully be able to tell me she was hurt or scared, instead of going into a meltdown. This actually worked really well.)

So, I’ve kept that going, except now when she’s crying, I try to coax out of her why she’s crying. Sad? Did she get hurt? Did she get scared? “Oh, Bean, you fell off the chair! Did you get hurt or was it just scary?” or “Oh, Bean, you’re crying. Are you feeling sad or did you get hurt?”

This feels a bit like I’m distracting her with words too — she pauses to consider whether she is hurt or scared. If she is sad, she pauses to consider why she is sad. She nearly always calms down. Later on, I’ll use her sadness as an occasion for learning — “It hurt when that little girl pushed you. That’s why we don’t push people; it’s not nice. If someone pushes you, that means maybe she doesn’t want to play with you. It’s best to say ‘No thank you’ and walk away” or “It’s ok to feel sad because you miss Daddy. Mommy feels sad sometimes because I miss Daddy too. Lots of people miss their daddies.” Aka Please please please grow up to be a nice person with empathy.

Our different approaches are just that — different. In both instances, we’re discussing her sadness head on. But, we’re both acknowledging her sadness in different ways, we are both providing comfort in different ways. I don’t think one is better than the other (although, for the record, Dave’s approach is much more effective when we need to get her to stop crying ASAP, like on the airplane.)

What tips and strategies do you use? How do you deal with your child’s sadness?