I can’t stand to hear my daughter cry. It was different when she was a baby because crying was her only form of communication. But as she transformed from a babbling infant to a talking toddler, she clung to crying as part of her repertoire and I grew less tolerant. If she protested one of my decisions for too long, I told her to go to her room and return when she was done crying. This seemed to help.

            As her crying jags grew less frequent, they affected me even more. They made me realize how deeply she felt about things. Sometimes they made me question my own judgment. I hated myself for allowing her tears to weaken my resolve. If she were being punished for a poor choice, then cried, I reminded myself, “Lesson learned.” But it was still difficult for me.

            Once she entered school, I wanted her to control her outbursts better. I didn’t want her to crumble into tears over hurt feelings and be teased by the other kids. If she started to cry at home over a minor disagreement, I’d tell her to pull herself together.

            Just last week, her tutor told me that she had done well, but at one point, had disobeyed. When my daughter was instructed to write with a pencil, she kept writing with a marker. A permanent marker. The tutor told her it would soak through the paper, so my daughter continued writing. I nodded and walked my child out to the car.

My daughter smiled up at me, “Do I get a treat?” Often when she does well at tutoring, she gets a chocolate Frosty from the Wendy’s drive-thru.

“Not today,” I said. I lectured that she needed to show respect to the tutor and do as she says. This is when I got the explanation about how she was careful not to let the marker soak through the paper. I was torn, since most of the hour-long session had gone well. I drove past Wendy’s anyway. I didn’t want to reinforce her poor listening skills. And so she began to cry.

And cry. My shoulders clenched. My head throbbed. Fifteen minutes of sobs from the backseat felt like hours. I wondered if I’d made a mistake. I then worried if I caved, I’d teach her to cry even more. I considered telling her to pull herself together. But I decided to let her continue. Even when she ratcheted up the volume.

I turned on the radio to distract myself. Soon, the music soothed her, too, and she quieted. We were almost home when she said in a calm voice, “I have to tell you something weird, Mom.”

“What?” I asked, my body still tense.

“Crying made me feel better.”

I hadn’t expected that. All of those times I’d tried to stifle her tears, maybe I’d been denying her some kind of catharsis. Then I remembered an old “Everybody Loves Raymond” episode where Debra said sometimes she just needed a good cry. She’d put on the theme from Ice Castles and give in to her emotions.

“Isn’t that weird, Mom?” my daughter asked again. She seemed pleased with her discovery that tears can actually work like salve on a wound.

I don’t understand it, but what matters is that she does.

How about you? Do you believe in the healing power of tears?

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One night when I was still naïve enough to think raising kids was a pretty straight-forward endeavor, I saw a young family at Wal-Mart. Two toddlers climbed all over the cart, whining and crying. I looked at my watch. 10 p.m. “Why aren’t those kids in bed?” I whispered to my husband.

That’s how I was for many years—a childless parenting expert. Everyone who knew about my Franklin calendar priority lists and my desperate need to keep my desk clean, must’ve secretly laughed when I announced I was having a baby. They probably thought,“She’ll never finish another to-do list again.” They were right.

Motherhood threw me off-balance. I tried to figure out my infant daughter’s schedule by writing every feeding and nap down. I needed some kind of predictability, but there wasn’t any clear pattern. As soon as I thought I’d figured her out, she’d change. My biggest fear was that we’d be out in public, she’d start bawling and everyone’s eyes would be on me. No one wants to hear a baby cry, I reasoned, and it was my job as her mother to make sure she didn’t disturb others.

Well, baby’s first Christmas arrived. Cry, cry, cry. Everybody tried rocking her—me, her dad, grandma, great-grandma , etc. I was mortified. She was ruining everyone’s holiday dinner. She wasn’t hungry, tired or lonely—just miserable. Nothing we did helped. Finally, we put her down in a quiet bedroom and gave up.

A little while later, we found out why she had been inconsolable. She’d eaten prunes for the first time and it upset her insides. One very messy diaper change later and my baby’s smile returned. (There should be a warning label on prune baby food containers!)

Seven years later, I still think about that family at Wal-Mart. Perhaps they’d run out of children’s Tylenol and one of the kids was sick. Or maybe they just hadn’t figured the whole parenting thing out quite yet. Either way, I try not to judge any more. I want to tell all of the new moms out there to stop worrying about what everybody else thinks. The ones who give you disapproving looks probably don’t know any better. The rest of us see your two year old having a meltdown and remember when we were in your shoes. How there’s no reasoning, no placating kids sometimes. Sometimes you just have to wait them out. And sometimes they just need to go poo. 

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