This morning, my kid fell off their scooter on the way to camp. A small scrape, no big deal. We headed home so I could clean it up and apply a bandaid.
Cue the meltdown.
Not over the fall... over the fact that the bandaid was blue instead of dinosaur-themed.
Standing in my living room listening to those tears, I felt that familiar tightness in my chest. And honestly? My first thought was:
"Come on, really? Over a bandaid color?"
First and foremost, my eldest turned 4 today.
Four years of watching this little human develop their own personality, their own preferences, their own big feelings about the world. Four years of me trying to figure out how to parent someone who expresses emotions so freely—something I never learned to do.
On their birthday morning, of all days, here I was getting frustrated with them for... feeling things. For having opinions about dinosaur bandaids versus blue ones. For being exactly the emotionally expressive kid I'm trying to raise them to be.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
The Kid Who Couldn't Cry
I grew up in Jersey City with immigrant parents working around the clock. My dad, always hustling. My mom, pulling 60hr weeks as a CPA. Childcare from my grandmother and random family friends who had zero patience for tears.
"Crying doesn't solve problems," was the household motto. Emotions were inconvenient. Survival was everything.
Add a rough neighborhood where weakness got you hurt, plus military training later that programmed vulnerability out of me completely. I learned to see tears as failure. And for years, this worked. I was the strong one. The problem-solver. The rock everyone could count on.
When Your Child's Tears Become a Mirror
Now I watch my kid cry over things my brain categorizes as "invalid"... wrong cup, broken cracker, screen time ending, and that voice in my head whispers:
"You're raising someone soft."
But here's what I'm slowly figuring out: My child isn't crying because they're weak. They're crying because they're human.
They're expressing genuine disappointment
When they melt down over the "wrong" bandaid, they're not being dramatic. They're showing me they know what they need and aren't afraid to say it.
They're practicing emotional honesty
That's not weakness. That's emotional intelligence I'm still learning to recognize and value.
The Daily Battle of Unlearning
Rewiring decades of "tough it out" programming is exhausting. Some days I still default to "You're fine" when they're clearly not, or "Stop crying" when crying is exactly what they need.
The old patterns run deep.
Those responses are so deeply ingrained that they come out before I can stop them. The programming from my own childhood kicks in automatically when faced with big emotions.
But other days, I manage to pause. To breathe. To remember their feelings are valid even when I don't understand them.
Practical Strategies That Actually Help
The 5-Second Rule: Before reacting to "silly" tears, I count to five. Gives me space to choose my response instead of defaulting to my programming.
Name My Feelings: "I'm feeling frustrated because I don't understand why this is upsetting." Being honest about my own emotions helps me respond better to theirs.
Validate First: "I see you're upset about this bandaid. What's happening?" I don't have to understand or agree to acknowledge their feelings are real.
Question My Standards: When I think "they're too sensitive," I ask myself: Says who? And are those standards actually helping my kid?
Learning a New Definition of Strength
I used to think strength meant not crying. Now I'm learning it might mean feeling deeply and continuing anyway.
My child is teaching me this every day, one "unreasonable" tear at a time. Maybe the question isn't whether kids today are too sensitive. Maybe it's whether we were forced to be too insensitive, and whether we're brave enough to let our kids develop emotional skills we never got.
Moving Forward
Last week, my kid cried for ten minutes over getting the blue plate instead of red. I felt that familiar surge of "this is ridiculous." But instead of dismissing their feelings, I sat with them. I didn't fix it, I just witnessed it.
They calmed down faster than when I used to try to logic them out of it. They felt heard. They felt safe to feel.
Questions that help me navigate these moments:
• Is my reaction helping my child learn emotional regulation, or teaching them to suppress feelings?
• What would I have needed as a child in this moment?
• Am I responding to their actual needs, or my own discomfort with emotions?
• Is this building their confidence to feel and recover, or teaching them their feelings are wrong?
I'm not perfect at this. But maybe that's okay. Maybe the goal isn't getting it right every time, it's choosing growth over the comfort of old patterns.
Sometimes the most important lesson isn't about stopping the tears. It's about learning to sit with them.
Sources
Child Emotional Development Research:
- Denham, Susanne A. "Emotional Development in Young Children." Guilford Press, 2019.
- American Academy of Pediatrics. "Emotional and Social Development." Healthy Children, 2023.
- Gottman, John. "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child." Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Intergenerational Trauma and Parenting:
- Yehuda, Rachel, et al. "Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation." Biological Psychiatry, 2016.
- Siegel, Daniel J., and Mary Hartzell. "Parenting from the Inside Out." Tarcher Perigee, 2003.
Emotional Regulation in Children:
- Thompson, Ross A. "Emotion Regulation: A Theme in Search of Definition." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1994.
- Cohen, Lawrence J. "The Opposite of Worry: The Playful Parenting Approach to Childhood Anxieties and Fears." Ballantine Books, 2013.
Join the BUBS Community
How do you handle your child's emotional moments?
Do they trigger something from your own childhood?
Share your experiences in the comments... we're all figuring this out together on BUBS, where parents support each other through the beautiful, complicated work of raising emotionally healthy kids.
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