Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4 ESV
When babies are born they using crying as their only method of communication. They cry when they are hungry, sad, happy, angry, fill in the blank. As they grow sometimes a mother is able to distinguish one cry from another. They know what their precious babies cry should sound like if they are hurt or if they just need a huge. When they start to move into the toddler phase most parents no longer think it is cute to cry as the only method of communicating their needs. We teach our toddlers how to talk and constantly remind them to "use their words." Obviously, we cannot cry and expect to have our needs fulfilled right away, so this is appropriate. However what happens when we start saying, "Why are you crying?"
Often times we get a response that we simply don't understand so we reply with a logical answer that makes sense to us, an adult, with an adult brain.
Example:
"Let me get this right.
You are crying because I gave you the white towel when you wanted the off-white towel?"
In adult brains it is simply not logical to cry because you didn't get the off-white towel. You should just be happy that you have a towel. So we tell our toddlers to stop crying and then we don't understand why they don't see the logic behind our reasoning.
Toddlers quickly turn into young children who again sometimes cry. When a young child is crying we aren't always quick to dive deeper and explore why they are crying. We simply tell them to "suck it up and stop crying." Again, not understanding why they don't understand our adult logic of not crying over silly things.
Young children turn into teenagers who again sometimes cry. In this phase of life we sometimes try and dive deeper and figure out why they are crying. However teenagers don't always want to share. Can you blame them? You've told them their entire life to "stop crying." You have made it clear to them that they shouldn't cry, they shouldn't mourn, they shouldn't feel emotions.
Why, as parents, do we tell our kids not to cry? In Matthew 5:4 the Bible says, "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." Wait, what? I am confused. My whole life I have been told to not cry but in the Bible God says if I cry I will be blessed?
The answer is clear, yes!
God doesn't tell us to hold in our emotions until we explode. He does not tell us to not feel sad, overwhelmed, stressed, angry, happy, or hungry. We are to feel all of those emotions and embrace them.
If your child is crying, let them cry.
To you, it may seem silly that they are crying because they spilled their cheerios on the floor. But is it really? What happens when you order your food from a restaurant and they bring it out and they put ketchup on your burger when you ordered it without? You feel upset, disappointed, sad, or angry. Why isn't your child allowed to feel these emotions too?
Last night was a hard momma night y'all. My little red was crying. It wasn't the crying over something that isn't important to me, it was mourning. We had family in over the weekend and they left on Sunday and big red was devastated. She didn't just cry, she mourned. And I let her. I let her scream, I let her feel angry, and I let her cry. I told her that it was okay to feel all of the emotions she was feeling. It was okay to cry and it was okay to admit that she was not okay at that moment.
Yes, I told my six year old that it was okay to feel emotions and to embrace them. It was okay to mourn.
Have you ever stopped and thought about how you, yourself, deal with your emotions? Do you tend to bottle up and then explode? What do you do when you're sad? When you're angry? When you're happy? Now take a look at your child and how they handle their emotions. You're likely to find that they express themselves the same way that you do. It's scary to think of it but they are always watching you. They see how you are when you get angry. They see how you handle sadness. They see how you handle frustration and they mimic it.
So, let them mourn. Let them feel their emotions.
If we want to open up the debate for suicide awareness let us first start by having conversations about our emotions. Let us talk to our children about what it means to cry, what it means to be sad, angry, happy, frustrated, or overwhelmed. Y'all we are unintentionally setting our children up for something that could lead to SERIOUS emotional problems in their life. If we do not properly teach our children how to cope with each emotion and how to cry then who will they learn it from? They will continue to mimic our behavior and the cycle will never end.
Talk to your child about emotions but more importantly, let them mourn, let them feel each and every emotion they have.
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