crying

Pin It

Nathanael has his own way of dealing with crying.

He's kind of like me when it comes to crying, I think.  When I cry, you can't understand a word that I say.  I start holding my breath, and when I can squeak a word out, that's exactly how I sound - squeaky.

When he is crying/fussing/tantruming about something, we tell him he needs to stop crying first so we can understand what he's saying, or before we tell him our response to his reason for fussing.  We try not to do this too often, because we want him to know that it's okay to cry sometimes, but we are trying to teach him that crying because he's not getting something he wants to which we've already said no (like a treat) is not appropriate.

He's developed a pretty cute way of dealing with this - He'll be crying, crying, crying, and we're telling him to calm down.  Suddenly, he'll look up with a bright-eyed, (but no longer actively fussing) tear-covered face and say "Bop crying!" (stop crying). And he's done crying.

Half the time, he's trying to stop crying without us directing him to do so.

Other times, poor guy, he's so worked up that he'll be crying while he's staying "bop crying." He wants to, but it's just hard sometimes. So we've been working on learning to take deep breaths and blow them out long and loud with lips.  

He's also taken to wiping his eyes with the bottom of his shirt.  Apparently, he does not care for the feeling of tears on his face. If his own shirt is not available, he'll grab the hem (or shoulder) of someone else's shirt to take care of his face.

He's so cute and so little.  I think it could be hard on him when baby Cakes arrives and I won't be able to immediately deal with every need and want. We'll work our way through it, but there could be a lot of crying and "bop crying."