My 7-year-old daughter cries multiple times a day. How do I help her?

Dear Meghan: My 7-year-old daughter (soon to be 8) cries multiple times a day. I do not want to shame her or disregard her feelings. She is always quick to tears.

At times I feel the behavior is manipulative — especially when combined with whining. At other times, it seems she cries because she doesn’t know how else to express frustration, anger or sadness. How do I best approach this behavior and give her another avenue besides tears?

— Too Many Tears

Too Many Tears: Thank you for writing in; this sounds very tiring. Before we get into the tears, I gently suggest removing the word “manipulative” from your parenting vocabulary. Not because I don’t think you feel manipulated — rather, we want to change our lens to curiosity rather than blame. “I notice she cries every time she whines; what purpose is this serving? What could this be about?” feels very different from, “My kid is trying to take advantage of me to get what she wants.” One statement invites possible outcomes and hence, solutions, while the other judges the child as “bad,” leaving punishment as your only option.

Tears are an integral part of being a human, and it is one of our first signals, as babies, that we need someone to take care of us. While we grow and mature, we still cry when things aren’t working out, especially when we are already overwhelmed. I remember a day where everything seemed to go wrong, from the big to the little, and when I opened a package of chicken to find it spoiled, I started crying like a baby. Was it really about the chicken? No. My tolerance for handling disappointment, finding solutions, staying mature and digging for resilience was spent, and there was nothing left to do but cry about this last proverbial straw.

So when I read about your daughter, I see a girl who doesn’t have the resilience, skills or wherewithal to slow down, locate her emotion and speak about it. Why is this? I don’t know — this is what you need to investigate. Here is a brief list of reasons your daughter may be crying and whining multiple times a day: She has gone through a trauma, wound or significant loss and cannot collect herself due to overwhelm; when she whines and cries, she quickly gets your attention; she is anxious, and her threshold for frustration is much lower; she has a learning or neurological difference, and her frustration tolerance is reached in even the simplest of tasks.

Your first step is to slow down and look at the patterns. Get very specific about the when, how long, where, what and who of it all, and then look at your responses. Beautifully, you have already stated that you don’t want to shame or disregard her, so make a note of what you are doing or saying. Get a hold of the back and forth: When […]

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