A Concept: Family Cry-Fests

As a kid, I cried a lot.

As a kid, I got told to stop crying a lot — often accompanied by “grow up”, “you’re not a baby”, or “you can’t cry in the Real World”.

Well, now that I am an adult in the Real World, I can confirm that I do cry. I’ve cried while working the counter at a fast food restaurant, in front of a customer. I’ve cried in a BART station in Oakland, I’ve cried in a grocery store in Salt Lake City, I’ve cried in a public bathroom in Cambridge.

Clearly, crying doesn’t stop happening after you turn eighteen. It might even happen more — I mean, yeah, being presented with a spoonful of scary green spinach puree is clearly distressing, but like…taxes. Those are incredibly sob-worthy, if not even throw-yourself-onto-the-floor-and-scream-worthy.

So, to any parents who read my stuff, or who will read my stuff, here’s an idea:

Have a family cry-fest.

I’m 100% serious here.

Are you having a rough week in your house? Affirm your kid’s distress, your own distress, your partner’s distress, just…feel it. Pull out the Ben & Jerry’s and pull up a family-friendly-but-also-really-sad movie on Netflix and cry together.

Show your kids the two things that, in my opinion, we often neglect to teach kids (and fuck them up in the process): crying is okay, and yes, even adults cry.

Like, sure, you might not want your kids to just cry all the time, but you also surely don’t want them to lock it all up and spend years of therapy paying $150 an hour for someone to scribble in a notebook while they purge all of that locked-up emotion, right? …Sorry, that got personal. Whoops.

But really: Teach your kids — especially your sons, for heck’s sake — that crying is okay. Teach them that we all feel that way sometimes. Teach them that there is no shame in being understandably overwhelmed by struggles in life: like taxes*, or not being able to get a pudding cup in the lunch line.

Report back with your findings — I don’t have a family of my own to do this with, but I feel like it’s a pretty great idea.