Kids have many reasons to cry. Some are even justifiable.
Teething. Like what the hell?!
Animals in the wild are ready to flee from predators within minutes of being born. We can’t see for days, clearly for months. We can’t walk for over a year, usually. But, surely, the pain of shoving rock hard chinks of enamel through nerve-ridden gums has to be up there with the top “cruel realities” of being a kid. Oh, and six or seven years later, they all fall out and you have to do it all over again!
Anyway, the point is that teething is a justifiable reason to cry. So is wearing a dirty nappy. Bumping your head if you fall as you learn to walk is fine with me. Being scared of things you don’t understand, yep, cool with that.
But, and you can probably guess where this is going, kids don’t always cry for good reason. Here are some of the genuine reasons any of the kids in my care have been crying since I became a Dad.
Child: Andrew Reason: We had no sausages
This was one of my first introductions to “no-sense crying”. Andrew was fairly young, certainly not two, and erupted when he heard me telling Tracy we couldn’t have a fry that Sunday morning. We thought he had hurt himself and were checking him for bumps or bruises. He kept saying, “NO SOSSIES!” We copped on. He was lamenting the lack of pork products in our fridge. He’d never even eaten a sausage at this point in his life!
Child: Samuel Reason: Daddy needs a haircut
Sam looked at my bedhead one morning and smiled. “Daddy, you need a haircut.” He was right, in fairness, I was in need of a shearing. But, as I told him he was right, the smile drained from his face, his bottom lip quivered and he started to wail. To this day, I’ve no idea why my need for some hair maintenance elicited this response but he said, simply, “I’m a bit sad about it, Daddy.” Better cancel those highlights I was getting next week!
Child: Andrew Reason: Ireland won’t win the football
My two boys are obsessed with football. I mean it. Like, “
Watford youth players“ obsessed. They can embarrass my most fervent of footballing friends. In one such discussion with Andrew, I was explaining the likelihood of Ireland being eliminated at the Group stage of last year's Euros. I went on to detail our performances in previous tournaments and, of course, list the tournaments we never even qualified for. Well, this did not go down well. Cue inconsolable tears for hours. At one point, when I thought he had calmed down, I went looking for him and he was two floors up, in our room, sitting on the floor with the programme from his first Irish game in the Aviva. Maybe seeing Ireland beat Gibraltar 7-0 wasn’t a great introduction to our traditionally average tournament performances.
Child: Samuel Reason: There’s no such thing as banana juice
I got one of those phone calls from my wife. Every parent with a partner knows it. You’re somewhere else, consumed by work or some other adult pursuit. The phone rings. You answer it in an adult manner. What greets you is an ear-shredding scream that Ozzy Osbourne would be proud of. Behind it, you head the voice of the other parent, attempting to explain why one of the kids is crying so uncontrollably. This one was because the three-year-old had been unceremoniously informed by his brother that there was no such thing as banana juice.
Once my wife confirmed this earth-shattering comment, he lost it. I know you
can get banana juice but this was more of a “what’s on the shelves of Dunnes up the road” comment. Well, I had to drop what I was doing, get bananas, milk and a bag of ice cubes and hot-foot it home to pop everything into my NutriBullet. Even drinking it didn’t console him. Every sip seemed to taste like pain, suffering and melancholy. Stick to OJ, kid.
Child: Nina and Anna Reason: All the reasons
These two are proper small. They have lots of reasons to cry and most of them are simply because they can’t communicate properly yet so tears it is. However, of late, they’ve started to find other, more specific reasons to wail. Because I put them down. What? They’re heavy!
Because I picked one of them up and not the other one. Because anyone, and I mean ANYONE, has left the room.
Because the TV isn’t on. Because the TV is on. Because the other twin has a toy and they don’t. Because they now have a toy each. Because they now have two toys and the other one doesn’t care.
Because the dog let them touch her but then went over there.
Like I said, because all the reasons.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the corner, weeping.
I am David Zachary John Moore. I am married to Tracy (who used to be Velcro Girl on 2Phat). We have four kids. We have a dog called Lorna, a lurcher we rescued in 2005. She can leap a nine-foot wall in one go. I am tired.
