This post was originally posted by Dr. Becky Kennedy on her Instagram account, and we thought many of our readers would benefit from learning about this. How many times, as a parent, have you thought that your child was “fake crying”? Well, keep reading, because we may be very wrong about how we are interpreting what our child is doing during those episodes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist specializing in parenting, managing anxiety, and building resilience. If you want to learn how to better manage meltdowns and improve your child’s emotion regulation, you can purchase this course, which will teach you how to do exactly that through a connection-based, practical approach.

The idea of “fake crying” is based on a problematic assumption that we – the parents – have a better idea of what is going on inside a child than the child does. The concept of “Fake Crying” encourages us to look at a child’s behavior and *judge it* rather than be *curious about it.*

Key reframe: “There’s no such thing as fake tears. When I think of it that way, I see my child as the enemy and assume that I know what is happening in my child’s body better than she does. I wonder if I was treated that way… if the adults in my childhood often acted as if they knew my emotional reality better than I did… as if their logic was superior to my feeling…”

Key idea: Every human is looking to feel seen.

And when we are not seen, we all have to escalate our expressions, desperate to be taken seriously so we feel real and worthy inside. Ironically, this can lead to a vicious cycle whereby a child starts crying, a parent says “Stop crying, you have nothing to cry about!” and a child would have to cry and scream more. The child trying so hard to feel seen by a parent, only for a parent to see this as more evidence of “drama” or “manipulation” – and you can see where the cycle would go from there.

How do we get out of the cycle? It starts with us.

1.  Tell yourself – a part of you that needs to hear this – “It is always ok to feel. It is always ok to cry. No one but me knows what is happening inside me.”

2. Imagine your child crying. Say hi to the voice that judges this with logic: “Hi voice that says she is crying for no reason. You have learned to approach vulnerability with logic. That must have been protective for me for years, early on. So… thank you for your service. That voice is not so helpful now. So now I am going to allow you to step back so I can hear a different voice that is in there.”

3. You have now made space for this idea: “Only my child knows what is happening inside. We all release emotions at times that seem not to make sense but are the result of lots of building-up of difficult experience. My job is not to logic through my child’s emotions. My job is to be there for my child while she is having these emotions. This is hard for me. AND I am someone who can do hard things.”

I hope that you found this information helpful. Comment below to suggest other topics you would like to hear our experts talk about. You can find Dr. Becky on her website, Instagram and Facebook.