Getting my 10 year old to stop crying

[too4hunden]

How do I get my 10 year old to stop crying over just about everything? For example when he plays baseball and strikesout he starts crying or if he misses a play the same thing. Even if he 's playing he's Xbox and gives up a run he'll start and say he *****. Please help

[specialmom]

Hi there. This post is from 2012 and the poster is no longer coming here.  good luck

[Kiera_Faith]

Is he depressed well my little brother is 10 and is like the same way, at 10 years old, they want to be perfect. If it doesn't seem to be perfect to them, they cry cause they feel like they had failed at that and will refuse sometimes to do it again. I have told him to keep trying but he told me he doesn't want to because he is not good at it. Talk to your son and see what the problem is and maybe he will tell you what's bothering him and maybe you can help

[sue_perfluous]

Are you sure he's not - at least mildly - biologically depressed?  It sounds like he may be.  Or it's just anxiety - which can also point to a medical condition.

Ask to see another doctor and see if they'll refer him to a psychiatrist.

[specialmom]

Hi there.  heart goes out to you and your boy.  A couple of things run through my mind.  First, with the idea of pressure and perfectionism.  Perfectionism is one of the leading causes of people being unhappy.  No one is perfect and if that is one's standard, they never feel good enough which is sad.  One thing you can do is think about how you handle things yourself.  Are you a perfectionist?  Or your spouse?  What we can do is talk about our own failures to our kids.  Not in a way that they realize WHY we are doing it but just in the course of talking bring up a situation in which things didn't go your way and how you handled it.  Let him see that it says nothing about a person to fail and that things go on if we do.  Tell him lots of stories like that, past and current.  Have your partner do the same.  

Second, your son seems to have missed an important step in regulation of mood.  Crying is not the appropriate way to express our emotions for everything.  I'd just be up front about this and direct.  Talk to him-------  it absolutely is inappropriate to cry at the ball field.  What could he do instead?  Then come up with a list.  Crying at the ball field is for when we take a ball to the face, not when we make a bad play.  And also talk to him about being a good sport.  Part of playing a game is being a good sport.  Good sports do not cry or complain when they mess up, they rev up for the next time to do better.  Give him ideas of what he can do instead of crying.  (if you need some, let me know).

Now I give you this advice of a mother of an 8 year old who has sensory integration disorder.  We've worked long and hard on sharing of emotions in appropriate ways as regulation of mood has been difficult for him.  He's also a baseball player.  We've tried to help him with appropriate reactions to the setting and situation.  

I also think that you should consider the issue of anxiety for your son.  

Don't get me wrong, it is important to feel you can have any emotion you want or your child wants to.  But they need to understand that they can also control how they express it and must think about that in various settings.

If it turns out to be anxiety related, then you'll need to address that and a psychologist can be very helpful.  

good luck

[AnnieBrooke]

It's tough, at 10, to feel responsible for trying to make things all right that one can't make all right.  Maybe in your son's case, he is taking on the feeling that he should be able to handle things that aren't really his responsibility to have to handle.  

[too4hunden]

I tell him all the time that I am proud of him and love him regardless if he strikesout or hits a homerun. He does have an older brother that has autism. He basically is the older brother.

[AnnieBrooke]

He sounds pretty stressed at the idea of failure.  He shouldn't be hearing such negative statements about himself in his head after only one mistake or lost run.  Is there someone in his life who is role modeling this self-critical world view, or acting angry with him for not hitting the ball in sports?  I'd try to model calm acceptance of momentary problems, so he can take his cue from you.  "Getting him to stop crying" shouldn't be your first focus, you need to figure out why temporary small failure stresses him so much that he would cry in public, which no ten-year-old wants to do.