Many parents think that crying in children is bad behavior. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. Most American parents punish their children merely for crying. However, children do not cry in order to undermine you as a parent. They cry because they need YOU.
God's Law prescribes a secure attachment between parent and child. See Colossians 3:20 KJV:
Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.
The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and is better translated as "trust", as in "trust your parents in all things". This commandment refers here to secure rest in the Christian Agape love of parents. Ultimately, this commandment refers to a secure attachment between parents and children. The context, when used as a guidepost, tells us how to form a secure bond with children. A good place to start is to respond to your child's every cry, as was done in the context..
Children growing up in the Early Church were never punished for crying. This is because Christian parents in the Early Church knew more than parents today that children cry in order to petition mothers especially for vulnerable needs. Maybe the child was tired. Maybe the child was hungry. Maybe the child needed mom's milk. Maybe the child needed mom, and mom only. Whatever the child needed, they got it.
Christian parents in the Early Church, under customary law, were required to meet their children's every vulnerable need when they cried. Children were understood under customary law to have five basic categories of needs; food, water, shelter, transportation, and attachment - with the greatest of these needs being attachment! Even tiredness was a form of attachment need, as co-sleeping was how parents then bonded with their children.
Children usually cry a deathly, screeching cry when they need something. The design of God behind the cry is to break down mothers, and keep breaking them down, until mom finally figured out what the child needed. All a child usually needs is time with mom.
For the first 6 years of childhood, children growing up in the Early Church cried, in most cases, due to separation anxiety. Separation anxiety is a morbid fear in children that mom would "go away and never come back". Christian parents in the Early Church knew more than parents today that children always cry for a reason, and usually, they just needed reassurance that mom was going nowhere. Children under age 6 never left the presence of mothers, with children aged 2-6 ranging next to mothers, seemingly attached at the hip next to mothers, fearing the worst whenever mom left children's line of sight.
Children usually cry when they need something. The first thing Christian mothers in the Early Church tried was mammary closeness, including breastfeeding. Maybe the child latched on or else snuggled up to the teat of mothers, with breastfeeding ending when the child rejected the nipple. If the child continued to cry after being offered closeness with mom, mom scrambled to figure out the need of a child. The child always needed something.
The depraved and entitled parents who punish their crying children will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them descend into the abyss which is the ever-burning lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Repent!
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