What LSL guy said. There are exceptions, but children are utterly shrewd and if they can play you with tears they will (I did!). The very sad outcomes result from when they are indulged in their histrionics. The second they want some attention they’ll turn off the taps and engage with you again. I should add that all of this presumes that you are sure there is nothing wrong with them, like a stomach ache or they were legitimately frightened or something. If you’re sure they are just throwing a fit for attention or out of frustration that you will not bow to their commands, lol, then almost any non-reaction or subdued reaction will be perfect. If you indulge it bad. If you yell at them or try to punish it other than with a “time out” or some-such, BIG MISTAKE! Punishment can equal attention. They will tend to regard punishment or any strong reaction as a success. In the war that is parenting the “time out” (boredom, not being at the center of attention) is the WMD in your arsenal!
I don’t want to post huge details on the off chance that they ever stumble upon this post, but I have friends with an 8 or so year old daughter that they did not set any crying boundaries with. OMG. I will never go to their house again. I hate to say it about a young child, but she is a manipulative little bitch because she KNOWS that all she has to do is snivel a bit and bam- both parents drop absolutely whatever they are doing and run over to her. It’s maddening to watch and frankly, a little sickening. I was at their house and she injured herself in the pool (think cut on the foot, not like needing stitches or anything). Yes, any kid would cry and she did, but HOLY jesus did she carry on for about an hour and made her father carry her around the rest of the afternoon. I had to keep drinking so I wouldn’t blurt out “GIVE ME A *UCKING BREAK ALREADY!!” When they weren’t looking it was amazing how she had no trouble walking. The second they turned around she would drop to the ground and snivel until one of them paid attention to her.
It’s a terrible thing to see in an older child and I think you’re doing the right thing by nipping it in the bud and not giving it the attention that she’s trying to draw from it.
I saw this in one of my nieces, when she was about ten. She fell and hurt herself a bit, so lightly that she probably never even got a bruise from it. She didn’t know that I was watching, and she came into the house and promptly burst into tears about how she was hurt so bad. I said something to the effect of I’d seen her fall, I’d seen that she hadn’t really been hurt, I’d seen her pick herself up, and I saw how she didn’t cry until she was in the sight of her mother and grandmother. This dried up the tears. And again, this was a kid who didn’t get attention until she cried, so that’s what she learned. She would cry and throw tantrums and generally make everyone around her miserable when she wanted attention.
I frequently took this girl on outings with my daughter, as her mother was useless and she was being raised by her grandparents (my inlaws). She and Lisa were almost the same age, and Lisa was an only child. Once she figured out that she couldn’t pull this sort of shit around Aunt Lynn, she was actually pretty nice to be around, and she enjoyed being with me and Lisa. Of course, when she got back to Grandma and Grandpa’s, she would revert to throwing tantrums, because she couldn’t get attention any other way.
I would just add (in case you didn’t just fail to mention it) that you make an effort to occasionally praise her for calm responses to situations. I ask my 2.5yo to “tell me calmly” what she needs, and she knows this is the quickest way to get what she wants. She’s not a cryer in general though, so I never ignore her cries.
Sometimes even in real distress she will take a deep breath and tell me calmly before the next wail. This is enormously helpful, as otherwise I might waste valuable time guessing that there’s soap in her eye or some such thing. Afterward, I will thank her for telling me, and compliment her on remaining calm.
Once when we’d been out shopping way past her nap time and she was moaning a bit in the line, (perfectly justified IMHO) the checker said in a nasty voice “that sounds like a fake cry to me.” I explained rather stonily that it was not a fake, it was just not the depths of despair. What I mean to say is, keep in mind that there are levels of discomfort, and not all whines are bratty.
I think we may be related. Only my Mom would have whacked me for whining about it. 
I’m right there with my three year old. I also add the “if you don’t stop crying by the time I count to 10, you’re getting a time out” She’s never made it past 5, and now the wails are usually done at 1.
In the past few months she’s begun freaking out when her little brother (almost 5 months) cries. I had to set my husband straight the other day, after he said “she really doesn’t like it when he cries - it hurts her ears” “Uh, no. She makes more noise than he does, and at a higher pitch. She’s crying because she doesn’t like that he’s gotten our attention”
Thank goodness he’s a super calm little dude, or I would have had to find some gypsies to give her to.
My mother said this to me when I appeared at her bedside at two in the morning crying from pain in my arm. She finally took me to the hospital, saying that if it wasn’t broken she was going to break it for me, just to give the doctor something to do.
I was very relieved when it turned out that my wrist was shattered. They had a long explanation for why it took so long to hurt, something about the swelling holding the bones in place or something. But my primary memory is of being relieved.
Mom’s primary memory is of being embarrassed when I told the doctor how happy I was that mom would not have to break my arm.
Your mom didn’t really mean it, though, right? I mean, she was kidding?
She was awakened at 2 am by a child (me) who had played happily all day after injuring the wrist, including climbing and falling out of at least one tree into the creek as I recall. She was not kidding, that is, there was no humor involved. She was pissed and did not believe me. So I have no doubt that she was deadly serious in that she had no plans to haul me all the way to emergency at 2 am to find out that I was fine.
The doctor laughed his butt off when I said it, so obviously he didn’t think she was abusive. But I tended to believe what my mother siad, she almost never made empty threats.
So, no, she is not an abusive parent and in retrospect I am certain she would not have broken it even had all been okay. I mean, she did take me to emergency after all, after I convinced her that it really did hurt a lot.
Ok. Cause your story tickled me, and I wanted to check that it was ok to laugh.
Amen to that. My wife started using it with the Firebug over the past few months, when he started speaking in short sentences. I’ve picked it up from her.
There’s a balance here: so often, it’s impossible to carry on an adult conversation unless one is willing to ignore the first few cues. A kid has to learn that they can’t always have your attention the instant they want it - that they may have to wait a minute while the grownups get to a stopping point.
I like this one.
Sounds good all the way around. Gives permission to have feelings, without allowing those feelings to affect everyone else (when there’s nothing anyone can do; not to be confused with ‘Bottle it up, bucko!’) . Good for boys, too, if they get into the overaggresive reactions to frustration. <not that girls don’t physically stress and boys don’t cry, but you get the drift>
As a teacher I some times have lots of kids that want my attention when I can’t always give it to them immediately. I’ve found something non-verbal like holding up a finger or a small wave of the hand both lets me finish what I’m doing and lets them know that I’ve noticed them and will be with them in a bit. It seems to help. I don’t know how well it’d work elsewhere though.
Heh - when my husband or I are doing something and can’t be interrupted right then, we’ve started saying (in an imitation of the on-hold phone voice) “One moment please…” 
You aren’t a bad dad. Nearly all toddlers go through a phase like this.
When my son was 2 he was very verbal. He had never tried the crying game until he had a play date with a crier.
He didn’t quite get the concept, though. He started to (fake) cry (no tears). I asked what was wrong, he cried louder. I told him just what you did, then sent him to his room, where he really turned it up. When that didn’t bring a response, he added “I’m cryin’. I’m cryin’ in here! I’m really cryin’ in here!”
When that didn’t work, he calmly came back into the room, and started playing quietly. He never did it again.
Heh, not a bad daddy at all, maybe a meanie daddy, but sometimes we need one of those in our lives every once in a while. 
I may also be a member of the meanie daddie club.
I have a 3-year-old daughter (along with 5- and 2-year old boys) who has a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen. Mind you, this may well be the definition of 3-year-old girls. She has just now finally understood that wet != dirty (for example, when she gets a few drips of water on her clothes, almost always self-inflicted). But even now, when I hear her yell from her room, “Daddy, my shirt is wet!” I have been known to respond, “I don’t care, put on a dry shirt”. And when she asks if the new shirt is okay (once again, from her room, when I have no way of seeing it), I’ll often say, “I’m sure it’s fine”.
We’ve stopped interfering in our kids’ fights quite so much, and just telling them to work it out. Especially because it’s very difficult to tell just who stole the toy from whom, and the responses may not always be quite so truthful in any case…
We don’t have to worry about that with ours yet, since she’s still only 15 months old, but my sister does this with the girl she tends. The 2 1\2 year-old girl will throw herself down on the floor and have a tantrum.
My sister finally got tired of it, and so she takes her to another room, which she calls the crying room, to let her cry it out. It didn’t take that long for the girl to stop the crying.
This all seems t be pretty much how I handle my 5yo. Biggest lesson I think she got was to breathe in and out slowly and consciously, it really seems to have a calming effect.
It does work, or at least it works for me. It works best if I then say “Okay, it’s your turn now” or somethign similar when I turn from what I am doing to the child. Also, you can’t let it go on too long, or they will quit relying on the hand gesture. I have been known for longer waits to put up, for example, 10 fingers for 10 minutes. This seems to work.
It also works to excuse myself from the conversation, say “Is anyone bleeding or are there bones broken?” to the child, and upon getting a negative, saying “Then it will be your turn in _______ minutes” and go back to what I was doing.
You can’t always, but reliability when you can goes a long way for the times when you just cannot. WIth everybnody, I think, not just kids.
For some reason, my mother started using a baby voice last year. The first time, I was too surprised to react. The second time, I told her “I realize you do wear diapers, but if you expect me to pour talcum on your ass you’ve got the wrong daughter. Are you going to speak like a grown-up or should we start looking into assisted living?”
A few weeks later she did it to one of my brothers. After recovering from the shock, he came and asked me whether she’d been doing that. She’s done it a few times since and our standard response is “right, assisted living it is.” Cuts it off right there.
My grandmother has always done something else, which Mom also does but not as much: speak in incomplete sentences. “Bring me the thing.” What thing? We don’t read minds! The standard answer is “subject, verb, complements.” Their own response is “I speak for smart people!” “Well, guess you can complain to my (grand)mother that she built me dumb. Now: subject, verb, complements.”
I don’t see there’s anything cruel in requesting that people communicate properly.