[Lostislost]

Nevermind, sorry.

[ChickenNoodleSoup]

Just my two cents on both topics:

Regarding the acknowledgement, as far as I know there's two schools of thought on this. One is to offer a tissue for comfort, to acknowledge the pain and so on. The other is to not offer tissues, and to more or less talk on as normal. My T is the same as your T, he has only given me a tissue twice in almost 6 years and never says anything about my crying.
For the tissue part, I have researched it and the line of thinking is that if you offer a tissue, it kind of says "stop crying, clean yourself up", which is not the message you'd want to send usually. Whether one agrees or not with that is an individual opinion, I'd say it probably depends on the client what a T should do. I'm not sure why there's never acknowledgement, but then again I cry every session.

As for the thing about the crying child: I don't think he meant to say he doesn't like crying. He probably interpreted the question as "do you like them in general, when riding the bus/shopping/unwinding at home", where if it's not your own child, crying is just something that distracts and is annoying. I don't think he meant to say if he had his own child and it was crying over getting hurt, he'd not like it. More if it was crying over wanting to get a chocolate bar instead of another candy or something.

[ElectricManatee]

I think he was talking in general as a person, not as a therapist. Like, small children are fine with him as long as they are not being disruptive. Non-parents who haven't spent much time around children often find babies and young children crying to be stressful and perplexing because a) it's unpleasant to listen to (also true for parents!) and b) it sometimes it means something is wrong and they have no idea what to do.

I also think crying in children and crying in adults are related phenomena but really different. Babies cry as their main form of communication and it can mean literally anything. Adults (especially in therapy) cry because they are upset and in emotional pain and they are able to talk about what they are feeling. His feelings toward the latter situation are likely to be quite different.

[LonesomeTonight]

I agree with CNS that I don't think he meant he doesn't like crying in general, even though I'd likely have similar thoughts if my T said something like that. When a child is crying, especially a baby or toddler, it can be difficult to know how to get them to stop (even if they're your own!). You can't reason with a 2-year-old. And they're often wailing and screaming as part of the crying. An adult is different, even if your inner 2-year-old is coming out.

I do think it's something to ask him about though. You don't want to have it in the back of your mind that he's bothered any time you cry.