Monday, September 10, 2012

Tough Love is the Best Love

Any good dog trainer will tell you dogs need a master. They don’t want a friend. They want someone to tell them how to act, to give them structure. Dogs are at their best when they have a job to do. Even if that job is to sit in one place for a prolonged period until the entire bottle of milk is cleaned up off the kitchen floor. Dogs. They need a master, not a friend.
Yes, I’m comparing kids to dogs, sue me. As I dive deeper into parenthood, I’m glad I paid 130 bucks to have someone train me on how to be a better dog owner. I think it’s made me a better parent in some respect. On the other hand, deep down I will always be one gigantic downy soft sucker.
Tough love. This has been my most difficult learning curve in motherhood. Tough love. Those words really don’t belong together in my book. When Jack starts crying in the middle of the night, I have to pretend I am glued to the bed so I don’t spring out of it like a gymnast going over a vault. It takes everything inside of me not to respond to Jack when he needs me. Or when I think he needs me. Tough love. It’s been an adjustment, but here is what I’ve learned.
Since I started digging deep for that ounce of tough love I have deep inside of me, Jack became a happier baby. Who am I kidding, he’s always been a happy baby, but he became a much more predictable baby. Some days I feel like a nurse diagnosing small problems that pop up along the way. If he’s crying, nine times out of 10 he is hungry or tired. And as much as I hate releasing him from my arms to go down for a nap, I have learned I need to do what’s best for Jack, not what’s best for me. And when he wakes up from that nap with the biggest smile on his face, I know that this thing called tough love is working.
On Saturday I took Jack to the grocery store and the woman in line admired how perfectly content he was sitting in your car seat admiring the sights and sounds. She told me she leaves her baby at home because she simply cannot predict how she will act. I refrained from advising her because I remembered how that felt when people advised me when I didn’t ask for help. I simply said to her “It must be great to get a little time to yourself.” And she smiled and nodded. We all need different things at different times.  
But I remember what it felt like to be her full of anxiety because I just didn’t know when Jack would be hungry or tired. He was dictating my schedule not the other way around. And now, I can look at the clock and know what he needs before he knows he needs it (most of the time). I realize this will change as he gets older, but I’m really making an effort to enjoy the present.
We went to a new parenting series at church on Saturday. As I checked Jack into the nursery, I found myself telling the volunteer what Jack liked. I stopped myself mid sentence and said “he likes everything and he’ll be hungry at 4:30.” I stuffed my diaper bag in the cubicle and left our son with a complete stranger without a worry in the world. That felt good.*
Tough love. It’s made me a better mom. A better dog ower. A better employee. A better person. Because life can’t always be rainbows and puppies, only 99.9% of the time.
*Side note, the security in this nursery was unlike any I had seen in any nursery. I’m sure that helped a little.

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