This post may be a little off topic, but after reading Dumb Little Man's post "How I Turned Myself From An Impatient Dad To A Loving One", I couldn't help but share it with you.
I am a new-ish dad of a now 11 month old baby boy. His name is Gideon. I love him very much. I have also experienced many moments, many during the middle of the night, of extreme frustration and had my patience tested by the little guy. I'm sure it never helps when exhaustion is setting in because he's been getting up twice a night for days on end.
I found that DLM's comment about being empathetic to be the most helpful for me. Every one, including children, toddlers and babies do everything for a reason, even if they don't know the reason themselves. For me, this morning at 4 am, a mere 1.5 hours before I get up to get ready for work, when the boy was up I considered what was going on in his world. Unfortunately for me Gideon can't quite speak in sentences yet. Some words, but not enough to be able to tell me what was bugging him. In the end, we ended up with Gideon sleeping peacefully between my wife and me. He had a cold and the house was cold (found out in the morning that the furnace pilot blew out during the night) and was probably feeling pretty crummy.
None of it his fault. None of it our fault, at least not explicitly. It just was. And in the end we worked it out.
Nice.
My blog has moved! Redirecting…
You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit http://www.digitalfugu.com/blog/ and update your bookmarks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Nice little heart warming story there, Caine. Isn't it better if we take a little awareness to empathize with what happens to our child?
Anyway, I am really glad you liked the "Impatient Dad" article. At least I have achieved my goal of helping parents, especially dads, to be more loving.
Post a Comment