There is no human being more vulnerable than a newborn baby. And outside of a newborn baby, there is nothing more vulnerable than smaller children—besides maybe the parents of smaller children
Leave The Selfishness At The Door
Before we had even conceived our first child, my thought process was very clear—I’m not having a child for me. Nor am I having it for my wife. Raising a kid, if you’re attempting to do it well, cannot be done with selfishness. In fact, outside of willing to die for your country, there probably isn’t anything less selfish than raising a child.
Of course, I wanted to be a father. I figured there had to be something to the old line from our parents that goes something like, “you’ll understand when you have kids of your own”. And nearly 15 months in, I already get it. Watching your child smile is an antidote to whatever problem you have at that current moment. No matter how shitty your day was, playing with your children for 15 minutes is as good as taking a pill to forget all the terrible you experienced. I received the first hug from my daughter today and I am still trying to come up with the words to describe it.
Should that kind of stuff comfort you? Sure. Is that a problem? Of course not.
The problem becomes when you, as the parent and leader of the household, choose to do something that comforts you at the expense of your child or hinders their growth. “No shi*, who would ever do that?”, you ask. Good question.
Real Life Examples Are Helpful
The idea to write this article came to me after a conversation I had with someone. I’m not going to get even close to identifying details of the people involved in the conversation, but there is concerning and unhealthy behavior that I certainly felt the need to share and comment. Basically, this person is committing what I would describe as borderline light child abuse.
If you’re reading this there’s a pretty good chance you know that arguably the most important thing a child can receive is an appropriate amount of sleep. While sleep is important at all ages, for an infant and toddler, quite literally every milestone they achieve at a ‘normal’ age is determined by quality and quantity of sleep. Right next to that in priority is an infant learning healthy sleep.
This person has aggressively violated the last line of that previous paragraph. One of her children, aged 2, will not fall asleep unless this woman is in bed with him. When I was first told about this my first thought was, “what the fu*k, followed by “are you fu*king kidding me”, followed by, “Jesus Christ, I would rather be shot in the head”.
Stop Making It Sound Cute
I think this is called co-sleeping. Which is just a way to liberalize a bad action. Because God-forbid someone call something what it actually is.
In addition to the dangerous sleep habits that have been instilled in this kid, there’s little doubt that this person’s sex life and, by extension, marriage have been strained a little bit. When you’re not sleeping in the same bed there’s obviously a loss of intimacy that is tough to replicate. I guess if you don’t find your partner sexually attractive anymore, this is a sneaky way to get out of the situation. But, I like to have my wife as much as I can get her, so even if co-sleeping wasn’t terrible for the health of the child, I still wouldn’t do it.
And it’s not like one night this person fell asleep reading to their child in bed and now the child is hooked. It’s obviously a pattern of behavior. And the worst part? They’ve admitted that they know it’s wrong, but they like the ‘comfort’ of being close to their child and feeling needed.
Fu*k that. Kids are not the comfort animals those weird people take with them on planes or inside of Home Depot.
Give Kids A Chance To Be Independent
I’ll write another article about the steps we took to get our daughter to sleep through every night by the time she was three months old later. But suffice to say, if our daughter was inconsolable at night, of course we were there to comfort her. Sleeping through the night in a different room doesn’t happen instantly. But jumping out of bed and racing to the nursery every time a baby cries, pretty much the only emotional response they have for months, not only fu*ks up the sleep of the parents, but it hampers or downright smothers the ability of a baby to grow, self-soothe, and yes, get on the path to becoming independent sometime before the age of 40. How fair is that to the child? How fair is that to yourself?
But that’s just one example. I’ve heard stories of parents leaving their kids back in kindergarten a year because they like walking them to and from school. You hear the stories of unmarried mothers and father relying on their kids for support during breakups. I’ve even heard of parents asking their children for money to pay their bills. Losers are all around us.
Raising Successful Children Is Like Investing
My wife and I are committed to not raising soft, dependent losers who are going to head out into the world needing a pat on the head every time they wipe their ass. Instead, we want to help raise children that they become strong, independent men and women who do great things and become rock-solid parents in their own right.That will actually be a controversial take to some people. Which in and of itself is the problem.
Thus far I’ve mostly learned that parenting is similar to investing. You may think that instead of putting $100 into S&P 500 index, it would be better to spend it on tickets to a concert. But investing in that fund and leaving it alone will result in a 7x investment in a couple decades so that you can attend several concerts.
Similarly, those sleepless nights early on as you’re trying to help your child learn how to fall asleep on their own is a real bitch. You might think it would just be easier to rock them to sleep every night so that you can avoid the sleeplessness. But after a few days, they fall asleep on their own and you’ll get even more sleep because you’re no longer spending time rocking them every night!
You’re There To Comfort Your Kids, Not The Other Way Around
Your kids, especially early on, depend on you being their rock. If they find out that they’re the one YOU’RE leaning on, where are they supposed to go?
Be the rock for your kids. Comfort your kids. Parent your kids. Don’t ask your kids to play your role.
