So this weekend, and which really may be the biggest reason that I started this project is that I was a bad dad. First a little background – I am 42 years old and have 20 month old twin boys. Their mother and I (well more her than I) underwent 2 years of IVF in order to get our boys into this world. The fact that we were pregnant was a surprise but he fact that we were having twins was an even bigger surprise. Anyway, that is a story for another day…
The point of this is that I lost my temper with them for no reason other than I was tired and just hit my limit. Now, everyone I know has reached this point, and I would be lying if I said it was the first time that this has happened, but this time I was especially cognizant of my overreaction. It was a long Saturday and we had visited some friend’s of my wife who live about an hour away. They have a two year old themselves so the day was spent with three little boys yelling and screaming while I tried to carry on small talk with folks I really have very little in common with.
The boys slept all the way home but as soon as we got home – wham! They were over tired (as was I evidently) and they just let loose and I proceeded to put them in their jammies (more forcefully than I care to admit) and yelled at them for being uncooperative. While I would not term my actions as reckless or abusive, I would most definitely say that I put them to bed with very little tenderness.
It took about a half hour for it to hit me that I had messed up and I still beating myself up two days later. My job is to protect my little boys form everything in the world that may want to hurt them. Sometimes my job is to protect them from me. I failed at that job, and will probably fail many times more, but I hope that I always can reflect and try to do a better job than I did the day before. That said, I hope you put your sons a daughters to bed tonight with a kiss on the head and love in your heart. I know I sure did.
Keep on climbing climbers!