“Sometimes I say NO… though my heart longs to say YES.
Like the other day.
My son lost another tooth, and he was thrilled to find a dollar and four quarters from the tooth fairy. He begged me to buy him some candy at the grocery store while he was at school.
And when he got home to find that bag of Airheads on the counter, he actually hopped up and down and squealed! So excited!!
‘Thanks mom!!’
He ate every bite.
But then he realized he had to fork over the money.
‘Hey, Luke. You owe me some money. Remember??’
And when he came downstairs with it, his cheeks were streaked with tears.
‘But it’s my tooth fairy money.’
I almost caved. I almost handed it back to him and smiled and said something like, ‘Don’t worry about it, Buddy. That candy is on me.’
But I didn’t.
Shockingly he was fine.
He moved on. He forgot all about it in maybe three minutes.
On to the next thing.
That’s what we do as parents, don’t we???
We do the hard stuff.
We say NO.
We follow through.
We enforce consequences. We check-up. We make sure someone’s parents are going to be home. And we even insist on talking to the MOM… ugh, how embarrassing.
We let them fall on their butts on occasion.
We say things like, ‘Huh. Maybe you should talk to your teacher about it.’
We don’t buy the next new gadget. We serve vegetables. We send kids to bed on time.
