When Mom Lets Go & Lets Dad Be Dad

It had been ten days since my son and I had been home, it was bedtime, and it was not going well. Our son (I’ll call him “T”) was overly tired, my husband had resumed his usual bedtime duties for the first time in a week and a half, and T just wanted mommy. 

For the past ten days, I had been the sole parent in my son’s life as he and I vacationed with my parents while my husband had to stay home because of work. So when T cried out for the umpteenth time, “I want mommy!”, it was all I could do to not scoop him out of my husband’s arms and take over the rest of bedtime.  

But I saw the look on my husband’s face, which I had seen before. It was the look that clearly said, “I’ve got this.” 

So I kissed my distraught toddler’s forehead goodnight, told him I love him and daddy loves him and Jesus loves him, forced myself to walk out of his room despite his growing cries, and felt my heart break a bit.  

I felt like the world’s worst mother … but a pretty good wife.

In the two and a half years since becoming a mother, I have had to repeatedly force myself to let my husband be dad and to be so in his own way. Sometimes I do this well, other times I make little comments that are sometimes welcome and sometimes not, and other times I outright take over claiming I know better because I’m at home with him all day.   

Letting dad be dad and at other times inserting myself into a situation when I feel a true need to do so has been a difficult line to walk—because it’s meant listening to our infant cry it out a little longer than I’d like, watching dad run alongside an unsteady two-year-old flying down the street on a strider bike, holding my breath while my baby goes soaring too high in the air before falling back into daddy’s arms, having a ringside seat to a wrestling match that’s a little too rough, being okay with an outfit I would have never put together, watching closely as he takes bites of food that I think are too big, and, well, I think you get the picture. Letting go and letting daddy be daddy is not always easy. 

But what our son does not need is a male version of me. He needs his dad. 

In those moments when I’m tempted to take over, I often hear my mother’s words: “That’s why he has a mom and a dad.” I also hear my grandmother’s words, which were said to my mom when I was little and have been repeated in some form to me: “Honey, will you just sit still and let her daddy take care of her? He’s right there!” 

My mom often assures me that had it just been her influence on my life, my childhood would have looked a lot different. Not better or worse, just different. (Although, perhaps a bit safer!) For instance, I would have never gone flying down our street on a homemade go-kart made out of hockey sticks, a stadium seat, a couple of two-by-fours, and lawnmower wheels. But my dad used my crash at the bottom of our hill to teach me three things: 1) a popular law of physics (an object in motion stays in motion along a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force); 2) that it’s important to get back on the proverbial bike (a few bumps, bloody scrapes, and bruises won’t kill me); and 3) that a design can always be modified. Let’s just say we went back to the workroom and added a clever system of brakes before our next test drive down the hill. Another example that comes to mind is when our high school band took a trip to the Czech Republic. While some teenagers might have found it a bit overbearing to have both parents as chaperones, I loved it. It was like a family vacation that included my closest friends. And because my dad was there, our group ventured out a lot more during our free time than we would have had it been just mom as chaperone—something she commented on as we boarded the metro to explore Prague at night. 

What I learned from watching my parents as a child—and continue to learn as a parent myself—is that my parents make an incredible team. And I think it’s because they both recognized early on the value they each bring to raising their child. I remember saying to them as a kid, “I always feel like it’s two against one!” to which they would reply, “Well, because it is.” Oh how that response used to tick me off—especially as an only child. It wasn’t fair! Now, as a mother myself, I have come to understand the importance of my husband and I being a united team and having each other’s back in this crazy journey called parenthood. 

So the next time I’m tempted to take over a situation—I try to stop, remember my mother’s and grandmother’s words, give thanks for the incredible blessing it is to have a loving husband and an incredible father to do life with (because I know that is not a reality for so many families), and to remember to always have his back. Because he always has mine. 

And while I will continue to work on keeping my shrieks to myself, I think a more realistic goal is to not let them get too loud. 

Baby steps, after all.