But there’s so much more to it.
The other day, listening to the radio on my way to work, the hosts used the word reconcile in regards to parenting. While I thought I knew what the word meant, in the moment, I found myself not being able to give the word reconcile a definition.
It could be because of another night of interrupted sleep. My wife and I were both up at 3 am dealing with a teething infant and a potty training toddler who didn’t make it through this particular night. Or could it be because I didn’t know the definition of the word.
This led me down a rabbit hole of wondering about all the other words we use daily without knowing the actual definition. And further thinking about other things in life that we pretend to understand but don’t.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word reconcile is a transitive verb. It means to restore to friendship or harmony; or to settle or resolve; also to check (a financial account) against another for accuracy.
The radio hosts were speaking about reconciling moments as parents. And they were talking in general about how you should enjoy and embrace the time that we have with our children.
I kind of understood the point but not really.
I’m the father of two young children, 2.5 and 10 months.
I love and adore them both, and I try to treasure the time I have with them. I’m extremely conscious of my own screen time when they are around, especially with my phone.
The past few nights have been rough. My daughter is teething and her mouth only bothers her in the middle of the night. My son is almost potty trained but still has the occasional over night accident.
Now they are both good sleepers but this particular night, my son had an accident and woke up screaming “wet, wet!”. I don’t know how long he was awake because it was 3 am and my wife and I were sleeping. By the time I got to him, he was angrily stomping his feet as he was trying to take off his wet pants while he continued to yell and scream.
This of course, woke up my daughter so she began screaming. I got my son changed, covered the wet bed, and laid him back as fast as I could. In the meantime, my wife was awake and taking the baby to feed her.
Now the boy was back asleep and the girl is fed and asleep as well. But as she we laid her crib in the crib, she woke and began another screaming fit, which of course woke up her brother. So the process of soothing began again.
Fast forward 3 nights and my son didn’t nap, and that means nightmares. Right on cue, after two hours of sleep, the screaming began. I found him standing on the end of his bed disoriented and screaming.
It’s always tough to calm him down after these dreams. This night, he would need some extra soothing.
It was as I was calming both kids to get them back to sleep, when I had the moment of clarity and I knew I needed to reconcile with this situation.
Would I get frustrated because they wouldn’t stop crying? Would I shout at them to shut up and go back to sleep?
I needed to find harmony with the screaming children. This was a one sided situation, . The kids don’t understand what they are doing, so I had a choice to make. Was I going to let the screams pierce my soul or would I choose a different course.
This was the point the radio hosts were making. There will be times as parents when will want to be in a different place, mentally or physically away from our children for one reason or another.
But, we have limited time with them. You and they, will never be as young as you are in that moment. And the reality is, you never know how many moments you have with them.
Was I happy to be up at 4 am, no. Could it have been worse, yes. But there in the middle of the night, soothing crying children, I understood what it meant to reconcile with a moment as a parent.
I had made peace with the moment, between two screaming children in the middle of the night.
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