When Maddie was just around five months
old and Brian and I were beginning to agonize over the whole
sleep-training thing, my best friend Abby uttered one of her wisest
sayings ever: “Welcome, my friend, to parenting. Every choice
you make will be ‘Do I pay now, or pay later?’ You have
to ask yourself: Do I do the work now and struggle through and reap
the rewards later, or do I take the easy way out now – say,
bringing the baby in bed with me – and pay for it later when
I have to sleep-train a three-year-old? Your whole life will be
making this choice, over and over again.”
Sleep-deprived as I was, I burst into tears, but Abby was
absolutely right and I’ve thought about it a lot in the past
few years as I make big and small decisions. I usually choose to
pay at that moment, grit my teeth and do something the long, hard
way so I only have to do it once; but sometimes I’ve made the
conscious decision to pay later, even though I knew the price would
be higher down the line. Holding fast when I tell a child
“no”, strictly limiting sugar and television, being
consistent in discipline, they’re all hard but make life
easier in the long run.
