It has always bugged me when people refer to their pets as their "children". No matter how much you love a dog, it is not a child. And the main difference is this: when you have a pet, your responsibility is to make sure its needs are met, but when you have a child, your responsibility is to make sure that it learns how to meet its own needs. Yes, a pet requires care and attention and affection just like a child. But you are not preparing that pet for the day when it leaves you and starts a life without you. When you are a parent, your main job is to make yourself obsolete.
I was thinking about this the other day, after my husband had a run-in with his ex over Jessie spending the summer with us. Long story short, when he insisted that Jessie would, in fact, be here, she accused him of being heartless and cruel. She said , "What kind of father are you, that you don't consider Jessie's feelings at all?" Well, I can answer that one. The kind of father that considers not only the way his child feels at this particular moment in time, but how she will feel one, five, or ten years from now. A good father.
Almost every divorced parent I know goes through this. My daughter Taylor, who loves her father dearly, and has spent every other weekend with him for the last two years, still sometimes throws fits and doesn't want to go. For the entire first year after the divorce, she would begin crying on the Wednesday before her "Daddy Day" and pout for two days afterwards. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world not to make her go. But she is the child, and I am the adult, and I know that life is not about the here-and-now but the now-and-forever. That she cries not because she doesn't love her father or want to see him, but because she hates change. That sameness is security, and doing something different is scary. That deep down inside she understands without understanding that she depends on me for survival, and doesn't understand that if I am gone there are others upon whom she can depend. That spending time with her father and maintaining a close and loving relationship with him is more important than the temporary fear and sadness going away may cause.
It may sound heartless and cruel, but I don't particularly care if my child is happy at any given moment. I care if she has the emotional tools to deal with all the scariness and disappointment and obstacles in life. I care if she understands that sometimes you have to do something you don't want to do, just because it is the right thing to do. And I want her to learn to feel good about making that choice. I want her to learn to respect authority, to honor her family, to obey the law. I want her to learn that caring only about yourself leads to unhappiness, and that caring about how your decisions affect other people does not diminish you, but enriches you.
Parenting is not for the cowardly. You can't be afraid that your child won't love you. You can't be afraid that your child will be angry with you, or will be unhappy for a while. You can't be afraid of your child saying something that will hurt your feelings. You can't be afraid of the struggle that will invariably ensue when you stand by your decisions. You can't constantly wonder 'Am I doing the right thing?' You are doing the right thing if what you are doing helps your child grow in kindness and compassion, in selflessness and honor.