Mother's Day

Today is my wife's 4th Mother's Day (as a Mom). I'm so glad that JD and AJ have my wife as their mother. She's confident in her parenting and grounded in her approach. She lets the kids be kids and discover things on their own and at their own pace. She also sets appropriate limits and boundaries. The more I interact with other parents (especially here in Silicon Valley), the more rare I can see these qualities are. The kids are blessed. I am blessed.

My wife and I make our marriage a priority. We feel like the single best gift that we can give our kids is the knowledge that their parents love each other and nothing will tear them apart. With that foundation, they should have the confidence to try or do just about anything. Between an incredibly involved aunt and some wonderful babysitters, my wife and I have the opportunity to go out together (for some private time) on a regular basis. That is also a great blessing. Ironically, I think some parents put so much time and energy into their kids that they neglect their marriage. A co-worker once told me that kids either bring a couple even closer together or amplify marital problems that were previously neglected. I think both are true. Kids bring you closer together, amplify old marital problems, and create entirely new ones. It's a lot of stress on the individual parents and their relationship. That's why I think it's so important to make the marriage a priority, to proactively address issues before they fester and undermine the marriage.

In Having It All ... And Making It Work (see this post), the authors observe that "We have discovered that many working professionals and emerging leaders struggle to achieve balance. We also see evidence that chronic imbalance causes serious problems at work and at home. Sadly, some people live in denial, at least until they experience a major wakeup call. They believe that problems in their personal lives with marriage and family relationships won’t affect their work or that problems at work won’t affect their family lives, but invariably an imbalance in one domain affects the other.” In the context of marriage and parenting, I would add "Sadly, some people live in denial, at least until they experience a major wakeup call. They believe that problems in their marriage won’t affect their kids or that problems with their kids won’t affect their marriage, but invariably an imbalance in one domain affects the other.” My wife taught me this. All the more reason I'm so happy I'm married to her and that she's the mother of my children.