protective parenting

He sat on my lap, quiet tears rolling down his cheeks as he waited for the nurse to come back.  Being four was losing its luster since it came with a side of booster shots.  He turned his shiny blonde head to me and said, "Protect me, Mama!" 

And then there were two people with quiet tears.

A few minutes later, he was crying with volume.  Ish was crying with volume out of the horror of it all, those three needles making his brother weep.  But by the time three Snoopy band aids striped Toby's legs, the tears were wiped away and talk of how there would be no more shots while being four became the one-year guarantee that he was going to cling to for the next 362 days.

 

I'm going to hear that little voice saying protect me, Mama for the rest of my life. 

And I will protect him - just not always in the way he thinks...

He didn't know that as I held him tightly for his vaccinations, I was protecting him.  And I knew that his sweet, heartbroken phrase was going to be my motivation to love for now and forever.  One more bullet point in my personal pep talk about giving intentional thought to what these three warrior boys need to learn and become for the life that is in front of them.  Tomorrow that might mean resisting the urge to make their beds for them even though they are finally playing so nicely.  Soon it might mean letting them suffer the consequences of forgetting homework instead of driving to the school to save the day.  And these little things are my own training ground for that day when I have 3 teenagers that need to learn through mistakes instead of having their mom pad their falls. 

Those future days don't seem as far off as they used to...