Friction is the price of Quality

My wife and I know each other in part because we both worked for the same fantastic daycare - St. Lukes Infant Care Center, in Austin Tx. So it should come as no surprise that we have professionally honed infant care skills. Some important things we learned there are that there are two key components you develop when you get good at caring for infants.

1) A personal style of care. How you hold a child, how you feed them and talk to them etc.- all of that involves subtle differences from caregiver to caregiver. When you care for infants professionally you find the way to do these things comfortably and with confidence, and that becomes your style. As a first time dad, it doesn't hurt to take advice on how to care for your child, but don't feel constrained to follow instructions exactly. Do what feels right for you and do it with confidence, and your baby will respond to the non-verbal queues in a positive manner.

2) The ability to adapt that style to the child. Quality care of an infant means you watch them, you listen to them, and you pay attention to what they've been doing so you can try to decipher and anticipate their needs - whether physical or emotional. Then you figure out how to apply your style of care to that child, because what works for one baby often won't work exactly the same way for another child.

So here's the problem. We both love our child and care for him more deeply then we ever could for a child at the daycare. And for all the reasons mentioned above, we don't agree one hundred percent on every aspect of caring for our child. Disagreement plus high charged emotion - can you see where this is going?

We could have fought about it, hurting feelings and spreading guilt along the way. However I'm happy to say this is where my wife and I click really well. We sat down and shared our thoughts and discussed the differences in a very constructive manner. We took stock of our own feelings and talked about them too just to clear the air of any ill will. When we were done, it all fell into place for me.

Friction is the price of Quality when responsibilities are shared. If one or both of the parents are uninterested in the care of their child, then most things are just "good enough". But if both parents are concerned about the care of their child then from time to time they will disagree and that's okay. Hopefully, by remembering this we can keep things in perspective and continue to deal with the friction constructively.