The heavens declare the glory of God.
Psalm 19:1
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‘Joy...in the Morning’
A Mother Must Know When To Let Go
By
Dotty Moore
When our daughters were in elementary school, I used to
sing them awake every morning. For years I would stand at the
bottom of the stairs and cheerfully announce it was a brand new
day with original little tunes, like:
“Good morning, good morning, good morning,
It’s time to rise and shine.
Good morning, good morning, good morning,
Be glad that you are mine.”
or:
“It’s time to have a wake up;
Wake up, get out of bed.
It’s time to have a wake up;
Wake up, you sleepy head.”
It made me feel good to wake them up this way and I always assumed they enjoyed my morning wake-up songs as much as I did. Then one night they said to me, “Mom, do us a favor. Please, don’t sing us awake anymore. Just tell us to get up.”
I was crushed.
The next morning I honored their request. I yelled up the stairs, “Hey, you guys, it’s time to get up ... so get up!”
One said, “OK, Mom. I’m up.”
The other one said, “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for not singing.”
They felt great. They came to breakfast as chipper as ever.
But me? I felt terrible every morning for days. I had enjoyed the old routine. Now, I felt mean and grumpy because I wasn’t singing to awaken my little girls.
Every morning I yelled, “It’s seven o’clock — time to get up!”
No music in my voice. No cheer. Just a plain old, “Get up, girls!”
Then one morning a couple of months later, I woke up thinking, “What bothers me the most — the fact that I’m not singing them awake anymore or the fact that they’re not ‘little girls’ any longer?”
I had to admit it was a lot of both. What could I do about it?
After all this time, I finally prayed about it.
An idea occurred that I thought might solve the problem — and it did.
My husband and I bought each of the girls her own digital alarm-clock radio. Now they could wake up without my yelling up the stairs. At the same time, they could feel grown-up and independent by setting their own alarms and selecting their own music (within reason, of course).
It was just a natural ordering of a healthy parent/child relationship — I was letting go to let them grow.
From the book ‘Joy...in the Morning’ Favorites, copyright © 2003 Dotty Moore. All rights reserved.
Variation of this column first ran in Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg, PA, May 11, 1985
Dotty Moore
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