STRICT and uncompromising schooling produces excellent graduates, but not without a redeeming atmosphere. Praise and encouragement have their limits, particularly when they stop inspiring and start enabling bad behavior.
Both loves are needed: tough love and tender love; loves challenge and encouragement.
And without both, the gift that love is to relationships falls short and is no longer gift. On the one hand, there is mindless discipline. On the other, nothing happens, development meanders, standards fail.
This is one of the reasons why the best trainers are famous for the feats they inspire; running the gauntlet along the razor’s edge of performance. They know how to push people just as much as they know why all people need to be pushed. They are passionate amateur psychologists.
All parents should know the efficacy of love in its entirety, and their responsibility to fulfill it. And yet, as parents, we all know how hard it is to love constantly, erring, as we often do, between tough and tender ways.
A key to unite these two forms that complement each other is the execution of patience. By being patient, we can achieve discipline and control anger. With patience, we are able to deliver what we promise and, at the same time, never (seem) to get angry. With patience, we can provide a safe place to push boundaries, broaden friendships, and maintain the enthusiasm to believe that difficult things, which sometimes seem impossible, can be done. That is nothing short of inspiring.
Many can survive the harshest of human experiences, but humans only tend to thrive when tenderness is available as a contrast to harshness. And the opposite is also true. Human beings need a loving nudge from time to time, so they are equipped for the realities that life throws at us all.