Choose your ‘hard’

A lady brought her daughter to see me… The child was having major behavioural issues at school. Distracting other kids, misbehaving, generally causing mayhem.

The Mom sat in my office looking desperate and powerless while her child was ripping the place to shreds… Scratching in my drawers, scribbling on my wall, tearing pages out of one of my medical journals.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

I got up and held the little girl firmly by her shoulders, looked her in the eye and said: ‘Sit down quietly while your Mom and I talk, or I may need to inject you with medicine that makes you calm’.

Anyone who knows me will understand that it takes A LOT for me to react like that, but the situation called for some extreme conversation!

Fortunately, the little girl took a deep breath and obeyed my request. I gave her crayons and she sat quietly colouring while her Mom and I discussed issues at home. I could see the Mom was overwhelmed. She had little support from her husband who was working all the time.

She said to me: ‘It’s so hard’.

My reply: ‘You can choose your hard… Either you do the hard work NOW to discipline your child or you will face real hardship later when your child grows up and something truly awful happens to her because she doesn’t understand boundaries’

Sometimes in life, we have to make tough decisions. We have to do hard things. But, ultimately if we do the hard stuff today… tomorrow becomes easier.

Whenever that little girl came to see me after that, she behaved like an angel in my office!

Moral of the story: Choose your hard. View the hard stuff that you do today as an investment in a better and easier tomorrow.

Comment below with a situation where you’ve made a hard decision that paid off. Your courage and determination can inspire others to overcome their challenges.

Case studies shared are for education and illustrative purposes. They are a combination of several patients’ journeys. To protect the privacy of the patients, the names have been changed and some of the events and characters have been fictionalized, modified or composited for these purposes.