In my pre-mommy life, I often found myself judging-- and even openly critiquing-- bad parenting. The woman in line at the store with the screaming toddler. The man who spanked his son over an accident. The mom putting diluted Coca-Cola in her one-year-old's bottle. I believed that I was not only superior to these "bad" parents, but also that I had a right to say so.
So, on occasion, I would step in and say, "Does spanking your son actually stop him from wetting his pants?" or "Doesn't the caffeine in Coke upset your baby?" I knew that, if and when I became a mother, I would be infallible. No one would ever have any reason to believe that I was doing a bad job. And, as it turns out-- of course--I'm no more perfect of a parent than anyone else. It took a whopping dose of humility and maturity to reach that point.
All Moms Have Moments.
My most humbling moment as a parent came just a few days ago. I had four articles that would be due in as many hours, I was fighting a horrible caffeine headache, and my daughter declined any lunch options I offered at home. Desperate to find a workplace with a wifi signal, coffee, food, and a kid-friendly playspace, I brought my daughter to a local cafe with a large outdoor courtyard.
No one else was outside, so I let my three-year-old romp around the courtyard with a bag of Sun Chips and a fist full of Play-Doh, while I immersed myself in work. It looked like a great solution.
Good Moms Can Look Bad.
My day-at-the-cafe plan seemed to be going well. I handed my daughter enough pennies to feed a third-world country, and she joyfully plopped them into the courtyard fountain.
Eight paragraphs into an article, she piped up, "Mama, I pooped."
"Just a minute," I responded, frustrated that she'd had yet another accident. I finished typing a concluding paragraph, clicked "submit," and looked up to see--- my daughter, pants-less, with her hands, legs and clothes completely covered in poop. This had all happened in less than three minutes of immersion in my online work. In an attempt to take care of her own mess, she had spread her feces all over the courtyard.
You Don't See the Big Picture.
Humiliated and in tears, I rushed inside, grabbed handfuls of wet napkins, cleaned my feces-covered child, and scrubbed the heck out of the tables and chairs in the courtyard. Other patrons, who became aware of the mess as I desperately tried to explain it to the cafe's staff, shot me daggers of anger and judgment with their eyes.
I realized, that, to anyone seeing this extremely upsetting fiasco, I might look like the world's most horrible mother. How could I have ignored my child while she made this mess? How could anything on the computer be more important than promptly addressing the accident? And, (gasp!) why isn't she fully potty-trained at three years old?
Looks Can Be Deceiving.
A person judging my parenting in that moment wouldn't know that my daughter has gross motor delays that have hindered potty-learning. Nor would they know that I was immersed in important work, not social networking or online gaming. Nor would they know that I have hugged, kissed, and read to my daughter every single day that she's been alive. Nor would they know that I'm a young, single, work-at-home mom raising my daughter entirely by myself.
The bottom line in sharing this humiliating story is to highlight that not all women who look like terrible moms actually are. The parent who you are judging may be dealing with an extremely stressful situation, and may be a phenomenal mom 99.99% of the time. Before you judge or criticize a "bad" parent, step back long enough to consider that you are witnessing only one moment out of decades years of this person's parenting.
I'm Done with Judgment.
As for me, I think I have officially stopped making judgments toward other people's parenting skills. For all I know, the woman I see yelling at her child may have just lost a loved one. She may have witnessed the same unacceptable behavior in her child every day for the last three weeks. She might be an hour late to work, on the verge of losing her job, and completely unable to find a caregiver for her child.
So, as hard as it is to keep your mouth shut when someone publicly engages in questionable parenting practices, my advice is to zip your lips and bite your tongue. The "bad" mother in public might one day be you.
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