I wrote a blog post a
while back about things I thought I did differently to a lot of other people. I
wrote it expecting a lot of people to read it and then tell me I was wrong, or
suggest other ways of doing things. I suppose I was expecting judgement. What I
actually got was a lot of people saying, “that’s not so different; I do that
too.”
A couple of weeks after the post,
someone sent me an email saying they had been reading my blog. She told me this
post in particular made her feel that I was judging her, and that since I’d also
recently made a post about women judging each other, perhaps I should be
a bit more careful about what I wrote.
She's judging you! |
The email bothered me. I went
back and re-read the post several times, trying to see where I might have come
across in that way. I asked several people for their opinion, and although they
told me they’d had no problem with that post or any others, it did make me
censor myself for a little while. I really didn’t want to upset people or have
them think I was judging them. I’m very aware that I’m just one woman, and a
lot of the time I feel completely at sea with the whole parenting thing, so the
last thing I wanted was to come across as a know-it-all passing judgement on
people around me doing it all wrong.
Then I read this post where
the writer commented that she regretted some of the things she’d done with her
first child, and had since read a lot of articles and studies that changed her
viewpoint on those particular matters. She noted that a lot of the time, when
faced with a different approach to their own, people will trot out the “I did
it and he/she/I turned out FINE!” response, and become defensive about their
own actions. The last paragraph of the piece reads:
So, I ask of you this, when you
are next confronted with a piece of information that you THINK is judging you,
that you think is trying to paint you as a BAD parent, pause, re-read and
consider what you are painting over the picture and realise how much baggage
you have brought to the place. Once you let that baggage go, once you can look
at it, acknowledge it and say “I don’t have to carry you any more” then life
will become that much lighter, and your parenting journey will be open to a
world of learning and opportunities.
I do not consider myself as in a
position to judge anyone. Sometimes, yes, I am guilty of making a snap
judgement in my head, but I try my best to keep it there, in my head. Having
been unfairly judged by a lot of people in recent months, I try to always
remember such glib sayings as “there are two sides to every story” and “you
never know what goes on behind closed doors.”
Since becoming a parent my own
views and opinions on things have changed dramatically. I have friends whose
parenting styles and choices vary wildly from my own, and yes, sometimes we
disagree on things. But we just agree to disagree, and carry on with our lives.
Who am I to say that my child will turn out any more happy, successful or
well-rounded than the one next door or down the street whose mother does
everything exactly opposite to me? Nobody knows exactly what they are doing
with this parenting lark, and anyone who tells you they do is, quite frankly,
lying out of their arse. It’s a learning curve that starts the day you pee on
the stick, and doesn’t end until you shuffle off this mortal coil.
I sometimes feel judged by
certain things I read, on blogs or on Facebook. I had always planned to wait
until S was safely past the 6-month mark before introducing solids, but
actually she was just over five months when we started. I was worried about
letting people know this, in case they judged me. Then I realised that
actually, they don’t care . They’re too busy worrying about what and when to
feed their own child. Or their Farmville game, or whatever else.
This point was clearly
illustrated the other day on Facebook, when a friend put up a post asking when
mothers had started their babies on solids. There were over 20 commenters, and
every single one said something different. I’m fairly sure none of them has had
Social Services knocking at their door. We all have different approaches, we
all think what we are doing is the right thing at the time, otherwise we would
not do it. But having been so lacking in confidence in the early days of
motherhood, I feel now that I need to be more vocal about my decisions, and my
confidence in those decisions. When I go off on one about why this is the best
decision, or that is not the right thing to do, I’m justifying to myself as
much as to anyone who might be reading, confirming that I do know what I’m
doing.
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