my judgmental mind

At church a few weeks ago, there was a woman a few rows ahead of us who was holding her son. The only thing is, her son looked like he might be old enough to read.

Having just finished How Much is Enough (Clarke, Dawson, Bredehoft), I was on high alert for overindulgence. To me, this looked like a clear case. I felt sympathy for this woman, whose back must have been breaking from the weight of this child. The child himself was staring back at me, almost smirking. I felt like he wanted to say to me, "Ha, ha, look what I got my mom to do, even though I'm waaaay too old."

Why was this mom doing this to herself? Why had she allowed herself to be manipulated by her child? I had a lot of ideas about how she could have prevented this overindulgence from happening, for the benefit of both of them.

Just as I was getting caught up in a wave of judgment, I realized something that stopped me in my tracks: this woman was just doing the best she could to be a good mom. Why was I judging her? She was swaying back and forth and singing to the music. She looked very happy. Her son seemed happy and was behaving perfectly in the church service, a place I cannot imagine bringing my own son yet. She and her son seemed to have a strong, loving bond. Why did I think I knew better than she did how to raise her son?

At this point, I had already stopped judging people's decisions on sleeping arrangements. My son has not been the best sleeper, and I know that there are times when life as a parent is just pure survival. I've done things I never thought I would do, just to get a few hours of sleep. I've let him sleep in my bed or on the floor in my room. I've crawled in bed with him. It's hard when your child doesn't sleep well, so if a family has found something that works for them, I'm certainly not going to judge them.

This experience at church made me want to expand my non-judgmental-ness to issues other than sleeping. If a parent is acting out of love toward their child, treating them kindly, and having their best interests in mind, I don't want to judge them.

I find that the hardest judgments to stop are not related to others, but to myself. I judge myself for letting my son sleep in my bed occasionally. I judge myself for letting him watch tv when I'm trying to make dinner on a weeknight. I agonize over the last time I lost my temper with my son and replay it over and over in my head, asking how it happened and seeing the look on his face.

Parenting is hard. So hard sometimes. And as much as we want to, we can't be perfect parents all the time. We get tired, and stressed, and things just don't go the way we want them to. Sometimes it all falls apart. I think it's ok. This is life. Just like that woman at church, I'm just doing the best I can to be a good mom. I'm doing my best, and I need to let myself see that that's a beautiful thing.