Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Every mom gets criticized for something

I recently read an article called The Mom-Judging Olympics: A competition nobody meant to enter. It goes through results from their survey asking moms what kinds of behavior would make them judge another mom. 26 000 moms were surveyed and 90% of them would judge another mom. I hate to admit it but I would be one of them.

Have a bratty kid? 66% of moms will judge you. It depends on the circumstance but if you brought a bratty kid to fine dining, I would sure judge you. Tristan is mostly well behaved, which is why we can travel with him and dine out with him. If he were different, we would definitely stay home. Ruining it for others would only ruin it for us even more.

Breast-feeding your 3 year old? 43% would judge you. I don't think I would judge you. I breastfed Tristan and can now understand why some people can be attached to this. I have no problem with breastfeeding as a way to provide milk for thirst but if it were used simply to soothe a bratty child, I would judge you.

Have an overweight child? 37% would judge you and yup, I would too.

Give your kid junk food? 34% would judge you. I wouldn't if I saw this for the first time. We're even beginning to give Tristan a bit of junk food tastings here and there. Even though, there are a lot of things he has not tried and I hope he doesn't eat any time soon like cheezies, flavored chips, McDonald burgers, and pop. If I knew that you were feeding your kid junk food daily, I would totally judge you. If you were feeding your 6 month old junk food, I would totally judge you. But these are sort of different questions, aren't they? I make my own healthy meals so of course I would judge you.

Let your kid watch TV/play video games too much? 32% will judge you. I would judge you. There is no reason your child should be doing this too much.

Co-sleep with your child? 23% would judge you. I would judge you but not harshly. I remember bringing Tristan into bed with us maybe for a few hours a couple of times when he was a baby. We were super tired and just couldn't handle it. We felt guilty every time since we didn't want to develop a habit and have him not sleep in his own bed. It was part of us being scared of too much attachment. Lucky for us the few hours of bed sharing had no effect on his sleeping habits. He sleeps great in his own bed and has been there since day one :)

You work too much? 20% would judge you. I wouldn't judge you, assuming you have proper childcare arranged for your child. I am a work-at-home-mom but I do most, if not all of my work while Tristan is in daycare. Having said that, I really don't over work. If anything, I would love to work more!

Didn't try to breast-feed? 18% would judge you. I would judge you. Not breastfeeding because you find out you can't or it's not your thing is cool. If you don't even try and I mean really try, that's uncool. Breastmilk is the best thing for your baby. Everyone knows it. You got to at least give it a good try.

There is something that didn't make it on their top 9 list, which surprised me. It's something I know I would be judged harshly for. Do you let your child cry it out for sleep training? I did this and was criticized for it. I made the mistake of commenting on an attached parenting site about the issue and then I got bashed over here on my own blog. I was totally outnumbered over there! What was I thinking?

No matter what you do as a parent, there will always be something for someone to criticize. I feel like Jean-Louis and I are pretty solid good parents. We are strict, yet loving, and gentle with Tristan. He is well behaved, polite, average sized, and sleeps well on his own in his own bed. He was breastfed for just over a year but I would have gone longer if he wanted me to. I love to cook and bake so most of what Tristan consumes is healthy and balanced foods. He only drinks water and milk. We rarely give him junky foods and we have no TV so he doesn't watch at all. We do let him play on the iPad maybe 5 to 10 mins a week, which is really nothing. He can play with his toys alone and he loves to read with us. We receive compliments about him a lot and it always makes us proud :)


Overall, it seems like we have it really great here. Ah, wrong. We let him cry it out when we sleep trained him. He didn't end up crying much but we were dying inside when it happened. We yell at him. Sometimes we lose our temper in front of him. We sometimes remove all his food if he refuses to eat or try to eat. That means no food at all until the next meal, which could be more than 12 hours later. We bribe him a lot with things like sweets or a DVD movie if he eats all his main meal. And so on. Basically, there are a lot of things you can criticize me for about parenting. It doesn't bother me as much now that Tristan is 2 1/2 years old. It bothered me back then when he was still a baby and parenting was so new to me. I know what kind of parent I am now and I'm pretty happy about it and that's all that really matters.

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