Oh, we moms. You must admit - we can be SO judgmental (and Dad's too).
photo courtesy of http://singlemindedwomen.com
But what do our passing judgements really mean?
I'm no saint, trust me and it took a certain person calling me out for me to realize exactly what my commentary meant. And wow! has it provided me with some greatly needed - appreciated change in perspective.
We all do it - pass judgment on other parents and their parenting methods, but what I started doing was turning the mirror back on myself. Why do I feel the necessity to judge? What is it about my own insecurity that is causing me to feel the need to point out these differences?
As soon I started doing that, wow did my perspective change. Now I am not talking about passing judgments on the obvious things like, child neglect - abuse and those situations. Those are obviously horrific and flat out impossible to imagine. I am talking about the differences in choices like - formula feeding vs breastfeeding, making baby food, cloth diapering, attached parenting. Those sorts of things.
It's not my place to tell these parents whats right for them, their community and how to read their children. It's not my place to judge their decision based off a situation I am not even entirely educated on. And more importantly - what is going on in my life to cause me to pass those judgements? Have you ever thought of it that way?
I see a lot of passing judgement blogs about 'don't judge because your different' or 'we all parent differently' or 'all kids are different'. Well yeah - duh. That's a bit obvious. Dive deeper than that. You will judge, because we are all so different. Don't kid yourself. I encourage that when we do pass judgement or the urge comes about - detect it, and turn it about face quickly.
Do an evaluation. Because our judgements are 99.9% of the time about us.