It started as an innocent text. And then, before I knew it, I was doing the one thing I hated the most: judging a fellow parent. I hate when people make judgments about my parenting style, so why was I doing it?

It really started innocently enough. I was exchanging texts with a friend of mine about the 4th of July. She asked if I had plans later, and I said “Well, first dinner. Then after that… FREEDOM!” I was making a fireworks joke, but instead, she said “Oh, are you kid-free for the evening?”

…and I kind of lost it in my mind. I tried not to let on my frustration, but my thought was “Why would being kid-free for the night spell freedom to me? I love being around my son!”

I mean, it’s true, some of the brightest moments in the day are with my son– watching him lick chocolate donut frosting off of his fingers, seeing him giggle as our dog gives him kisses, helping him turn his shirt right-side out.

So that’s why it completely floored me when someone else implied that being without my son for an evening was what I meant by the word “freedom.”

But what floored me even more was the fact that immediately judgment passed through my mind… if this mom saw the thought of being away from her child as “freedom,” I thought, what was wrong with her? Does being with her child not bring her joy?

Does she not properly care for her child?

After that popped into my head, I realized I needed to take a step back.

That mom may have the same things bringing her joy– watching her daughter learn how to pump her legs to swing by herself, seeing her daughter tackle potty training like a champ, catching those everyday moments.

Just because a few moments of having her child with a sitter brought her some relaxation didn’t mean she loved her daughter less than I love my son. It means that she’s tired, that she was taking a few minutes to herself, and that’s okay.

I choose not to have much time away from my son outside of our usual time apart. I don’t often ask someone to watch him unless I have a major work event come up that he can’t attend. I chose the career path I did so I could spend more time with my son, because I felt like he needed that added time.

But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every mom. It means that we’re all in this in our own way, trying to make it through motherhood with our own styles of doing things.

Judging another mom is like a cardinal sin in this day and age– I let something change how I felt about a friend because I didn’t like her assumption that for me, freedom meant being kid-free. And because she made an assumption, I made a lot more assumptions… and negatively judged her.

Of course, we all have thrown judgment at one time or another, but let’s all try to love each other, get through the journey together, and recognize that we all have our own ways of doing things, and we all want varying amounts of downtime. We all look at free time in our own way– some of us with our kids, some of us without our kids, some of us somewhere in between… and that’s okay.

 

Have you ever judged a fellow mom? Why? Have you changed your mind at all? Let me know in the comments below!