Part 2 of Motherhood Is NOT A Competitive Sport

By Stephanie

I have more kids than I can handle.  I know that. Anyone who spends more than ten minutes with me knows it, too.  As my sister said after vacationing with me and the girls for five days this summer, “You don’t make this look easy.”

Since I don’t plan to give any of my kids away, though, I’m going to have to tough it out for a few years until my littles become bigs and my bigs go to college. The rest of the world is just going to have to be patient until then.

Every so often I am unfortunate enough to come across someone judgmental (and vocal). Somebody who sees me in all my glaring imperfection and thinks it might be helpful, or satisfying, to point out that my house is generally a mess.  Or that Hallie’s shirt clashes wildly with her pants, which doesn’t really go with any of her six hair bows. Once in a blue moon somebody even hints that I, ahem, have not lost the baby weight gained in my last three pregnancies.

Really, Einstein? I hadn’t noticed.

I am also not completely oblivious to the fact that my twins cry too much, in any public place they please, and that it’s annoying. And you’re right, my kids have too many toys.  Or was that too few?

Moms don’t get report cards. On any given day our kids melt our hearts, give us hope for their brilliant futures, and make us want to strangle them. This parenthood business is one big hail mary pass, a wild hope that if we throw everything good we are and that we have at our kids, they’ll turn out okay.  And we won’t know if it worked until after they’re out of our homes.

The temptation, then, is to compare ourselves against other mothers. Sometimes that’s useful and we get fresh solutions for our dilemmas.  Other times, though, we feel terribly inferior - some moms are amazingly good at this business.  Here and there, we find some poor woman who’s clearly getting it all wrong, or at least part of it. She feeds her kids fast food several times a week. Her (five-year-old) daughter dresses like a hooker.  Her son is a juvenile delinquent in training. She yells too much, or disciplines too little.

So – should we tell her? We could try to disguise the criticism, phrase it as a question, “Oh.  Do your kids feel okay with the 2,846 calories for a dinner they get from a happy meal?” (I made that number up.) “Do you plan to insist on modesty once your daughter is a teenager?”

Once, in a playgroup full of nice but uber-competitive moms, I was told sweetly, “Your baby is so tiny! It must be nice to have one who’s so small for her age.” This was a group of women who announced after every well-child visit that their kid was in the 90^thpercentile for height, weight, and head circumference! (So was Kira, by the way. I thought the competition was stupid and never announced that my child was big, too.) Off topic: it was really satisfying to hear this woman’s husband telling somebody at church that his baby was 50^th percentile for weight and 25^th for height.  “She’s a short little sucker!” he said.

Sometimes a parent does something that’s so egregious that we wonder if it’s our duty to say something. My opinion is that if the child’s safety is at stake, it’s okay, even necessary.  I’m not talking about a mom who lets her child walk the two blocks to the bus stop or ride in the front seat of the car at age 11 instead of waiting until 12. (Because I do those things.)

Sadly, the parents who really need to be told to do something differently are often still doing the best they can. My brother has a friend who is a single mom with a five-year-old daughter. This woman has an unending string of live-in boyfriends whom she lets babysit her child. She’s given her child beer on at least one occasion. She feeds her daughter nothing but junk food.  This little girl has no bed time, no consistent discipline, and frankly, not a whole lot of hope for a bright future.

This mom loves her daughter. As hard as it is for me to wrap my head around, she’s doing her very best. I’ve never met her, but I would like to think if I had the chance I would be compassionate, encouraging and helpful.  And if I got sufficiently concerned, I would call the Department of Family Services. I hope this woman gets it together, and I applaud her for giving her daughter a better childhood than her drug-addicted parents gave her, but the kid still comes first. For now, she’s doing the best she knows how.

That’s the kicker – for all the lousy parenting going on out there, it’s often the best the parent can manage.  Should more people hold off on having kids, maybe forever?  Should more people limit the number of children they have or space them out more? Probably, but that same criticism could be made of me, and I would answer that I made the decisions that were right for me and my family, and if it doesn’t look perfect to somebody else, that’s their problem.

Comments criticizing parenting decisions are almost never helpful. Most moms who care about how they’re raising their children are already painfully aware of their shortcomings. The ones who don’t care? Well, it’s not going to do much good there, either.

So this is my suggestion: that we all (mostly) save our breath when it comes to fixing each other’s parenting styles. We’ve all thought about how to raise our kids until our brains hurt, and we’re all passionate about the methods we’ve chosen. It’s as hard for me as it is for anybody to bite my tongue when I see somebody doing something I think is a mistake, but bite it I shall. Really, I’m gonna try.

And for all of you who think I kind of suck at this motherhood thing? You bite your tongues, too.

Please.

Fear and Safety

By Stacie

I guess I've been inspired by the news this week because I have another story I would like to focus on.

A couple of weeks ago in Sandy, Utah,  a 4 year-old girl and her mother were shopping in a local store where after wandering away from her mother the little girl was lured into the mens bathroom by a convicted child molester who committed unspeakable acts upon this girl. It took just moments to irretrievably damage this young girl and her family.

Luckily, the molester was caught in the act by the child's mother and as he tried to run away customers tackled him and held him till police arrived. This story has been reported on every step of the way since the incident which means that almost every night since, while watching the news, fear for my own child is instilled in me again and again. (A link to this story)

My own daughter is 4 years old and lately every time we leave the house this unfortunate story runs through my head. Abbie is a very friendly and energetic child which is wonderful but could get her into a lot of trouble. Even though I tell her to not talk to strangers I still think she's too friendly to heed my warnings.

One day after I watched an update on the news about the story, I tried reviewing with Abbie what she should do if a stranger approached her. I've always told her that if a stranger tried talking to her without mom or dad around she should scream and run. But I thought I'd test different scenarios with her.

Me: "Abbie, what if a man wanted you to help him find his puppy? Should you help him or run away?"
Abbie: "I should help him."
Me: "No, He's a stranger. If he needs help he can ask another adult. What should you do?"
Abbie: "Run and find."
Me: "And make as much noise as you can. Now, if a lady in the store wanted to show you something in the toy isle do you go with her?"
Abbie: "No, I yell for you and run."
Me: "Good job, yes."

This went on for a while with a warning to stay next to me while we are shopping and I thought that she understood but the next day while shopping in Walmart, she wandered off. I yelled for her and when she  popped out from behind a rack I thumbed her down in the cart and decided that scaring her would be the only way to keep her safe. I told her that if she wandered away from me, there are bad people out there that would not hesitate to grab her and take her home with them and hurt her.  I told her that I loved her and I want her to go home with me and asked her if she wanted to go home with bad people of with me, and she said, of course, me and I warned her to stay close then.

I feel bad scaring her like that and I didn't want to it to come to that but I didn't know what else to do. What am I suppose to do?

I've thought about testing her in a "scenario" and asking a stranger to talk to her while I watch her reaction from around the corner, but is that going to far? How do I keep her safe and keep the fear from seeping into every part of our lives? Is there really an answer to all of this because the world is not becoming safer, it's becoming scarier. It's vastly changed even since I was a kid and parents can't let their kids do the same things that I got to do as a kid. But how do we find that balance? Keep our kids safe and keep the fear at bay? Any suggestions or ways to calm fears?

"Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!" But Discriminated

By Stacie

I had planned on writing a piece about my experience as a mom being “drafted” into jury duty, but I read an article the other day that made me put that post off for a couple of days. The article focused on a restaurant in North Carolina called Olde Salty that has posted a sign on their door that reads, “Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!” As astonished as I am it didn’t top what was stated later in the the article. The owner, Mrs. Armes, is being applauded for her actions and she has stated her business is doing better than ever as a result of the sign. Mrs. Armes was tried of families coming in and parents letting their children act like the restaurant was their own private playground. So, to end her frustration she posted the sign. She admits she’s not against children coming into her restaurant and will welcome everyone in, but if a child gets out of hand, an employee will politely ask a parent to take their kid outside to quiet them down. 

I understand her frustration and why she posted the sign. I remember a couple of instances before I had children when at a restaurant my husband and I were sat by families with obnoxious  kids. One example I can remember was being sat my a family of 3 kids and none of them were sitting in their chairs. 2 were running around and one was coloring their placemat on the floor. The table and the floor were a mess, and although the parents were not completely ignorant of the situation, they didn’t seem to care. It was appalling. I’m sure all of us have been sat by a family like this one time or another and have said to ourselves, “that will never be my family.” I totally did that!

But, now that I have kids I get how hard it is to wrangle in children in public settings. By the end of a very long week at home with my kids, I’m desperate to get out of the house. If I can convince my husband to go out to a restaurant I’m as giddy as a little girl, until we are actually seated and waiting for our food to be brought to us. Both kids are squirming, cranky, irritable, and no matter what I’ve brought to entertain them, it doesn’t last until the food comes. Food ends up on the floor, a mess ends up on the table, and one of us has to take an unruly child out so that we aren’t disturbing other customers. By the time we leave the restaurant (leaving a nice tip for the inconvenience) my husband and I agree it will be a while till we take them out again. 

This isn’t the situation EVERY time but more often than not this does happen. I consider myself to be a good parent who works hard at helping her children be good kids but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be perfect angels out in public. The original article that I read (unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it but there is a link to another, similar, article below) started to explore the idea of further family regulations not only in the restaurant business but on flights as well. There has been thoughts of corralling families who fly into a completely separate section on planes so other passengers are not disturbed by kids. No-children flights have also been contemplated to ease passengers flight experiences. 

I’m offended. What if more restaurants post the same sign? What if airlines start to make flights less family friendly (personally, I think they are already headed that way)? It feels as though families are continuously being judged, put into the same rotten category, and being discriminated against. Am I the only one?

Restaurant that has banned screaming children says business is better than ever

We Are BACK!

Sorry! I know it's been a couple of months but now that the school year has started and I'm refreshed and rejuvenated from the crazy summer schedule we are ready to get back to posting regularly on this blog. To restart our posts, Stephanie is beginning with a 4 part post. Please check it out!

Motherhood is Not a Competitive Sport

By Stephanie

Part 1 – How it Should Be

Every mom should have a friend like Denise.  My oldest daughter, Kira, is the same age as her youngest child, Ashley.  Kira and Ashley have been in the same grade, same classroom, every year since kindergarten except one.  This could have been a recipe for rivalry and competition, but instead it’s been a seven-year collaboration on the best way to raise our daughters.

Because Ashley is Denise’s youngest child, she’s had far more useful information to share.  The best teachers, how early to go to sign up for summer programs, what we think about a mutual acquaintance’s slumber party - she’s even called me about good deals on modest swimsuits. 

We also talk about how the girls are doing in school.  That could have been a touchy subject – nobody likes to admit that their child has fallen behind academically.  With so many other moms, I would have been tempted to not mention it or exaggerate Kira’s successes. Instead, though, we’ve commiserated when they got off to a slow start in math, rejoiced together when they both became excellent readers, and did lots of patting ourselves on the back this past year as they blossomed in the classroom of the most sought-after sixth grade teacher in town (we got in line at 5am for that one).

“How much work are you putting into the medieval fair costume?”  “Is she dressing up for Halloween?”  “Some of the other girls are wearing make-up and my daughter isn’t interested.” 

What do you think?

Having a safe person to ask those questions has made a world of difference in my parenting.  Had I not had Denise, my initiation into so many parts of raising children would have been tentative and unsure.  Instead, I’ve had the knowledge and the confidence to go charging in and do my best for my child.  Denise has been my mentor.  She has always encouraged and never criticized.  She’s occasionally made some tactful suggestions, but never in an “I know better so listen to me” way, although many times she probably did.

Most of all, Ashley is a fantastic kid.  She’s mature, hard-working, polite, kind, everything you would want in your daughter’s best friend.

If you’re thinking maybe this is all a bit too good to be true, let me assure you it is not.  Perhaps the reason I have such strong opinions on parenting and the way mothers should relate to each other is I’ve experienced the best possible relationship between two moms.

As I climb onto my soapbox for what will be a four-part series (the next two posts are about the nasty stuff moms to do to other – tune in!) I hope you chime in with your opinions, too.  None of us raises our children in isolation.  We all need each other, but sometimes we fail miserably in that obligation.

Sometimes, though, we are kind, and helpful, and recognize the tremendous power mothers can have when we work together