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.