As I write this post, my three year old son is watching TV and eating goldfish crackers. I am such a BAD MOM. If you look around my living room, there are toys and crumbs and dirty socks and sippy cups and snack cups everywhere. I am such a BAD MOM. It gets worse if you look in my kitchen – the floors are sticky and I haven’t cleaned up the breakfast dishes and there are Oreos and jelly beans and animal crackers and juice in the snack cupboard. Yep, I am a BAD MOM.
(Yes, that is a giant bowl of brightly colored “Superman” ice cream. It was a longggggg afternoon)
Everywhere I look lately I have been finding proof that I am a bad mom. With all the articles and messages out there telling me how I should be doing things, it’s hard not to feel that I fall short. Do you formula feed? BAD MOM. Do you let your kids watch TV? BAD MOM. Do you feed your kids junk food? BAD MOM. Do you let your kids cry it out? BAD MOM. Is your house a mess? BAD MOM. And while I may do a million other things right, it feels like I’m doing everything wrong most of the time.
The expectations for what a mother is “supposed” to do have gotten ridiculously out of control. No one can do it all, but I feel like the messages I hear (and I am probably too sensitive…BAD MOM!) are that I’m failing as a mom. It doesn’t matter what “side” of the mommy wars you’re on, you are going to be facing a ton of heat for any decision you make. In cyber mom world, there is no gray area. Everyone that parents differently than you is clearly a bad parent.
Obviously there are things I can (and probably should) improve on as a mother. And there are probably things YOU can improve on, too. That’s kinda part of being human. But doesn’t it matter at all that we love our kids to pieces? That we are doing our best? That we have reasons for the choices we make, even if they are different reasons and different choices that others make? In this hypercritical age, is there ANYTHING a mom can do to be a good mom?
I have certainly had my share of moments where I jump to conclusions and assume the worst about another mom. But the longer I am a parent, and the more I realize all the things I do “wrong” myself, the harder I try to give other moms the benefit of the doubt whenever I see them doing something differently than me.
That mom on the phone at the park “ignoring” her kids? She loves her kids, too. That mom that hated breastfeeding? She loves her kids, too. That mom that feeds her toddler cookies? She loves her kids, too. That mom with sticky floors and crumbs on the couch? She loves her kids, too. I KNOW this for a fact, because I AM THAT MOM. And I promise you that I love my kids so much it hurts. I love them when they are bad. I love them when they are throwing tantrums. I love them when I’m tired or grumpy or lazy.
I think about this world that my daughter is going to grow up in and sometimes it makes me feel sad. I hope that my daughter never feels the type of judgment as a parent that moms today feel. We live in a world that rarely celebrates that gray area of parenthood, where we can do everything differently but all still be amazing parents.
Let’s try to stop assuming other mothers are uninformed or lazy or bad moms just because their choices may not make sense to you. I’m ok, you’re ok. And guess what? Our kids are going to be ok, too.
thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am also this parent, I refuse to hyper focus on everything my kids out in their mouths but allow them to enjoy life! I try to teach about love, kindness and doing things for yourself. I adore my girls and do everything I can to give them a happy, rounded child hood. I was just accused by my brother for being a bad mom for giving my 11 month old Little Crunchies that look like Cheetos- she’s teething, everyone else was eating cake that she’d choke on & it made her happy he didn’t allow his 3 to have any sort of junk or cKe/ ice cream til they were 3 years old, trust me it was more sad for the family to watch the poor kid not get any cake at family stuff while they had to watch everyone else eat it- but he’s the good, perfect parent. Thank you for your post, we are not bad parents- our kids will love not be bad people for having junk food and watching tv just like us
Yep. My toddler loves My Little Pony. Can you guess how I know that? Oh, right… because she watches TV. Oh, and while we’re confessing things. She still maybe likes to have a bottle instead of a sippy cup. There, I feel better. Confession IS good for the soul. Proud member of the Bad Mom Club!
Bad mom=rad mom.
My son is two. He can count to 20 and knows both two-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. He loves pentagons, hexagons, and octagons, and even knows what a dodecahedran is (for anyone like me, who didn’t know, it’s a 12-sided three-dimensional shape). Even his preschool teachers have been impressed with his knowledge of shapes and numbers. I wish I could claim responsibility for this, but I am one of those bad moms who introduced my child to television, and it turns out he loves Team Umizoomi. Also, thanks to Blaze and the Monster Machines, he’s started learning basic physics. He is also an incredibly imaginitive child.
I feel like, unless you are endangering your child, your parenting style is none of my business and vice versa. But I dare anyone tell me that my child is worse off because of television.
Great post! THANK YOU for giving a voice to ALL of us moms. Every child is different, every family faces different ups and downs, but we’re all trying our best. It’s time we stop judging ourselves (and others) and start appreciating how hard parenting is!
Thanks for the “I hate breastfeeding” part!!!!
I thought it was just me 😀
You are brave. And you are awesome!!!!
Love!!