You know what would make the Mommy wars go away?

[roseleaf]

If we would stop thinking that we could judge parents by one moment or one action.  I'm so tired of it, and I've been running into it all over the place lately.  That nice long letter to the mom on her phone about how much she's missing.  Yeah, except maybe she's taking 15 minutes on her phone out of her entire day and she needs a break.  Needs

Comments

[chaz_lehmann]

http://Jen.You.Are.Mighty.aninote.com

[mi_er]

I agree that we are all quick to judge others. I know I am, hence my post the other day :)
But I don't agree about the tumblr. With regards to crying you are absolutely right but it's the fact that he takes pictures of it. Lots of pictures. And whether it's right or wrong by putting it all in a very public place he opens the discussion on it in my opinion. I am trying not to judge him as a dad but I am judging his actions as I feel they are wrong and hurtful.

[roseleaf]

I can totally understand the other arguments against it. And he has made it public and opened himself to discussion of whether what he's doing is right or wrong. I'm specifically talking about judging his ability to comfort his child. I really, really don't think it's fair to assume that he doesn't know how to comfort his child because he's taking a picture instead of comforting his child. And with your post the other day, you were rightfully judging a specific action that you know a lot about and know the harm of. That's not what's been frustrating me lately. It's people seeing parents in one situation and using one aspect of what they see to judge their entire parenting.

[kathleenfoucart]

Oh, man, I did this in Target yesterday. Saw a dad on his phone with a whiny toddler-ish age daughter & got ticked off because he was yapping away to somebody instead of paying attention to her. On the way out, when she was *actually* upset/ crying, he was off the phone, zig-zagging the cart & singing silly songs to her until she started laughing & smiling again. So... yeah. Really need to work on not letting one moment (esp. when *I'm* in a poor mood, as I was yesterday) define how I think about someone else.

[roseleaf]

I think you're at the stage where it's easiest to do this. You're reading and thinking about what kind of parent you want to be and arming yourself with all of that knowledge, but haven't had to make it all fit with your actual child and your actual family yet. ;-) As a parent, it's easier and harder. There are days when I would totally have thought, "Man, he needs to get off the phone and pay attention to his poor daughter." And there are days when I would have thought, "Poor guy. Can't she be quiet for five minutes and let him take a phone call?" We went through an awful stage with E from 18 months to 2 years. She would just scream when she wasn't happy about something, usually when she was hungry and/or tired and sometimes we couldn't help but be out in public for it. Waiting for food at restaurants was awful. I know people judged us for it, but there would be times when we were all tired and starving and a half an hour from home, and what else could we do? Or my dad would always want to go out to eat when they're here or

[amieroserotruck]

I'm guilty of being on my phone at the park and proud of it.  I love this response to that self-righteous twit.

http://friedokra4me.blogspot.com/2013/03/dear-mom-on-iphone-i-get-it.html?m=1