Raw Drip

Coming in at #3 on my list of parenting life lessons, I thought it was time to get a little Atticus Finch on your ass…

Walk a mile in another mommy’s shoes before you go passing judgement on her parenting style

Macaroni & cheese dinner, chicken nuggets, french fries, frozen bagel pizzas. Welcome to the contents of my new kid-friendly freezer.

After Adam was born, I made a pact with Dick to prepare only the most wholesome, natural food we could make or buy. Only fresh fruit & veg for our kids. No pre-packaged, mass-produced, sugary, chemical-laden crap.

Usually I reserve the pleasure of being judgmental for silently ripping on the silicone-inflated, overly-dressed New Jersey mom caricatures teetering in their Jimmy Choos at the local mall. But my smug superiority has been known to extend to parenting from time to time. I readily admit that I’ve looked down upon parents who embrace convenience foods for their kids. I thought they were probably taking the easy way out and their children would surely pay the price with their health.  Parents who let their kids zone in front of Noggin for hours a day were another pet peeve of mine. “What about stimulating your child’s imagination and developing his cognitive abilities?”, I’d say under my breath. Yes, I was judgmental.  Not anymore…

Once I went back to work and my SAHM gig ended (SAHM=stay-at-home-mom, for the uninitiated), I learned that preparing healthy food for yourself is difficult enough, but finding time to prepare let alone convince a child to eat anything nutritious is nearly impossible.  Sometimes you just have to feed them what you’ll know they’ll eat and trust that, on balance, they’re getting what they need to keep going and growing.

I also learned that a working mother’s schedule doesn’t afford you a lot of flexibility. It’s tough to focus on thinking about and preparing a gourmet meal when that 14ft tall pile of laundry is always looming and so are children’s demands for attention, about a gazillion household chores, oh, and then there’s obligatory sex (which you give up as a reward to your husband for not leaving you and the children) – the list goes on and on.  This means that something’s gotta give and it’s usually nutrition.  The convenient allure of pre-packaged food seduces you so easily…

I have turned to the dark side. Convenience foods? Check! Mind-numbing TV to zone out the children? Check! No longer can I harshly judge others for falling back on modern convenience in the face of endless responsibilities.  I figure, as long as you’re not actively neglecting or abusing your kid I’m of the belief that good child-rearing is a concept open to interpretation. 

So, you let your kids watch TV unattended while you make dinner?  I say – “How clever, you are!” 

Occasionally, you slip junior some children’s Benadryl so you can get more than 2 hours of sleep? I say – “Good thinking, girlfriend!”

You want to bring your iPod to the restaurant loaded with episodes of ‘Sponge Bob’ so you can, maybe, get in some adult conversation? I say – “Brilliant!”

Although I may choose to do things differently with my kids it doesn’t mean that whatever that other mommy is doing is wrong, bad or lazy. It’s great to have ideals & principles, but it’s also important to demonstrate your flexibiulity and openess to other ideas without judgment. Both are equally important lessons to pass on to our children.  Let’s stop judging one another so harshly. Parenting isn’t a competition anyone ends up winning.

But, I do feel compelled to warn you: If you’re strutting through a fancy New Jersey mall with a face that says, “Plastic surgery is my favorite past-time” and wearing loud designer clothing that should’ve been left on the Neiman Marcus mannequin, as far as I’m concerned it’s open season on judgement.  Let that catty bitch out of the bag!