Is Life Over After Having Kids?
Cringing At Poor Parenting Had Been My Go-To. Now I’m Trying To Use These Opportunities To Improve My Own Style.
- Doing Our Best, Other Parents
I Admit, It’s Hard To Stop Parent Shaming
- By Avigdor Azamir
Don't believe the naysayers. You can still party when you have kids, and you can even do it with them.
Here’s a situation that you’ve perhaps experienced ….or dread.
While we were still in the earlier days of the pandemic, my wife took my 2-year old daughter, who was home all day with us, to the local park. After their usual routine of swings and slide, my daughter played on her own, and my wife took advantage of the break to follow up on work on her phone. She was startled to hear a gruff voice, “Please, stay away,” talking to our daughter. My daughter, who was yearning for playmates, had followed another little boy to the top of a slide. The little boy was with his father, and they were both masked. Our daughter was not. My wife quickly stepped in, but was reluctant to physically pull my daughter away. The man began shaming my wife for being on her phone instead of fully attentive on the playground. Before long, he was blaming ”people like her” for the problems in our country.
It took a good couple of hours for my wife and me to process that encounter and reassure ourselves that he, in fact, was the problem with people these days.
Terrible Parents Are Everywhere
As a fairly mild-mannered person who tries to maintain a friendly profile (at least in public), I would never shame another parent that way. But boy if you only heard my thoughts. Do you have any idea how incompetent some parents are? Don’t get me started.
I’m not talking about abusive parents or parenting styles in the “3rd world”. I’m talking about our neighbors, our family members, and the other folks at PTA who can be the biggest dopes when it comes to dealing with children.
Some common expressions I’ve witnessed are parents who think they’re like the king of the world, whom their kids must obey unflinchingly. “Don’t you dare…” or “Don’t make me repeat myself…” are frequent preambles to some petty commands in that fiefdom.
Then there are those poor parents who’ve crowned their kids as royalty, and must constantly scramble to fulfill their child’s every whim.
The most idiotic variant of parent in my opinion are those who seem to breath condescension and insults a la: “You should be ashamed of yourself”, and “Do I have to do everything for you?” When that poor child is brought to tears, the same parent proves themselves even more idiotic when they attempt to cheer up their child with silly clown impersonation, or by throwing the kid into a tickle torture.
I often think, Don’t you realize your kid is going to grow up one day? You’re creating someone who will be emotionally scarred, inept in relationships, and who’ll likely hate you. Jeez, be a better parent for your own sake!
The I Am Awesome And You Suck Mentality
Spending time around certain parents is an exercise in tongue-shackling restraint, which starts and ends in the self-righteous gray matter between my ears. That is when I’m amongst strangers. When it comes to family, however, judging and shaming parenting methods come a bot more naturally.
Purged of any snobbishness in my tone, I manage to deliver sage advice every time. Like, “I read this article about kids developing ADHD because of too much screen time. You might find it helpful with Jr. I’m happy to send that to you.”
By the time I register that smile and nod I’m already regretting opening my mouth.
Then there was that time Jr. was having a tantrum after a dance performance for the extended family which was sabotaged by some cousin or other messing it all up. In that case, my sister chose to dismiss Jr’s devastated feelings because it was late and Jr. must be very tired.
“What’s wrong?” I said to Jr. within earshot of my sister. “It sure is sad when someone disturbs your dance, hu?”
My thoughtful intervention was rewarded by a lashing command from my sister not to parent her child because only she can see through all the shenanigans Jr. plays and only she knows how to appropriately respond.
My Deepest Motives
I guess I could justify my parent-shaming attitude as founded in a deep caring and concern for those little ones on the receiving end of intergenerational incompetence. But if I’m being honest, there is something deeply self-congratulatory in finding fault in other parents – and this does not come from a good place in my heart. If it did, I could spend an afternoon at a playground feeling like a saint, with all the judgmental opportunities I would inevitably have.
I’m A Work In Progress
I’m working on controlling these inner voices. Primarily by the realization that parenting is damn hard. Parents may get a break, but they’re never off, and they’re always a hair trigger away from catastrophe – a rush to the hospital for stitches, a call from the principal, a neighbor with a bill to fix the window broken by one of yours, and all the buttons those little angels know to press.
Parents who are prey to my scathing glance are like all of us, dealing with some struggle I know nothing about. It’s likely that they don’t have great role models from their parents, and like so many people, are carrying trauma from their own childhood. There is no cause for me to cast them as “bad” parents. They are just people. And I choose to abide by the belief I learned from Brene Brown that “most people are doing their best.”
I don’t think this means I need to ignore the bad parenting that I witness. And I don’t think it’s wise to make excuses for parents insulting and emotionally burdening their kids. Intervening between a parent and their kid is a risky proposition that I’m learning more about. Yet, I’m sure I will be confronted again by terrible parenting and I want to prepare myself and have a personal policy in place. I am pretty sure a direct confrontation with a stranger is always going to be counterproductive. But a thoughtful email or text message to a family member or a friend may actually open a productive conversation.
Finally, I’m realizing that I don’t need to have a mental diatribe against inept parents in order to learn from them. The important thing is that I ask myself what about this parent’s behavior is unacceptable to me, and how can I avoid making that error myself.
