We're Doing The Best We Can

I just asked my husband if he ever had anyone make any comments directly to him, or passively, about his parenting. He looked at me like I had two heads. “why would someone do that?” he asked. Exactly.

When my first kiddo was about six weeks old it was the middle of winter and we strolled around the inside of the local indoor mall before the shops opened. A shop owner was really upset at me about taking him out while he was so young. It was too early for him to be outside the house, she said.

I had a pediatrician (not our regular one) tell me to not feel guilty about my son being in daycare. I didn’t feel guilty, but it really upset me for the rest of the day that she said anything about it at all. As if I should have felt bad about it.

At a gymnastics practice one morning I played around on FB for a bit while my 5 year old was tumbling. A woman behind me said to another woman next to her, why is she on her phone, her daughter is right here?

Those women had no idea that my anxiety was about to get the better of me and if I didn’t get some type of exercise soon I was going to lose my mind. They didn’t know that I chose to go back to work instead of staying at home with the kids. They didn’t realize that I had been in charge of the kids for 3 days and was feeling overwhelmed and I desperately needed something ridiculous and funny at that moment.

These are all little things. Let's try to be kind to each other. We’re all doing the best we can at that moment and we don’t know what is going on in anyone else’s lives. Raise each other up parents!