Parents: ignore judging Looks or Comments - you know your Child best!

I yesterday wrote that one should not judge people from a glimpse that one happens to see from their lives. Especially as parents, one can often be at the receiving of such quick and unnecessary judgement. This can make anybody over-conscious about his decisions in raising their children.

It is quite natural: your toddler throws a temper-tantrum in a supermarket. You know what you are supposed to do according to countless parenting-advice-books: react calm, let him or her scream and continue about your business. Once the child has calmed down, you can talk about it. Nevertheless there is this one nagging feeling inside of you: oh no, what is everyone going to say? You feel guilty as though it is your fault that your child just had this meltdown. You see other people looking at you and you feel ashamed.

There are enough people who actually judge. Who look at a child misbehaving and straight away blame the parents, not thinking that it might just be that child’s worst day! They don’t consider what may have happened just before the outburst!

After that, there are people who somehow feel entitled to judge on parental decisions of other couples: they comment on children sleeping in the bed or even bedroom of their parents, they disapprove of nursing children for more than a certain time that seems appropriate to them, others disapprove of bottle feeding, regardless the reasons for it and some even have problems with the choice of clothes of some parents!

As long as those children are not yours and their actions don’t directly influence you, why do you even bother to create your judgement? You don’t know what is behind that and really, it is in most cases not your business. You make a parent feel bad – which is by the way not helping the child’s behavior either!

For the parents, I would like to say you should not mind other people as much. Be confident about your decisions and let your child as well as the surrounding see that, too. Sometimes you anyway feel guilty or embarrassed for no reason at all. Often, you imagine other thinking more than they actually do – and that makes you insecure.

You are the one who sees your children the whole day long, not the person who just walks by. Not the other patients in the doctor’s waiting room. You know whether your child has deserved a chocolate in the morning and you decide whether you get the best sleep with your baby in your bed or in a separate bed!

Parenting teaches you bigger confidence in your own decisions and helps you grow up in this way: you don’t need to care about other people’s judgement anymore!