To All the Moms Before Me

I’m not a huge fan of those “open letter to XXX” blog posts, but I feel like it’s appropriate for this sort of confession, so here goes, an open letter to all the moms before me:

To all the moms before me,

I judged you. All the time. I thought the little things you did to keep your kid quiet or happy or fed were silly and that being a parent had to be way easier than some people made it look.

I saw you at the farmers market with your 3 year old in a stroller and thought, “Why doesn’t that lady make her kid walk?”

I went to your house and thought, “Why do they have a baby jail set up in their living room, it looks terrible and how hard can it really be to contain a baby who can hardly crawl.”

I saw you at Target with your kid who looked “way too old” to be wearing a diaper and thought, “Wow, if I ever have kids, they’ll for sure be potty trained by that age.”

I watched you let your kid that looked “way too young” climb to the top of the jungle gym at the playground.

I gasped when I saw you feed your toddler McDonald’s french fries. I gasped even louder when I saw you give him a sip of your coke.

I was horrified when you told me you let your kid sleep in bed with you still, and he’s 7 years old.

I was also horrified when you told me you let your kid cry it out for 2 hours and then did the same thing the next night.

The list goes on and on but I’ll spare you…

So again, I say, I’m sorry, those things you did were to protect your own sanity, something that is way more important to the long term health of you and your child than any stroller or diaper or pacifier will ever be.

I would love to say that I won’t ever pass judgement again, but that’s just a lie. So…keep doing your best and I’ll do mine and I’ll keep my judgements to myself and some part of me will understand why you parent the way you do and I’ll stick to my (equally “terrible,” “crazy,” or “unorthodox”) parenting methods!

And one more thing: mom, you did a great job with us!

Look! Our very own baby jail!!