During my conversation with Melanie Boudreau for this month’s podcast, she said something that has stuck in my head for a few weeks now. She talked about being at church with her daughter, who has issues with noise, and seeing the looks from others when they noticed her wearing noise cancelling headphones. As a parent you know the look, even if your child doesn’t have a special need. If our children act up or are not doing something deemed appropriate by others, they give us the look of disapproval. They of course would never let their child act like that, or perhaps if you were just a better parent your child would not act like that. A lot of things go through my head when I get that look, anger, shame, and judgment.  I don’t like the feeling of others judging me in a situation they have no idea about, and I think to myself how they have no right to give me that look.

While I can be, in that moment self righteous, I have to sometimes step back and realize I have been at times on the other side. Maybe I didn’t give the look, but I have judged other parents for their handling of a situation or behavior, that I may have thought they should be better at dealing with. There might have been a million reasons why the parent was not having success in that moment, including as many call them, a hidden disability, which might have made what I deem acceptable, not possible. There have also been times when my children decided to test me, which meant proving to them that even having a tantrum was not going to let them get what they wanted, even if that tantrum was happening in the middle of Toys r Us.

Not to say the behavior is appropriate, but giving each other the benefit of the doubt is so necessary. Areas we may have succeeded in may be an area others are working on. It may also be we are better at seeing this in other’s children, and not in ours. Whatever the case, we need to stop judging each other on our parenting skills, and start supporting each other in our pursuit to help our children grow up to be the person God wants them to be. This road of parenting is bumpy and hard enough without us making it harder on each other.

The flip side to this is we also need to let our children be children. I have expectations of how my own children should act, and some of my expectations no one could ever live up to. Wanting my children to act like a well-trained pet is equally ridiculous.  Knowing where to press and where to let go can be a really hard thing to do. The good thing is we have been given grace by God in our own lives and we can share the same to other parents and our children as well.