Mom's Judging Mom's

Do you ever wonder why on earth as mom's we are so hard on each other? Since Gage was born I have been getting so much flack from all these different mom's about my parenting styles. As mom's I feel for the most part that unless your child is abused or neglected or unloved in any way, we should be left to just parent our children! I will never forget when Gage was just tiny and I found out folks were talking about me behind my back saying I don't put that poor baby on tummy time. He. Was. Colic. Would you lay a screaming baby on the floor and leave him? I wouldn't, that is just not something I am OK with. I am pretty sure his current issues do not stem from not being "allowed" to have tummy time at 4 weeks old.

Another example out of thousands; I am visiting a friend when Bo is about three months old. One of her friends walks in, see's him, and makes this enormous fuss over how TINY he is. It is the first time she has seen him in person, but she knows of his feeding issues thus far. Instead of remarking on how adorable he is, all she does is rant about how he needs to eat more because he is so tiny. I am sorry Judgmental Mom, you must know more than the doctors who are unsure of how to treat my recently "failure to thrive" diagnosed child. Go ahead and give feeding him a try. Oh and by the way, thank you for making me feel a little bit worse about how I am doing as a parent. Now let me tell you, these are two examples out of THOUSANDS. I can easily say thousands, because it is most definitely true.

Here is the kicker... we do this to each other. This is not just happening to me, it happens to everyone. We should be allowed to make our own parenting choices!!! If you want to breastfeed your baby past that one year mark... who cares! Co-sleep... go ahead (just please be cautious)! Baby-wear... whatever! Spank... it's your choice!

In our home we cloth diaper AND use sposies, we sometimes baby wear, we sometimes co-sleep, we try and go med-free, we do not believe in crying-it-out, Cote is almost 3 and she still uses a bottle (for cognitive reasons), we did extended rear facing car seat's till they were 2, we will be homeschooling Gage (perhaps temporary, perhaps permanent), we are religiously open and choose to let the kids choose their own religions, we actually discipline our children (appropriately depending on cognitive awareness), my kids run naked outside in the summer, Gage will probably be the only boy in the county with long hippy hair, and we do not discriminate against ANYONE and teach our children to do the same.

So whatcha think? Maybe one of these days we can be open to how other mom's parent their OWN children???