“Go Ahead. Judge Me.”
In coming up on the end of my first year of motherhood, I’ve been doing some reflecting on the things I’ve learned, and the first major lesson I’ve absorbed is this: Everyone judges my parenting; I am the worst mother in the world, and that’s okay.
I work. Full time. Because I can, and because I want to, and because I have ambitions for the future of my careers (teaching and writing). I only see my son in the evenings and on the weekends, mostly while my husband is at his part time job and while both my husband and my son are sleeping (sometimes I grade papers through the night). As far as traditional society values go, this makes me a horrible mother, because I am not constantly around my child, and on top of that, I’m a selfish jerk for deciding that my career is important. But, when I am around my son, I’m happy and full of love for him. When I was at home all the time, I was always angry and it was so hard to be pleasant to anyone. This isn’t true for everyone, but it is true for me. So I work. Go ahead. Judge me.
We stopped nursing at six months. When I say that, I mean my son was on nothing but formula by the time he was six months old and we started the switch when he was five months. The FDA recommends nursing until the age of two, and I’ve heard stories about mothers who continue to nurse while feeding their child solids and regular food up to the age of five. Honestly, if we could have afforded for my son to be taking formula from day one, he would have been on nothing but formula from day one. As far as current society values are concerned, this also makes me a horrible mother, and it makes me a selfish jerk because I decided that my body was mine and I took it back before the infamous “they” said I should. But, nursing was painful and difficult and at the beginning seemed to be impossible. So we got him on formula as soon as we could afford it. Go ahead. Judge me.
We don’t have an established bedtime. We try. We honestly do. It’s gone from 10pm, to 8pm to 2am to 9pm, and it changes constantly based on whether or not my son is going through a growth spurt or teething or if it’s a Tuesday (because, you know, Tuesdays are Tuesdays). We’ve tried rocking, walking, talking, bathing, singing, and bottles, in every order and combination. Nothing ever works two nights in a row, let alone the minimum three nights it takes to establish a precedent. According to the statistics, we are severely damaging our son’s future success, and that makes me a horrible mother, and a selfish jerk, because if I wasn’t a selfish jerk I would be able to do this, right? Go ahead. Judge me.
My son sleeps in our bed most nights. We keep trying to break him of this habit, but he just doesn’t sleep as well in the crib. He wakes up more often and is crankier during the day if we make him sleep in the crib. My husband found a statistic somewhere that says children who slept in their parents’ beds until the age of two or three had stronger hearts and fewer health problems. There is such a big argument around this whole co-sleeping thing, but I think if both parents are not in a drugged sleep and are well and able to wake themselves easily if needed to respond to baby, why not co-sleep? It’s not like that kind of thing breeds supreme co-dependence and ensures that your child will remain insecure and shy and socially awkward for his entire life. Right? Go ahead. Judge me.
The second big lesson…
I’ve learned over the last year is this: THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER! There are a lot people out there, some of whom have children and some of whom don’t, who all do have a lot of really strong opinions about what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing, with statistics to prove it (especially the people with opposing viewpoints – they always have the most statistics to back up their answers) and the most important thing I learned from all of them is this: they’re all wrong.
It’s not that their statistics are invalid, or that their ideas aren’t sound. It’s just that they keep touting their ideas as the Right Ideas. There are no Right Ideas in parenting. There’s just parenting (as opposed to non-parenting, which includes things like abuse and neglect). Some things are going to work for some families (like nursing until the age of five and bedtime every night at 8pm and always in the crib) and there are other things that are going to work for other families (like formula from day one and loosey goosey bedtimes and let-them-sleep-where-they-drop), and always with varying outcomes. The thing is no matter what we try to impose upon our children or try not to impose upon them, our children are going to be who they are going to be, and there’s actually only so much we can do about it.
This is the third and most important thing I’ve learned this year:
My son is his own person, and he always has been, and he always will be. I do him no favors by trying to make him into something he’s not. I also don’t do him any favors by not giving him any structure whatsoever, since he does eventually have to figure out how to integrate into society. So, I pick my battles.
I make sure he wears diapers and clothes, and eats food (as opposed to newspaper), and I make sure he sleeps in some kind of bed, rather than the floor or the trash can, and we’re in the process of teaching him to speak and use words to get the things he wants instead of screaming all the time. As far as bedtime goes, we’re aiming for 9pm right now, but that will probably change in another month or so. I tell myself that one day someone somewhere will wave a magic wand and my son will pick a bedtime he likes and stick with it.
The most important thing to me that informs my parenting is the concept of compromise. There are rules and lessons and behaviors I want my son to learn and a certain amount of sleep he needs every night, but working with him to instill these things in a way that isn’t in complete opposition to his nature tends to turn out well for us. We discuss behaviors with him even now (he’s capable of understanding a lot more than you might expect) and I always try to explain why I don’t want him to do something or why I’ve said “no”. If nothing else, this at least gives him the idea that rules have reasons, and that they are important because of those reasons. Sometimes the reason is “because mom said so” and that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t happen too often. My son responds best when he is treated like a person with opinions and wants and needs, but I don’t know if every child is like that.
You see, all of these things work for me. That doesn’t mean they have to work for you or your neighbor or your mom or whoever. It’s okay if they don’t. I’m not judging. There are plenty of other people out there doing that already. Some of them don’t have kids, and that’s the obvious reason not to let their opinions get to you, but for the ones that do have kids, and do have opinions, and do tend to judge your parenting, their kids aren’t your kids and they are not the parent of your child, so, really, why are you letting their opinions bother you?
As for me, I’ve accepted that I will always be judged, and that I will always be found guilty. It’s okay, though. I love my son, and that’s the only thing that really matters. Go ahead. Judge me.
