Words of Wisdom - Never Say Never

My words of wisdom today is NEVER SAY NEVER. 

Now that you have the Justin Bieber song in your head, here we go.

Before I had kids, I judged.  Shane and I would see kids screaming at WM or the mall and think "our kids will NEVER act that way".  We would see a kid talking back and gasp, hit their parent, and we would say "our kids will NEVER do that!".  We would hear about parents letting their kids sleep in their bed at night and there was no way we would EVER do that.  You catch my drift.

In my almost 8 years of parenting, all of these have happened. 

Just the other day, Bree screamed, standing in the cart at Old Navy while throwing everything I put in the cart out in the floor...all because she wanted a ball. 

Claire used to throw fits and try to pull my hair out or pull on my shirt until either my boob flopped out or the seam ripped because I would not let her have candy because she had already thrown at least one fit.

Bree has slept in our bed for almost her entire 2 years of living. Right in between us with her own pillow and usually with a handful of my hair and her feet in her daddy's chest.

I could list probably hundreds of things that we said our kids would never do and now we are eating (or ate) crow.  We judged.  We judged hard.  We thought it would be easy and that these parents could not control their kids and that we would do a better job.  HA!  We were stupid.

Even worse, now that we are all parents, we find ourselves judging other parents even more.  We know better than this...

Never say never.  We are doing things now that we said we would never do and we are okay with it.  We all blog about and know that raising kids is not easy.  In fact, it is the hardest thing we will ever do.  Most rewarding, but hard as hell.  Seriously, most days we are just trying to get through the day with everyone fed, bathed and knowing we love them.  Going to admit, they don't always get bathed (right now they do being the beginning of school :)) but I know we are doing the best we can.  That is the thing,  most parents are doing the best they can. 

When we are judging another mom (parent), we have no idea what her situation is.  If she is giving her child a Dr Pepper at Chicfila and you think that is wrong, she could be doing it as a reward to that child for going potty in the big potty that morning (if you have a problem with that, you obviously have not potty trained and if you still do, you are not going to like my blog :)).  If you see a 4 year old with a pacifier, and you think that is wrong (I am guilty of judging that), that mother could be trying her hardest and the kid is about to make her lose her mind.  If a child is throwing a fit in WM and you want to give her the stupid candy, remember that the mother could be teaching that child a lesson (and get to the other side of the store :)). 

I will say it is kind of fun to judge a dad with a screaming child in WM.  Let's face it, we all love that :).

Sorry, I digress.

Sometimes we have bad days and that is okay.  My point is that motherhood (parenting) is hard enough as it is, why are we judging each other and making it that much harder?  Even if you are not a mother yet, know that you could be one day and you have no idea what situations you will be put in as a parent.  I, personally, pray every day that I not allow the "judgement of others" prevent me from being the mother that I am and making myself even better.  I laugh now at the young ones that judge us, being the exact person that would make me mad when I was younger.  But let's face it, that is the circle of life and how we learn.

I am happy to say that Bree slept all night in HER big bed last night (walking downstairs at 5am and climbing in with us)!  As I was watching the video monitor last night instead of sleeping (afraid she was going to fall off the bed :)), I thought to myself of all the things we said we would never do, letting the kids sleep with us being one of them.  I laughed to myself and thought, I am proud of the parents we have become.  We are not perfect by all means, but we are doing the best we can and pray that the Lord keeps our kids protected :).

Never say never.  Or one day you too, will find out that crow tastes DISGUSTING!