When it comes to my children, I have always tried to pick my battles wisely. The desire to cling to the last few bits of my sanity has made it imperative that I spend at least forty-five minutes of every day not fighting about something; what this means is that while I have been adamant about things like music lessons and getting clear verbal answers to my questions (if it doesn’t work on the witness stand, it doesn’t work for me), I have been somewhat laxer when it comes to things like cleaning your plate (or even using a plate) and going to bed at a reasonable hour.
I always thought that this was my choice as a parent: just like some people choose to spend their disposable income on pumpkin spice lattes while others prefer to save up for a trip to Burning Man, the decisions as to what to discipline my children for are mine and mine alone (well, and maybe my husband’s). Or at least, that’s what I always thought. Apparently however, I was wrong.
While most people would feel awkward about telling another adult they need to stop saving their money for vacation and instead start drinking more six dollar coffees, they apparently feel no such compunction about telling other parents when they should discipline their children. Or, rather, about telling other parents that they should be disciplining their children the exact same way that they themselves are.
When my children were younger I had people chastise me that it made it “hard” for them to enforce the “clean plate rule” with their own children after their kids saw that I didn’t enforce it with my own. A few of them even asked me if I could just “fake it” a little bit to make things easier on them. Because, obviously, making sure my own children weren’t completely confused wasn’t nearly as important as whether or not their kids ate all of their lima beans. (I actually did consider it, but then I thought about how I would feel if my husband asked me to “keep quiet” because some of his friends were coming over and they didn’t want their wives to notice how “uppity” I was, and I said no. And then I considered telling them I would do it if they would enroll their children in music lessons so my kids stopped asking me why they had to practice every day when their friends didn’t. In the end I just kept my mouth shut. Mostly).
Keeping my mouth (mostly) shut when other parents criticize my parenting choices hasn’t always been easy, especially when they misunderstand the reasoning behind my decisions. “You’re supposed to be a parent, not a friend,” they told me. As if making someone eat their broccoli was a friendship issue. Although it is true that I have never tried to force any of my friends to eat their veggies; however, this is not so much for fear of losing their friendship but rather fear of them rejecting all future dinner invitations). No, the reason I have never forced anyone, at any time to eat their broccoli, or honey-glazed ham, or watermelon, is that, frankly, I really don’t care what other people eat. And my children fall into the category of “other people.”
Now that my kids are older, and demonstrably healthy, I feel even better about not changing my parenting style to suit other parents, and even for (mostly) keeping my mouth shut about other parents’ habits as well. After all, my kids never developed scurvy or rickets from their broccoli-free diets, and their friends didn’t turn into axe murderers because they didn’t have music lessons. Or at least they haven’t yet. On both counts. I suppose only time (and police records) will tell.