Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Calm Down

Can we all, please, just calm the heck down?
I mean good grief...
You're a terrible parent if you vaccinate, if you don't, if you do sometimes.
You're destroying your children if you spank, if you don't, if you do sometimes.
You're killing babies if you go the grocery store with a cold.
You're not informed enough about this cause, that cause, this current event, that current event. Your children are doomed to repeat the worst of history and they're totes going to kill the planet with their plastic bags.
Your children will shoot people (or themselves) if you have a gun, if they don't know anything about guns, if they play video games, if they eat chicken with antibiotics and estrogen in it.
You put your kids in daycare and work fulltime, you stay at home and homeschool them, you work part time when they start public or private school? You selfish horrible person, you made that decision because it's what you wanted and not because it was what was best for your child/the community/ everyone else on the planet.
Your kids are wearing pajamas at WalMart? OMG, I'm calling CPS.
They stayed buckled in their car seats while you stood next to the car and pumped your gas and you stared into space and enjoyed the quiet for all of 5 minutes instead of staring into the eyes of your toddlers as you held them in a baby wrap you made yourself from responsibly sourced 100% cotton gauze?! SOO calling CPS.
You have more than one child? How selfish. Your children won't feel loved or special.
You only have one child? How selfish. Your child will never know the joy of siblings.
You're a Republican? Democrat? Tea-Partier? Libertarian? You really just don't give a crap? Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. It's people like YOU that are ruining our country/world/ future.

It's exhausting. You can't do anything right. Every single decision you make as a parent is scrutinized from every angle and we are all found to be severely lacking in skill, intelligence, and common sense by at least one offended party. Often the worst among them are other parents, usually those related to us or neighbors, "friends"...
All this to say... everybody take a freaking chill pill and mind your own business. Take care of your own children. Regardless of what Hillary Clinton may think, the village is not nearly as necessary as sane parents, and how can we stay sane if we're so busy trying to make sure no one is offended by our choices or worse that the choices we've been making (and generations of parents before us have been making) are going to somehow totally and completely ruin our children. Ya know what? They might, some of them really might. Parenting is hard. We leave the hospital with these tiny little helpless babies and somehow we're supposed to figure out how to get them from that point to standing on their own two feet, capable of making their own decisions and taking care of themselves. That is HARD. LIFE is HARD. Can we please just stop trying to make it SO MUCH HARDER?
Just love your kids. It's really that simple. Love your kids and do what you feel in your gut is best for them and understand that it might not work out just how you thought it would. Just love your kids and take care of them the best you can. The really hard things will come, and you'll make a stupid decision or you'll make a brilliant one and your kid will still get sick or hurt or angry or sad because that's just life. And maybe if we all stop trying to parent everyone else's kids for them we'll have the sanity, and energy, and love left over to handle it when the hard things come. Maybe we'll even be sane and kind enough to be there for other parents when their hard things come.

But good grief, we have GOT to CALM DOWN.

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