Before kids it was easy to judge bad parents. Then one day with child I found myself due to circumstances in a store way past my child’s bedtime. She was screaming and crying, because it was way past her bedtime.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
I still judge parents, because I compare them to other parents.
Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.
Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.
One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids
Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.
It's difficult to translate what you're saying. You say "go to visit" which implies you don't see your friends with kids very often. If true you're in a poor position to make these judgements even by your own standards.
Everything you're observing is even more likely to occur if you don't see them that often. Your friends probably want to spend more time focusing on you. The kids are not that familiar with you and are less likely to engage with you. Which also makes the parents more likely to want to distract them with something else.
Whether or not you're bringing children with you matters too. It sounds like you don't because you're focusing on child-adult interactions. If someone has kids the kids run around and be kids with their loudness, and child-adult interactions are going to be much more likely. If you're not bringing kids in tow my kids are much more likely to just go off and do their own thing.
Much of what you're pointing out can also be down to individual child temperment. Which changes as children age. By your standards many parents turn into a bad parent once their kids become a teenager.
That is not to say that your observations are 100% wrong. But just that there's so many variables, most of which I didn't even mention here, makes trying to analyze your statement make my head spin.
Not to lean too much on anecdotes, but I have a friend who has extremely well behaved kids. He has said a couple times that he feels like he has placed too many adult responsibilities on his kids. Is he a good parent? Based upon outside observation, he seems good. But he seems to be questioning some of his own choices. Maybe that alone makes him a good parent? I don't know, who am I to judge?
you read very far into a relatively normal phrase "go to visit" meaning "when i visit them". Some people just say "visit" instead of "hang out" or "bum around with."
eta: it's like some people say they have to do errands.
But sometimes there are legit behavioral issues that are extremely challenging, and are not the parent's fault. Sometimes what looks like a "tantrum" on the outside can actually be autistic overwhelm and meltdown, which can happen with even the best parents. Not to mention stuff like Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
All this to say...if you see a kid in public throwing a "tantrum", you still shouldn't judge the parents without knowing the full picture.
There is a difference between kids using bad behavior to get attention or blackmail parents vs kids who have actual behavioral problems they are working through.
The first is an actual problem stemming from bad parenting and as a society we should indeed shame parents who raise spoiled kids who expect everything to be given to them.
I mean, do you even know the full story at a friend's house? I guess it depends on how closely you know them, and whether they've confided any developmental issues they're children are dealing with.
Consider how bad it would have been for you/would be for you right now had they not even tried though. Impossible to "what if" the situation now but I'm sure the effort will have made at least some difference.
Oh, believe me, I have no complaints on how they raised me. They did a great job, I turned out alright. Wife, daughter, many friends, stable job.
I am just saying that anyone would have judged them poorly if they saw me spending a sunny Saturday glued to my SNES playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms IV, or going for yet another playthrough of Diablo on the PC.
All kids are different, my second has about 20 tantrums a day. I've no idea why. It's getting really hard to deal with. But it will pass.
Honestly the only certainty is that unless you have been 100 percent responsible for a very young child for more a few days, you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't mean that directed at you. Just my own generalisation based own experience and the opinion of every other parent I know.
Life as a parent is completely different than life before.
I saw a woman completely lose her shit in a museum with her kid. Before I became a parent I would have judged. But when it happened I just thought "poor woman, I know how it feels, just giving it her all and she's got nothing left to give right now, how many times have I felt like that, how many times have I failed to live up to my own ideals as a parent".
Definitely hard to say. I get being angry and frustrated, and circumstances surrounding being a parent might not help at all. For instance my wife and I have no family to help out. It's just us. It's hard, but we do what we can.
I'm beyond fortunate that she's fully into being a mother, calm, patient but knows where the boundaries are. And that's reflected into our kid. He's so incredibly easy to parent, it's insane.
I look at his friends - all good kids. Boisterous, outgoing, a bit wild and uncontrollable, but fundamentally good kids. They fight with their siblings, and they're learning how to navigate the world.
And then I go shopping. We live in lower socio-econimic area, and it's genuinely just saddening to see what goes on. The number of parents that are actively, in public, swearing out their kids and just having the kids stand there quietly shrinking away is heartbreaking.
I don't know what's going on in the parent's lives, and I know being a parent is immensely difficut, and none of us are equipped from the outset to really become one... but yelling at your kid for being a f*ck in the middle of a shopping center? I fail to see how any of that is OK because of 'circumstances'. At some point you have to grow up and be an adult. You put this kid here. You need to take responsibility. It doesn't mean it's easy, but if you can't self reflect enough to know that's not OK, then you're a big part of the reason the kid is how they are.
Yeah... I was thinking about what I wrote above, I came to the conclusion that actually there is a limit. Because some people are awful parents, and that is reflected in how damaged some people are. I guess I could see the woman in the museum was trying, and had just had enough. But hey she was in a museum with her kids trying to do something positive with them.
I mean, not judging other parents doesn’t come from thinking that all other parents are doing a great job, it comes from knowing that you’re doing a terrible job in your own, special ways.
Parenting children is impossible, therefore all parenting lies on a spectrum from terrible to catastrophic, and it’s hard to know how you did until they grow up (if ever) because there’s a lot of sensitivity and subtle emotional stuff, especially at very young ages, which are the most important and the ones you remember the least. I’m certain there are screen-free parents who are worse for their kids than a good chunk of tablet-hander-outers
Yes, when you have a toddler undergoing a public meltdown, it is easy to see who around you is an experienced parent, and who is not. Just by the look on their faces.
> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.
I smile a bit and give a chuckle when a toddler is giving a parent a hard time. It reminds me of simpler times. The problems and consequences are so much smaller than teenage problems.
Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.
Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
Yeah, with a kid I still judge. I'd rather see kids running around and playing and being kids in public than on a tablet. Even grocery shopping I see toddlers on tablets sitting in the cart.
My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"
I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.
But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.
I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)
I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.
> I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.
Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.
Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.
Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.
The only thing I'll add is that you never know what people are going through. Both of my children have pretty intense ADHD, and when I went through my divorce I definitely leaned into too much screen time for a while. It wasn't permanent though, and I managed to get back closer to the ideal you speak of (but as a single parent, it took a lot of processing of guilt to find a balance that worked).
I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
> I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.
I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!
Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).
Thanks for the clarification, I see where you are coming from and definitely agree it's a real problem.
I'm proud to say for myself that devices never leave the home now (and mine stays in my pocket except for explicit communication needs), and we are able to fully connect on road trips, dinners, and other outings. It's freeing, and I always tell the kids, that being device free means we will actually remember these moments.
I will continue to judge my parents for abusing me throughout childhood until doing so no longer contributes to my own healing. There is no single right way to respond to a hyperactive child but there are plenty of permanently life-altering ones.
It's less blame/resentment (though I admit I'm still working on it) and more that pretending my childhood was just fine and my parents were absolved of everything just because they tried their hardest was exactly what kept me trapped in a vicious cycle for far too long. Some things go beyond "just" bad parenting and into the level of abuse and potentially lifelong physical/mental conditions. Only by admitting to myself that yes, I was not at fault for all my own misfortunes and maybe someone else did share the blame, was I finally able to start healing.
One of my goals is to isolate the healthy parts of blame from the all-consuming and unproductive ones, which I'm still working on.
For my case (and I speak for nobody else), I don't want to have children until I'm 100% certain I will not make the same mistake as my forbearers and pass down their trauma to my offspring. Some of that decision-making is out of my hands until I've had enough therapy and healing. That's just what abusive parenting does to a person's psyche.
And for what it's worth, I can't predict how my perspectives on parenting will change if I become a parent myself, but even in that case I will never stop believing my own parents were abusive. No model of how the world works makes sense to me without that understanding anymore.
Having multiple kids can make things much harder too. A child that is easy alone may not be easy with siblings.
Parents flex for children because there's a lot of things we don't care about. Little Timmy wants to go first? That's fine. But now introduce Little Jane. Little Timmy can't always go first. Now he has to contend with Little Jane.
Turn taking is the standard here. Doing it at preschool is one thing, but in every day life, at home, from sunrise to sunset, when tired or sick, is another thing. There's also lots of corner cases to navigate. What if Little Jane wants to watch something that scares Little Timmy? What if Little Timmy missed a turn because he had soccer practice? And so on.
You also aren't in control of all turns. For example, birthday parties. Or frequency of seeing friends. What is seen as unfair parts of life by an 8 year old can be completely out of your control.
You can oftentimes rely on the older one being a little more flexible than the younger one, and that is a life saver. As a parent you can lean on it and reason with them. But there is a scenario where this falls apart: twins. Congratulations, have fun reasoning with two 1.5 year olds who want opposing things.
The corner cases from taking turns can get easier as they get older though. I usually offload it to them: you guys figure out whats fair, everyone has to agree, let me know when you figure it out. This can degenerate into the most stubborn winning though, so I still have to monitor the results and stop relying on it if that's what is happening.
I dunno, it feels kinda exhausting for being easy.
Before kids, you take a look around a diner or a store or a playground and you see little ones happily eating some chips or browsing the foodstuffs or playing on a slide.
You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.
Then you have kids and you know.
You know.
Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.
Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.
That's not the impression I hear from my many intentionally childless friends. They take the negative behavior - the screaming, tantrums, chaos - as the norm.
It sounds like you always wanted kids. I don't say this to criticize - it's great that those who want to start families do so - but I don't think your experience is universal.
> only the more well behaved kids are going out in public.
How would that work? Do you think they have life-long domiciliary arrest? All children need to go to school or like to occasionally walk or go to a shop.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.