I find there is way too much judgement between people. I find this is especially true with moms. Why are we as moms so quick to judge another mom for doing something we don’t agree with? And this isn’t big stuff really, it’s the little stuff. Yesterday I was in Aldi getting groceries. I walked into the store with only my youngest, 2-year-old, in tow. Shopping with only one kid instead of four is heaven! Anyway, my son wanted to walk instead of being in the cart, so I let him. We did great for the first 20 feet or so and then we passed a display of wine. I went over and picked out a bottle and put it into the cart. He proceeded to pick up a bottle also, but didn’t make it to the cart, instead it landed, loudly, on the tile floor. Glass and wine everywhere. Surprisingly this is the first time I have had one of my kids break something in a store. So, I went to tell the check out lady what had happened and they came to clean up. However, at this point my two-year old now smells like wine. lol. So, we proceeded with our shopping trip. He then found a box of fruit roll ups he wanted. I usually try to stay away from that sort of thing, limiting sugar with my kids is a good thing. But I decided to give in and told him he could have one if he got into the cart. I didn’t want him breaking anything else. He agreed,so I opened the box and let him have one. I then went on shopping. I was walking down the next aisle when I noticed a mom with three young kids trying to shop. One of her kids saw my son with the fruit roll up and asked it he could open something. She said, “no, we don’t do that, we don’t open things in the store.” With a very judgemental tone and loud enough so I could hear her. I went on and the same thing happened again when we met on another aisle.

I made it to the checkout and a woman was behind me in line. I had gotten all my groceries onto the conveyor belt and the wine I was purchasing kept rolling towards her. She looked horrified and said, “your wine keeps rolling towards me, I don’t drink.” I smiled and said, “sorry”. As I was walking out of the store I felt very judged. Judged for letting my son open something before we bought it and for buying wine. Although I must admit I was not very contrite about the whole thing. I was really thinking that the mother of three kids who was judging me for letting my son open something while she was screaming at her kids to sit down and be quiet should just have let her kids open something and then they would have been quietly eating like mine. 🙂 And I was also thinking that they other lady in the checkout who was judging my wine purchase should maybe sample some wine herself and then she wouldn’t be so uptight about it all. Okay, maybe that last thought wasn’t very Christian of me, she has convictions about wine, obviously, and I respect that but just don’t make comments to me about it, it’s not necessary.

Why do we judge others? I must admit I too was judging those who I felt judged by. Why did I even care what they thought? I shouldn’t, but on some level I do. I think we all just want to know we are not alone in this thing called life. And I think we are all just doing the best we can to get by and we do that in all different ways. I am not a bad person for letting my kids eat fruit roll ups in the store before purchasing them, if you have never shopped with four boys in tow you have no idea what it’s like. And I am not a bad person for letting my kids watch TV every now and again, okay so everyday, but I am still not a bad mom. I need some peace every now and then and TV achieves that so I can do things like cook dinner or go to the bathroom by myself. As moms, we should stick together more and not judge each other. There are no perfect mothers and we are all just doing the best we can with what we have. I would love to say my kids  never watch TV, play video games or eat junk food. I would love to say they eat five servings of veggies everyday and read one hour, yeah right. I make mistakes and sometimes I mess up as a parent or let something slide that I shouldn’t, but I have learned over the past nine years of parenting that you can’t take yourself too seriously. It will not permanently damage your child to watch TV or eat junk food every now and then. We should see other moms and cheer them on, not judge them and make them feel worthless.