Dear People Without Kids: You Don’t Get To Judge Parents. Ever.

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Here’s a new rule:
If you don’t have children and/or never had to raise children, then absent physical abuse or obvious emotional, you don’t get to judge people who are real actual parents.
Never. Just never.
On my blog’s Facebook page recently, I shared an status about how people who not have children or choose not to have child, are not entitled to live in a childfree world. And then a guy named Joseph commented that “when kids are misbehaving in an intolerant manner, it is almost always shitty parenting.” (And yes, I copy the whole sentences for you guy.)
When I responded to his comment, I simply asking whether he had kids (exactly,that’s all I asked), and then he said on his comment “represented the statement of an opinion and not an invitation to converse.”
Totally wrong, buddy, the great thing of owning a Facebook page is that I can communicate with whomever I please, and if they doesn’t like it, they can get out of here and reading someone else’s page.

And you know what: Joseph obviously doesn’t have kids.
So the other day when my daughter was having an brokenhearted meltdown at the public pool, it clearly wasn’t because she was so exhausted, tired and had a cold, eat so many candies when I wasn’t there, or because she is just 5 and her mental capacity hasn’t fully developed.
No, it’s totally not because of that, it was because I’m a “shitty parent.” Joe, you nailed it! You are right, Joseph.
Being a mother, it hadn’t easy at all. We must guide our children in the right direction so many, many times before they could follow their own direction that they think that they love and take control of themselves or simply it’s their own will.
It is an amazing effort.

Whoever wants to judge a person as a de facto bad parent after their efforts. Witnessing a snippet of their child’s behavior has clearly never had to deal with a young person themselves.
Of course, there still have terrible parents in this world. However, I resolutely believe that 90% of us are trying our best to raise our children to become loving, functional, healthy and useful person of society.
How hard it can be to raise children? It likes you do a hardest work for the rest of your life. So that most people who don’t have children or raise one cannot understand them, which makes it that much more annoying when I can tell a childless person is internally shaming me when my kids are acting wrongly.
The childless person doesn’t see the efforts that parents who is trying hard to guide their children in the right direction. They just judged them. And when their child is strong-willed and unmanageable then the parent is crying in the shower because their chidren are growing up and don’t need them or just because they can’t meddle. What about the parent who is making every effort to obtain effective treatment for a child who has a disability? And the parent whose putting stars on a sticker chart every single night until their fingers are bleeding hoping it incentivizes their child to “make good choices.”

These judged people who don’t see the other 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day that contain waking up, eating breakfast, making lunches, returning home and doing homework, talking on the drive to school, going to work (or staying home with other children and tending to household chores), attending extracurricular sports and other activities, making and eating dinner, getting out of the house, and then bedtime. It’s so many many things. Just doing all of this, and woah, that’s a lot! But these people, who always judged parent just because their kids get the five-minute “sound bite” of a child’s poor behavior.

They never and ever see all of the sincere efforts parents make behind a kid’s life.

So dear the childless person:
We remind our young children to be understanding for other passengers on airplanes, but sometimes the flight is really, really long, and they can’t hold it anymorre. They end up running up and down the aisles or hysterically crying when their ears are popping.

We teach our kiddos to being a good person and the importance of sharing and being a good friend, but they will seldom make another child cry when they don’t want to give other a couple of Goldfish crackers. We have tried, but still get mistake sometimes.
We of course used to teach our children to docile at restaurants, but they just toddler and sometimes end up screaming and throwing french fries on the floor.
We make sure they know it’s important to be quiet in places like the library or church, but sometimes they’re so excited and curious so they forget.
It happens. It happens sometimes.

And most of the time, the parent is trying really hard. And I promise it’s not because the child’s keeper is a bad parent. It’s because the child is a child. That’s all.
So if my kid is a little bit innocent, please don’t judge me.

Especially if you aren’t a parent yourself.

She took to Facebook to preach after her husband stepped up.
You can keep your baes and your Tinder and your boombox serenades. A happily married woman took to Facebook sharing what love looks like in your forties.
As you get older, expressions of love change, and sometimes rose petals on the bed is not as great as leaving work to rescue your wife when she forgets her wallet.

Amy Midtvedt is a blogger, mom, and a wife at Hiding in The Closet With Coffee. The Facebook page describes the blog thusly: “We drink coffee. We hide from our kids. We’re nicer and hug them a lot when we come back out. We write about all of it. We never stop looking for the joy.”

Amy doesn’t have far to look, based on a post earlier this week that has over 500 shares, thanks to her husband Todd. She said:
“Yes, that’s my amazing husband who is arriving on the scene with his credit card because what you can’t see is me, standing next to a cart super full of groceries that I couldn’t pay for because I couldn’t find my wallet.”

In her picture she shared about her husband: “Not sure you can tell, but he’s smiling at me. Yup…he had to leave work and he is smiling. His only words of admonishment were, ‘You’re not supposed to be grocery shopping I said I’d go this week.’”
After she found herself at the register without any legal tender, arriving at the grocery store to save the day. Occurred in the middle of the work day, it was an embarrassing moment for her, and surely no less an inconvenient one for him, but you wouldn’t know it.

All he could muster is an admonishment that she shouldn’t even be bothering to run the errand he promised he would do, even though everyone’d expect him to throw a little shade at his wife. Boss threw shade at himself.
It sounds like par for the course for this man, based on the rest of her post.
“Love also looks like me coming downstairs to a full pot of coffee every morning because coffee is love. Love looks like all the lunches being made already so I can enjoy that aforementioned cup of coffee. Love looks like someone washing the dishes while his wife catches up on This is Us while plopped on the couch not helping at all. Love looks like a super patient dad doing the 5 year old’s homework with him every morning so I can get to work on time. Love looks like running to the store before bed after your wife has forgotten to buy milk because you know the morning will be easier if we can serve up some cereal.”

Apparently, this “knight-in-armor” routine has been there ever since college!
She wrote on her page “In college this love looked like boyfriend Todd running to the store for a danish I was craving or watching me and my friends on the dance floor long after he wanted to leave the bar or him being known across campus by the flower backpack he was carrying which of course was mine.”
After defining that when you’re older, those prosaic displays of love become just as momentous as showy proposals and expensive gifts, Amy took the chance to provide some advice to the youngsters on dating.

“Do not be fooled by big, showy promposals and giant cards with candy bars glued to them with some cute saying or by your name spelled in pepperoni by a boy who’s asking you to homecoming.” She wrote.
And of course she’s right. Passion and lust may get all the press, but love is more about an the steady middle – the long haul – than an explosive beginning. And what happens behind the scenes.
She continued “Watch how he treats you when Instagram isn’t looking.” And how he responds when you forget your wallet.”
Amy said that she was beyond gratified by the response her post is getting. “It’s rare to have a piece reach this far and be so positive…so that’s amazing to me.” But what really moves her is seeing other women praising their husbands the same way.

“So far the best part about this post is all the positive comments and wives tagging their husbands to thank them,” she continued. “The specific comments thanking their knights in shining armor for the ways they are loved are bringing me to tears.”