One day, if you become a mother, be prepared to receive an avalanche of "questions", "concerns" and "advice" from friends, family, acquaintaneces and of course, complete strangers.
People are going to want to know what type of labor you're planning (natural or medicated?!), if you're going to breast or bottle feed, what school you're going to send your children to, what solids you plan on feeding them, what clubs you'll sign them up for, and on and on and on.
You'll be able to tell if people ask you these questions because they truly care about you and your children, because they'll be a huge fan and one-hundred percent supportive of whatever your answers are.
If they question and critique your choices and/or decisions, chances are they're just trying to make themselves feel better about the decisions they've made. It's not your problem.
Here's the thing...parenting is mostly a guessing game and usually done through trial and error. Sure there's some decisions made based on your values, but most of the time you're just making decisions based on what feels best for you and your family.
You don't ever have to explain or justify your parenting decisions to anyone. As long as you feel right about what you're doing, than you've done a fantastic job.
So my advice to you is to take the critics with a grain of salt, and just be grateful that you're happy and confident in whatever way you've chosen to raise your beautiful children.
Love you and your choices!
Mom
So true, I am just learning all about this. I also get tons of advice about twins from people who don't have twins....lol. Sometimes I feel like printing a t-shirts that says "Not interested in advice".
ReplyDeleteThoughout my entire pregnancy I was bombarded with people telling me how terrible my life was about to become. It is almost as if people want you to fail.
I guess it is like your post says, people want to feel better about themselves. Sad but true, oh well we just have to learn to ignore.
OMG I can't even begin to imagine all the advice you would have gotten with twins! I bet it's double!
DeleteI don't know what is with people, it's like they haven't figured out that there's more than one way to raise a great kid. Super annoying.