Let me tell you the story of the worst time I was openly judged as a mom. I was at the grocery store (of course). At the time, we lived in Chicago, walking distance from a lovely grocery store, a fact for which I was very thankful and something I really miss now that we live in the suburbs. My first son was about 4 months old. He was in the stroller, and we were going through the checkout line when he started to cry (again, of course).

I did my best to console him while we waited, and then I did my best to get all of the groceries on the belt and get out of there as quickly as possible while also consoling him. He cried on. Then, the real craziness happened. In my haste to get out of the store, I put down one of the bags a little too hard, just being careless. That bag contained a glass bottle of chocolate milk, which broke because apparently I was She-Hulk that day. Not thinking (because the baby was still crying), I thrust my hand into the bag containing broken glass, and pulled out a bunch of bloody fingers. I don’t even remember it hurting. I just remember being pissed because I was trying to get out of the store, and now I had to deal with chocolate milk and glass and blood on top of my crying baby. 

Enter judgy lady. She was probably in her 60s. I don’t remember exactly what she looked like, so my memory makes her look like the evil old witch in Snow White. A few more minutes passed while the SUPER KIND grocery store employees helped me re-bag the groceries, put a band-aid on my finger, and get out of the way. Poor baby boy was crying through all of this and was really starting to test his lungs by the end of the ordeal. I had pulled off to the side to get my bags arranged so I could leave, and this lady came up and said, “Well, at least console him or something!” She was visibly flabbergasted by what a terrible mother I was.

I looked up at her and made the most aggressive eye contact I’ve ever made. I think I even tried to smile, and I said, “We’re fine. Thank you,” in an absolutely deadpan, I-have-no-time-for-you voice. She drew back as if she’d been slapped. Honestly, in that moment, I was capable of slapping a stranger. She hemmed and hawed and said something about having a 40-year-old son, and then she went over to someone else who was standing there watching the whole thing and tried to talk trash about me. I basically ran out of the store. 

I probably cried as I was walking home. I definitely cried as I recounted the story to my husband. I thought of a MILLION things I wish I had said to her, such as, “I’ll give you a call when my son is telling a therapist about this moment in 15 years,” or “Oh really? Is your 40-year-old son waiting for you to bring his groceries home, since you never let him cry and he still lives with you?” and similarly brilliant come-backs. (I’m not even good at come-backs when I have years to think of them.) 

The point is, I was already clearly frazzled and feeling stress and concern about what was going on. What did her open judgement and criticism add? Absolutely nothing, clearly. As I told this story to friends later, the ones with kids ALL had their own stories to add! Almost every mom I spoke to had their own instance of harsh, open, blatant judgement. And we all know so much more of it occurs behind backs or more frequently, behind computer screens. I mentioned in my first post in this series that I removed myself from all but one of the Mom Facebook groups I’m in because they are dens of judgement and passive aggression. (The one that remains is made up of the lovely moms I met in a class we all took at the hospital. I actually know them all and our kids are roughly the same age.)

What is anyone gaining from this??? Self-satisfaction? Superiority? The scepter and crown of the Queen of the Grocery Store? Babies cry! Kids throw tantrums, usually at Target! They actually do not have control over their impulses or emotions yet! Also, internet moms, some people don’t have strong feelings about the same things you have strong feelings about, and that is ok. I’m purposely not touching on the big judgement-filled topics like breastfeeding and vaccines and baby-led weaning, but honestly, it’s no one else’s business how I feed my children, and obviously my kids are vaccinated. 

I think we’re so hard on each other because we’re hard on ourselves. I think that this type of judgement is our own insecurities coming out, but I also think it’s from a lack of self-awareness. In my own case in the store that day, I needed HELP, not snide comments. We’re all just doing our best to raise these babies and kids to be good people, but they’re all works in progress, and sometimes bad days happen. So hold the door for the mom pushing a baby crying in a stroller. Maybe give her a smile and kind word. Help that mom with the toddler throwing a tantrum at Target get something down off the high shelf. And then give her some space to deal with the tantrum. She’s probably already embarrassed. The Facebook and internet judging unfortunately probably isn’t going away anytime soon, but we’re all going through this together. Try to be there for the moms in your life. Maybe they’ll be there for you too.