Judging Other Parents

There was a time in my life (while my daughter was still being “cooked up”) when I looked at certain parents with disdain. There were so many horrible parenting examples out there, but I knew I would be better. I knew that I would not succumb to cheap, lazy tactics to keep my child in line.

That was then.

Now, many of the things that I looked down upon are critical elements of my parenting strategy.

For example, my wife and I often joked about parents who plopped in a DVD to keep the kids quiet during a car ride. For three years I resisted doing that too. Then, an hour long conversation in the car with my daughter changed my mind. It went something like this:

“Are we there yet?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

That went on and on.  And on and on.  And on. That’s when I finally understood how wrong I was to judge others. I bought a car DVD player the next day.

In my defense, I limit the DVDs to trips longer than two hours, but I now understand that flexibility and openness are key to parenting.

When I bought the DVD player, my wife asked what our parents would say about this. I thought long and hard about this. Things were always tougher on our own parents, yet somehow they managed to raise us just fine. Somehow we all survived our childhoods without all these gadgets and contraptions.

Then it came to me. The only reason that neither of our parents resorted to this strategy is that the technology didn’t exist. There were several summer car rides where I’m absolutely certain that my siblings and I drove my parents halfway to insane.

They used what resources they had. There were sing-alongs, license plate games, pocket-scrabble games. They tried, but nothing they had at their disposal was as powerful as the car DVD player.

Another example of “bad” parenting that I’d witnessed was using food to calm down the child. This is something parents, uncles, and aunts do all the time to quiet the kid down, reward the kid, or persuade the kid to do something.

I had sworn never to use food in this way. Again, I was wrong.

Granted, I don’t do it often, but there are certain times where the ends justify the means. For instance, parents always know when a child has to use the bathroom. We know that if the child does not use the potty before getting into the car, it will become a problem in about fifteen minutes.

The solution for the parent: reward the behavior we want. This is actually good parenting. This is how psychologists manipulate behavior. The difference is that instead of a healthy food pellet, I use gummy bears or Hershey’s Kisses. Oh well. If it means getting where I want to go without having to stop in some nasty bathroom fifteen minutes later, then I’m okay with an occasional unhealthy treat.

There are still a few things that parents do which I’ve scorned in the past but not yet come around to. I suppose the difference is luck or situation.

One such thing is the baby leashes. When I first saw one of these, I was aghast. What kind of horrible person would tether his or her child like this? Why couldn’t this parent just hold hands or watch the child?

Now I understand. First, even when keeping vigilant watch on my daughter, it just takes a half-second distraction for her to disappear. I’ve been in the mall and turned my head to look at something, and my daughter has already taken off in the other direction. Mine is a pretty good kid about that sort of thing. Plus I have only the one kid to watch.

For parents of multiple children, I apologize for judging you. Parents of children who like to run off: I’m sorry. To all the parents that I thought were doing things badly – I was wrong. I know now.

But have you seen these parents who let their kids stay up past 10:00 p.m.?  You’ll never see my child awake that late.  (Except when it may suit my needs).

This originally appeared in Parenting on the Peninsula