A Lesson in Judging Other Moms | Real Life Guilt

This post was featured on Netmums.com

It has been a month since my last post. Life has gotten pretty busy – as they do.

Then this happened the other day. And I felt the urge to write about it.

I went to the park by our house for the 1000th time. It was one of those particularly repetitive days of motherhood. You know the ones.

Baby, Toddler, and I walked up to the park and headed for the swings. Consistently, the first stop on every trip to the park.

I catch the eye of the only other mom there, with her two toddlers and a baby strapped to her chest.

They look like twins, probably two and a half– I think to myself.

Then I hear her ask them if they want water or if the one boy had to poo.

“Do you want some WAHH – TERRR”?

“Did you have a POO POO”?

“WAHH – TERRR”?

“Should we go BYE-BYE”?

Oh, great, I thought to myself, baby-talk. I’ve come across this before. The Over-Pronunciator-Mom. Every word is enunciated with precision and over-exaggeration.

Ugh, how annoying.

My mummy belief system includes talking to my kids like they are normal human beings and thus they will then learn how to talk like a normal human being (has worked so far). Why baby-talk to them or encourage any form of baby-talk if you don’t want them to ultimately talk in baby-talk?

Her twins started running all over the place and so she made an attempt to get them in the stroller to go. One of them started to throw a tantrum.

Ahhh, the I-refuse-to-leave-the-park tantrum. I know it well. It happened quite often for my little girl around the age of two.

“The struggle is real, when you leave the park”, I told her.

She readily agreed.

Then, she said it was tough because her boys were 10 weeks early.

Puzzled with that response, I ask, “Does being early still affect them now?”

“Absolutely. They are very behind, developmentally. They are three and a half right now but are probably at the skill level of a two and a half year old. They don’t talk. They just scream and cry. I feel like the last four years of my life have been just screaming and crying.”

Meanwhile she managed to get everyone in the stroller and was proceeding to walk out of the park.

I give her that knowing mom-to-mom look of “I hear your pain” and say good-bye.

Well, crap. I am such a bitch.

Poor mom. The reason she was talking to her twins with that annoying over-enunciation was because she is desperate for her boys to talk to her. And not just cry at her.

All over my news feed there are loads of articles about how the mummy wars need to stop and how everyone just needs to get along and blah blah blah.

But I guess it’s a bit inevitable to have a bit of judgy in us.

I learned my lesson and I will learn it again and again. You just never know what is going on in a person’s life and why they are acting like they are.

Sorry, mom, for judging you. I’ll do better next time.

Happy Wednesday, y’all!