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My wife said something today that I found disturbing: She called one of her parenting choices “stupid.”

Specifically, she was telling me a story from the early days of our kids’ lives, about how they would fight. In one instance, out of desperation, she decided that a coin-toss should determine who would get to choose a movie. After she said that, she quickly added, “I know it was stupid, but…”

I stopped her, just as I’m hoping to stop some of you, and I said: Listen, don’t ever refer to a parenting choice as “stupid.” No matter what, if you are intent on being the best parent you can be, and you spend any amount of time thinking of a decent solution to a kid crisis, the results don’t mean spit compared to the effort.

Maybe it’s me, but I find that there are a lot of parents who judge themselves too harshly. Let’s be real: You, who are reading this right now, you probably put your parenting results into too harsh a light. Stop. It’s time. You’ve been hard on yourself long enough. Now is the time to tell yourself, no more judging.

And as we’re being real, I will tell you that I am one of you. And I need to hear this as well.

Why? Why should we not judge our parenting? Because it’s clear that we’re already making the effort. Each of us reads this blog, searching for ways to be a better parent. We all read other parenting blogs, we all talk to other parents (we even talk to our own parents), hoping for a tip here and there. And this makes us good parents. It won’t make us *great* parents, not by itself. Great parenting requires serious commitment and an enormous amount of hard work. But good parenting just requires the effort. And good parenting, at times, should be good enough. We don’t have to get it right all the time.

by Stu Mark

[tags]parents, parenting, kids, children, judge, judging, judgment, assessment, acceptance, commitment, perspective[/tags]

Photo graciously provided by Joe Gratz, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved