When Your Friends Parent Differently

When you’re a new mommy… every decision you make is huge.

Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding?

Schedule feeding or on demand?

Co-sleeping or crib/cradle only?

And here is a really tough one: To go back to work or not…

And those are just some of the decisions you make in the first few days or weeks.

As your child grows, you make other decisions that seem even bigger…

Spank or don’t spank?

School or home school?

I mean the list is actually endless, you can probably name another dozen or so right off the top of your head!  Maybe where you are right now as a new or newer mom, you see many of these decisions as deal breakers with some of your past or current friends. Your other new mommy friends are making different decisions than you and because you are feeling so convinced that you are right, this may cause friction in your friendship. You are both equally convinced of two seemingly diametrically opposed methods and it is really putting a strain in these relationships.

Can you let me speak into your life for a moment as a mom a little further down the road than you are? With maybe just a little bit more experience than you? Good. Then listen up. Because I am about to hand you a full dose of maturity and save your sanity.

I remember what it was like to be a young/new momma and be passionate about my positions on many of these issues. I wholeheartedly believed that every decision I made was right. And they were right.

FOR ME.

AT THE TIME.

And I am afraid that perhaps some of the time, I let my passions and my beliefs get in the way of some friendships in a way that probably should not have happened. I may have hurt some of my friend’s feelings. And I am now 20 years in to this adventure of parenting and I want to tell you something you probably do not know at this juncture you are at in your life:

You can be fully convinced in your own mind that what you are doing is right for your family and your friends can be fully convinced of just the opposite for themselves and their families. And you could both be right.

And from where I sit as a mommy with big kids now, with some of my other mommy friends who we have known each other for over 20 years and parented very differently, many of those decisions turned out to be right on all our behalves. And the mistakes that we made a long the way – we really needed each other to encourage one another and pick each other up from our own stupidity….and not one of us needed to hear an “I told you so.”

So let’s agree to encourage one another…even if we don’t agree with every method, all of the time, let’s listen to and be there for each other. Let’s not be so convinced that we convict each other. Let’s not be so positive we are right that we are negative to one another. This is a tough enough job…let’s just love one another.