As my children have gotten old enough to have little personalities and opinions (4 & 3), I find myself lacking patience more and more in situations where I feel out of control. You know, when your kids push you to the edge. If I’m not careful, I can go from calm and conquering the day to an extremely heated, mental meltdown in a matter of minutes.
Do you ever see somebody out in public and think “man, I would never do that / say that / act that way with my own kids?”
It’s hard to be a parent in general, let alone in front of anyone else these days. But I think those glimpses into someone else’s life, when it appears a little rough, are similar to super successful moments in another’s. Not everyone gets to see the process and all the sacrifices that lead up to a successful moment. And we talk about that a lot in society, and we say “there is such a journey involved” and “that doesn’t happen overnight … ,” things like that. I think the same can be said about those moments where we catch a quick look of someone else momming out in the wild. That mom may be in a seemingly difficult situation at this very moment, which is not really for us to judge anyway; however, she could have been making very different decisions five minutes ago. Maybe those decisions five minutes ago were great decisions and maybe things just got out of hand, or she was pushed to her limit. There are so many factors that can affect one reaction in one moment, and for all we know she’s a great mom (in fact, I’m sure she is)! I’ve been in that situation, in public, where I don’t recognize myself in that very moment with the way that I’m acting or how I’m saying something; however, I was a great mom five minutes ago and you just didn’t see that part.
