7 Things We Should Stop Judging Parents For

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After only two weeks of nannying a 6 year old (yes, only 2 weeks) I learned a lot about parenting and now I officially have #NoJudgment

1. Lying to their kids.

I use to hate the saying, “do as I say, not as I do” because even at a young age I was pretty sure that was the very definition of hypocrisy, but now that I’ve spent most of my waking moments with a child under the age of ten I have discovered that sometimes it’s ok to lie a little. Obviously it’s nothing to be proud of, but just because I binged watched all of Orange is The New Black in 3 nights does not mean you can watch Disney Channel all day, everyday. Kids are inquisitive creatures and sometimes they really don’t need all the answers.

2. Letting their children leave the house looking a hot mess.

After the 4th times of telling them to put their clothes on you really don’t give a shit if they come out in hot pink leggings and a green sweater even though it’s 99 degrees outside – honestly you’re just happy they’re ready to go. I use to think parents who did this were of the hippie variety – the type that wanted to teach their kids self expression and what have you, but now I know it’s that they just stopped giving a fuck as long as it covered all their parts and wasn’t on backwards.

3. Letting themselves leave the house looking a hot mess.

Ditto goes for the parents. It’s easy to think, “couldn’t she have at least brushed her hair before coming out in public” when you’re not busy trying to wrangle a small human into clothes and making sure everyone has everything and goes pee and eats and etc, etc, etc. Shit, you’re lucky if you leave the house with a half-assed ponytail and a somewhat clean t-shirt. Unless you want to start getting ready to leave the house several hours before departure you kind of have to just grab what you can and pray there’s no spit up on it (see item below).

4. Having a messy car/house/purse/everything.

In your head you think you’ll have time to clean and organize everything but then when you realize it’ll just get trashed within 5.3 second of having cleaned it you kind of just throw up your hands and learn to live with the chaos. Not to mention that all cleaning must take place between the hours of 10pm and 7am and as we previously discussed those are sacred hours reserved for your Netflix addiction so you still can sound like a normal human being when at the park with every other adult.

5. Leaving their kids at practice/ a play date in order to go run errands.

As a society we demand that parents watch their kid every second of everyday or else we label them as “bad parents”, but you are kidding yourself if you think the first time you have an opportunity to get in at the Apple genius bar at the same time as their swim practice you’re not going to drive like a bat out of hell to get to the mall while your little nugget is safely in the pool with their qualified instructors. This is the only time parents have. I mean have you seen the hours at a dry cleaners?! What parent can pick something up between 10am and 5pm without a little creative thinking.

6. Losing their shit on their kids in public.

We’ve all seen it, that one mom in Target that we half feel sorry for and half want to call CPS on – but just you wait until you’ve had no sleep, your house is a mess, you’re hungry and this damn kid won’t stop asking you to buy unnecessary toys for them. It’s enough to make the most sane person go crazy! One day we were at the mall and the little girl I’m watching would not stop touching all the merchandise even though I had told her FIVE TIMES to stop. The 6th time I saw her do it I was so mad I probably would have shaken her (I mean I knew she could hear me, she’s not deaf!!!), but I didn’t instead I turned around and yelled, “if you don’t stop that right now we are going home and so help me God you will not come out of your room again until it is dark.” I wasn’t serious, but I she thought I was which was all I needed.

7. Posting too many pictures of their kids online.

Yes, I know, little Jimmy is adorable and the rest of us without kids would really need our Facebook news feeds to stay filled with drunken nights and over sharing statuses, but lets get real – kids are cute as hell. They’re so cute that every time the look at you with their big wondering eyes you just want to snap as many pictures as possible and tell the whole world how you created this little person. It’s annoying but we should really stop giving parents a hard time about this. It’s their greatest accomplishment and it’s way more fun to look at then hearing about your dumb promotion for the 6 millionth time.