Humor, Parenting

100 Ways People Are Judging Your Parenting Right Now

On the Internet. At the mall. In the grocery store. At school. Everywhere, it seems, are experts in parenting not just their own children, not just children in general, but your specific child — and whatever they believe is right, honey, you're not doin' it. It's easy to feel judged and shamed and hopeless ... until you realize that while everybody has an opinion, not all those opinions are the same, and it would be impossible to do what everybody says. Somewhere in the gaps between all this conflicting advice, you must be doing something right, right?

When you think of all the things you get judged for, really, it's easier just to laugh.

1. You're too strict. 2. You're not strict enough. 3. Your child spends too much time looking at a screen. 4. You're not taking enough advantage of technology to help your child. 5. Your child is taking advantage of technology and that's not fair to everyone else. 6. You're not involved enough in your child's school. 7. You're too involved in your child's school. 8. You're not helping your child with homework. 9. You're helping your child too much with homework. 10. You're letting your child wear that inappropriate thing. 11. You're not forcing your child to wear that appropriate thing. 12. Your kid's too loud. 13. Your kid's too quiet. 14. You are labeling your kid with a diagnosis. 15. You are not letting your child identify with a diagnosis. 16. You are seeking too many accommodations for your child's disability. 17. You are disablist and unjust toward people with disabilities. 18. You are not pushing your child hard enough. 19. You are pushing your child too hard. 20. You're medicating your child. 21. You're not medicating your child. 22. You take your child to too many doctors. 23. You're not looking hard enough to find the right doctor. 24. You're looking for a cure when you should be trying for acceptance. 25. You're accepting things you should be searching out a cure for. 26. You read too many books. 27. You don't read enough books. 28. You haven't read the right books. 29. You're not controlling your child's behavior. 30. You're too controlling, and that's why your child acts out. 31. Your child is eating all the wrong foods. 32. Your child is too much of a picky eater. 33. You don't advocate enough for your child. 34. You advocate in an unpleasant way. Stop that. 35. You need to help your child self-advocate. 36. Your child is behind in developmental skills. 37. You are pushing your unique child to develop according to some timetable. 38. You spank your child. 39. You don't spank your child. 40. You are not getting your child out in the community and involved in activities. 41. Your child does not have enough unstructured free time. 42. You read too many posts about parenting. 43. You haven't read that one post that has all the answers. 44. You'd rather read humor posts than ones that tell you how wrong you are. 45. You're totally overthinking this parenting thing. 46. You're completely thoughtless in your parenting. 47. You take everything too much to heart. 48. You don't take things seriously enough. 49. You are coddling your child. 50. You do not make your child feel special. 51. You act like you know it all. 52. You act completely clueless. 53. Everything wrong with your child is all your fault. 54. You act like there's something wrong with your child. 55. You haven't tried this treatment yet. 56. You're always chasing some new treatment. 57. You worry too much. 58. You're not worried about this very. important. thing. 59. You're too outspoken; nobody likes that. 60. You're too passive; you need to speak out. 61. You take too much money from the government. 62. You're not taking advantage of all these government programs. 63. You're too stressed. 64. You're too laid-back. 65. You only care about your own opinion. 66. You care too much about other people's opinions. 67. You need to lighten up. 68. You don't seem to grasp how very bad things are. 69. You burden your spouse with too much. 70. You do everything and shut your spouse out. 71. You have too many parenting theories. 72. You don't seem to have any plan to your parenting at all. 73. Your children are spoiled. 74. Your children are deprived. 75. Your children do nothing but run to therapy appointments. 76. You have failed to get your child this important type of therapy. 77. You're constantly bringing your kid to the doctor. 78. You didn't bring your kid to the doctor for that important thing. 79. Your child's teacher knows best, but you don't listen. 80. Your child's therapist knows best, but you don't listen. 81. Your child's doctor knows best, but you don't listen. 82. Your relatives know best, but you don't listen. 83. You listen to what everybody says instead of trusting your own parental instincts. 84. Your child is disrespectful. 85. Your child is so sweet and docile, but your other child is a nightmare. 86. Your child is respectful, but clearly did not learn that from you. 87. You do not treat your children all the same. 88. You treat your children all the same, but they need different things. 89. The fact that your child was well-behaved that one brief time proves that all the misbehavior is your fault. 90. The fact that your child misbehaved that one brief time invalidates all the good behavior. 91. Everything bad about your child comes from you. 92. Everything good about your child is due to the hard and careful work done by others. 93. You're inexperienced. 94. Your experience is not relevant to your current parenting situation. 95. Your constant agonizing over how people judge you makes your child feel bad. 96. Your failure to correct your parenting makes your child feel unloved. 97. You spend too much time arguing with people on the Internet about parenting. 98. You spend too much time sharing parenting posts on Facebook with sarcastic comments. 99. You're too defensive. You think people are always judging you! 100. You just do whatever you want without paying attention to valid constructive criticism.