Navigating motherhood is an interesting thing… 

Jackson one day old…oh boy, I had no clue what I was getting myself into…

There are a billion and one ways to do things:

Exclusively breast feed or formula feed or a combination of both.

Pump once in a blue moon or pump every day….nipple confusion and engorgement and all that other fun stuff.

Stay at home mama or a working mama or stay at home working mama.

Sleep train or cosleep and scheduled naps and random naps.

Cry it out or dont. Ferber or extinction or attachment parenting.

Cloth diapers or disposable. Inserts or prefolds or huggies or honest.

Pureed foods or baby led weaning or gerber jars or solely organic.

Seriously, there’s a book on each of the different facets of parenting…and each way tells you that it is THE way to parent, and if you don’t do it, you are wrong.

We have this mindset that babies are fragile beings (and they are, not saying they aren’t) that will break if we make even close to one mistake. There is quite a weight put on us mommies that if our babies didn’t get the attention they needed as infants that they will be the next young adult to bring a gun into their school because they were left to cry a minute too long…or they will be depressed in their teen years because they didn’t get enough tummy time…or they wont be as successful because they had too much screen time.

When we really think about it, we put this weight on ourselves because society has given us this weight. Think about it: a kid is rude and we think, “who are their parents? They were not raised right?” Or a kid is depressed in their teen years or even adulthood, and we think, “They were not held enough…they weren’t given enough love.”

There is probably some truth to that, sure. If you leave your baby to cry all hours of the day that is called neglect and does have serious consequences for people. A friend of mine told me a story of a young girl who was in the same orphanage in China as the son she adopted. This young baby girl died because of neglect. It’s a real thing; it’s devastating.

But as meaningful adults in a western country with access to all the means in the world, do we really think our choices for our babies as infants will destroy them into adulthood?

As Christians, we need to evaluate this a little further… What does God say about it?

He tells us as parents to:

• Train up a child in the way he should go,” (Proverbs 22:6). 
• Care for our children and protect them (Story of Moses – Exodus 2). 
• Wean our children – so they are to grow up and mature (1 Samuel 1:24, Psalm 131:2, Hebrews 5).
• Discipline our children to live lives following the truth toward wisdom and lives away from folly (Proverbs 22:15).
• Not provoke their children to anger, but to bring them up in discipline and instruction of the Lord,” (Ephesians 6:1-4).
• Etc.

In the stories of Moses, Samson, Isaac, David, and others, they are born to do great things and live out great purposes of God that only he could bring about – and in each of these people’s lives, they were definitely human and struggled with human problems. When you look at the lives of many different children in the Bible, parents are given great responsibility to teach and instruct their children. They are told to model their lives in a way that their children can follow (1 Corinthians 11:1, 2 Timothy 1:13).

Though, when it comes down to it… Children are given the command to obey their parents and to honor them. But, it is their personal choice and their freedom to do so or not.

We can parent perfectly according to every book and every mommy blog and even the Bible, but at the end of the day, they could choose to do it or not.

As women (and men, too), we know this in the core of who we are. I mean, we were those children once upon a time making our own choices despite what our parents told us. You know, that time they told you not to climb on the couch or chair and you did it anyway…and learned it the hard way by falling down and cutting open your face (yeah, a variation of that happened to me).

And, if kids will do things regardless of our “perfect” parenting, don’t you think the outcome isn’t up to us? The outcome is up to God, and our job is only to do the job he has given us well and with all of our hearts. Parent well, and stop putting so much stress into how they are going to turn out and trust God that he will honor that hard work.

But, then there’s a disconnect when we look at someone else and the way they are parenting. When it is different from the way we are parenting, we jump on the chance to judge them. We all have spent hours upon hours reading books and blogs and asking other parents questions and making our own determination of what is right or wrong for our children. And we do it with the best of motives – with love in our hearts for our babies.

So why do we do this? Pride, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe because we have done so much research and put so much energy into figuring out the right answers that we think others should *clearly* be doing something the same way we are. I really don’t know the right answer. And God knows I have been guilty of doing these same things.

I think there are important things that we must teach our children and responsibilities that God has entrusted to us as parents (listed some of those things above). We need to do those things and honor God in them. But everything else, if guided in love and care for our babies, why do we have to judge? Why do we have to think less of our fellow mommy who is battling just like we are to do things the right way so we don’t screw up our children? We are all in the same boat paddling down the same river? Let’s join arms instead of being at odds.

Okay, so we use cloth diapers, but another mommy thinks it’s disgusting. We do baby led weaning, but other moms have pureed excessively. We exclusively breast feed, but others have formula fed from since day one. We have done a stint of cry it out, and other moms do not. We are all different, not to mention each of our babies are different. Yes, I am passionate about those things, but it doesn’t mean what you are passionate about is any better or worse than what I have chosen. Follow God, love your babies, and keep doing the best you are doing. I am proud of you!