Over-parenting, Undermining, Oh My!

Every day I'm worried I'm running out of things to write about and then I think about whatever happened the last 17 hours and I can come up with something. Here goes!

My mom helps me with Luna twice a week. As per previous posts, I don't have the very best relationship with my mom but we manage to get by. My mom and I agree on almost nothing when it comes to parenting and she is very much "Grandma." She dresses her granddaughter, buys her toys and all the things she would never need, and gives her candy and chocolate and junk food no matter what.

One thing she does, and it drives me completely insane, is she parents over me. Let me explain. My daughter interrupts and talks over us constantly. She's 5, and no matter how we spin it, everything is too important to wait. I always ask my daughter to follow directions. Over and over again I ask. "Finish your two tasks, we can talk about that later, one thing at a time." I will literally walk in the door in full parent mode and give my daughter instructions and my mom will give them over me. It sounds like this: Me: "Luna, please clean up the table, calm down and go brush your tee---My mom: "Luna clean this mess up and go brush your teeth!" It's maddening.

There have been rough periods where my husband does the same thing. It makes me shut down. I'm sure I have been guilty of this stuff too, no doubt, but it can feel defeating. When I was a nanny, you can bet I made sure I was the authority figure and I mirror that with parenting as much as possible. But, when I get steamrolled, I get cranky.

It's important for my daughter to know I'm in the mom. The head lady of the house. And when my mom undermines me, it makes me feel 6 again. So I try to overcome!

I also try not to parent other people's children, especially in the presence of the other parent. I try and make everything a dual agreement. Candy? Okay if he can't have it, you can't. Disagreement? How do we go with this? Because parenting is a team effort, even if you do it completely differently.

My husband and I have had some serious differences of opinions and I really had to learn to stand my ground on certain things that I wanted nothing to do with in terms of parenting methodology. With that said, I also don't judge how others parent...okay I try not to judge how others parent as much as possible. I admit I lose my mind when I see children under 7 with caffeinated sodas...I do. If you aren't parenting your child when that child is harming or hurting mine though, an entirely different beast can be awakened. This hasn't really happened to me. Most of the time, I've found myself around like-minded parents and if they see their little one hit mine, we get all of us into a huddle.

One of my closest mom friends, her son has always lashed out physically at my daughter. Never to the point of any real harm but in every case, my daughter has said something or done something to provoke him. That's when the two of us moms laugh and say, "Don't provoke if you don't want him to lash out in his way to communicate and don't expect her to be nice if you always hit her when she is sassy." It's a team effort when both of them are being ridiculous. 

I've only ever had one instance with a "mean kid," where she was playing at our place and I was a room away and I overheard her saying all the reasons why she was better than my daughter. Then my daughter emerged to ask for lunch for them. I asked the guest what she wanted and she proceeded to pick through our pantry and fridge. I said, "Luna wants a turkey sandwich, would you like one too?" This young one then told me she was a picky eater. Turkey sandwiches were disgusting and she wasn't even hungry. She'd eat a slice of cheese.

As my daughter happily inhaled her sandwich and her guest picked at a slice of cheese I said to her, "Every house is different and in this one, we don't talk about how we are better than others, we talk about how we may be a different or enjoy different things. Like Luna loves to color and I like to paint, not necessarily that I'm better than Luna at painting. And when we are offered something to eat that we're not interested in, we say 'no, thank you,' or 'May I have something else?' We don't say something is disgusting just because it's not our favorite. We really use happy and kinder words with each other." The play date got awkward and then better. I regret nothing.

Dana Carvey has an epic stand up routine where he talks about parents now and how we've softened. He alluded to his childhood being filled with his parents yelling "Shut up," or "I'll give you something to cry about!," and now we find parents in the park saying, "Now Gregor, what did we agree to?" The whole bit is funny because it's painfully true. A part of me wanted to scream at this little girl to shut up and not speak to my daughter like that or she doesn't need to play over here anymore. But I had to channel the millennial mom that was calm and rational and very much not my first instinct.

But I truly don't want to undermine anyone's parenting. It's delicate. As someone coming off of 2 really rough years, I can tell you that if someone were to comment to me on my parenting or lack thereof, depending on the situation, I might have lost it, so I try to just be as objective as possible unless it becomes a safety concern for my child. Some situations are harder than others.

With my mom, I can't tell her not to parent over me. It's completely irritating and unnecessary but she would just get offended and pissy. So I just reroute the discussion or distract the kiddo and let her interject her piece. I don't like that undermining feeling because, as a woman, we get the shit end of the stick anyways, but motherhood gives us some ferocity and no nonsense force that we may have never had before.

I saw many moms as I was growing up that I would never mess with. I grew up opposite as my mom was the pushover, and my dad was not to be messed with, but to me, most other moms were scarier than my dad any day! Mom's don't mess around, and that was my general imagery for my stance in motherhood, thus I try to embody it. 

Parenting is delicate, regardless, because there are so many different ways to do everything, but I think my general point to this post is, being undermined as a parent really sucks, so let's not do that to each other. Instead of parenting over one another, I'd ask that any of my mom friends just say, "Hey Luna's being a little crazy" or, "you might want to check in with Luna about how she's acting with..." Because I'd rather be "called out" on not seeing less than amazing behavior, than let Luna treat a friend poorly. Maybe that's just me but I really want to see less "shaming" kinds of things and way more learning experiences. 

So if you see me acting a fool as a mom, or see my kid being out of line, I ask that rather than undermine, you find the time to bring me into the know and help me sort it all out as a fellow parent. It really does take a village so please don't leave me to be the village idiot!