Notice without judging.

Last night, L threw the mother of all temper tantrums. It was big. It was bad. It involved a threat to pee on me.

I may or may not have e-mailed the social worker at his school this morning. I can say with certainty that I would appreciate any moms of 4 year olds telling me that a 45 minute meltdown is normal for a kid that young. Seriously.

But I digress.

One of our family members, who shall remain nameless, for a variety of reasons, was at our house last night, witnessing the whole thing. He watched the parenting choices I made (including writing a social story, picking him up and placing him in his room for "uh-oh time," and actively ignoring the screams and thumps that went on for 45 minutes.

At one point, he noted, "Wow, your patience is amazing."

(For the record, it isn't always, or even usually. However, I deal with kids in crisis every day at school and feel like my parenting is best during the biggest meltdowns. Weird? Maybe.)

He continued chatting with me. As we heard a particularly loud thump-crash combination, he chuckled and said, "When my kids were growing up, that's when I would have gotten the belt."

B and I explained that we believed that L was clearly displaying attention-seeking behaviors and we choose to ignore those. We didn't discuss our own, very different, feelings on spanking.

"Yeah," he said. "I get that."

And we went right back to what we were doing.

Later, I realized how monumental that moment was.

Once, a long time ago, I blogged about a sentence that one of my favorite yoga teachers said during a class.

"Notice without judging."

This family member is amazing at that very difficult task. He follows a very unconventional religion, yet encourages us on our own, very different, faith journey. He even attends church with us from time to time.

As mothers, as friends, as professionals, as women, I feel that this is one of the most difficult things to do. To notice, without judging.

I think I'm usually pretty good at it. I don't judge others for breastfeeding or not breastfeeding, which is probably easy because I have experienced two polar opposite breastfeeding journeys with my boys. I don't judge for choice of diapers, or circumcision, or sleep-training methods, even though I feel very passionately that the choices I've made are right for me.

But when I see a parent disciplining their child, or failing to do so? I tend to judge, albeit silently. And when I see a child with a pacifier who I feel is too old to have one? The judgies creep up.
I'm sure there are a few other things that make me more judgmental than I'd like to admit.

Clearly, our family member subscribed to a very different discipline technique than we do. But he was able to let our choices in our household roll off his back. We weren't hurting him. They were our choices and he recognized that we have a different perspective. A different background. A different family dynamic.

Today, I'm making the choice to consciously start trying to notice, without judging. Can you imagine what a difference it would make if even a small portion of the blogging community chose to do the same?

Namaste.