My Snapshots

Today I took my baby C.F. for his six-month check up. In the doctor's office, his two-year-old brother C.S. behaved like a perfect child. He waited patiently and quietly, even threw in a few kisses for his brother to woo the nurses. The staff was impressed. And I was proud. Not only of my son, but of my own parenting.

Ten minutes later in the parking lot, everything changed. The baby was crying hard, C.S. was screaming and refused to get into the car. I noticed an older man watching, silently judging me, I'm sure.

If you randomly take snapshots of my day, each one can draw a very different assumption of what kind of a mother I am. Snapshots don't tell the whole story. But I too have times when I subconsciously make snapshots judgements. They can be based on all sorts of presumptions and stereotypes. A mom giving candies to her children in a grocery store? Bad mother. Men checking their Blackberries on weekends? Workaholics. Children screaming in the parking lot? Can't their mother control her own children? Wait, that was me.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Matthew 7:3