When Bad Things Happen to Sanctimonious Mothers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do things my way, and I was pretty rigid due to PPA. At the same time, I don't care what you do with your kids, and I find it mind-boggling that you are waiting for me to misstep and fall. New moms were telling me that I should not try to breastfeed so hard, not not sleep train because they did, etc etc. My actions are not a judgement of yours, do what you see fit and leave people like me alone.

Are you sanctimonious and mean to other mothers about their choices? If not then this thread isn't about you.

+1. It is totally about obnoxious people. Which is what makes this thread so ... interesting.

You'll have to be blunter than that, otherwise OP won't recognize herself.

[Anonymous]

I did lots of stuff folks hear call martyrish or illadvised. They worked fine, I didn’t bang on about it or need validation. I also didn’t think once let alone twice if someone did it differently. It’s too bad that somewhere someone is hoping you fail and suffer. Agree with another poster, it’s creepy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do things my way, and I was pretty rigid due to PPA. At the same time, I don't care what you do with your kids, and I find it mind-boggling that you are waiting for me to misstep and fall. New moms were telling me that I should not try to breastfeed so hard, not not sleep train because they did, etc etc. My actions are not a judgement of yours, do what you see fit and leave people like me alone.

Are you sanctimonious and mean to other mothers about their choices? If not then this thread isn't about you.

+1. It is totally about obnoxious people. Which is what makes this thread so ... interesting.

I had two other moms seeing my rigidity as sanctimony. Some still do: my child plays an instrument, and one mom repeatedly told me it's useless, and we should drop the classes. The same mom has signed up her child for music classes with the same teachers months after me telling her I don't care what her stance on music lessons for my child.

[Anonymous]

I suspect some view me as sanctimonious or smug because I really like to follow rules and I am pretty forthcoming about sharing things I’m proud of my child for. But I also share the s^{% out of my problems so IDK.

I feel like in this town sometimes sharing a bit of good news marks you as a sanctimonious harpie. But if your kid walks at 9 months or gets a coveted spot on the fencing team or is admitted to a magnet and your friends are weird about it, good on you and boo to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect some view me as sanctimonious or smug because I really like to follow rules and I am pretty forthcoming about sharing things I’m proud of my child for. But I also share the s^{% out of my problems so IDK.

I feel like in this town sometimes sharing a bit of good news marks you as a sanctimonious harpie. But if your kid walks at 9 months or gets a coveted spot on the fencing team or is admitted to a magnet and your friends are weird about it, good on you and boo to them.

+1000

[Anonymous]

My first was a preemie, who is a normal child with very mild health issues. Normally developing (which I now appreciate the greatness of)
My second is special needs. Long term lead poisoning as a baby. Nothing works like normal for her. Very delayed. She regularly sleeps 2 out of 24 hours. Sweet but incredibly difficult to live with.

My 3rd is a little prodigy. Picked up letters, numbers etc age 2 w minimal effort on my part. Sleeps thru the night. Memorizes everything and understands everything I say. A bit intense about learning but very easy and happy so far.


I guess my point is what I've learned from my kids is so little is in our hands. i would probably have been super sanctimonious if my 3rd was my first. Since they're my 3rd i recognize how much of their temperament, interests, abilities are inborn and I don't take credit.

Our job as parents is to make our home a castle. Our kids shouldn't be compared to other kids or each other. Each child is a spark of God and a unique soul, and our job is to maximize their potential. We don't know which average kid will end up helping millions of people, which special needs kid will inspire people, which brilliant kid will help the world and which will become a career criminal. We just have to do our best and pray.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My first was a preemie, who is a normal child with very mild health issues. Normally developing (which I now appreciate the greatness of)
My second is special needs. Long term lead poisoning as a baby. Nothing works like normal for her. Very delayed. She regularly sleeps 2 out of 24 hours. Sweet but incredibly difficult to live with.

My 3rd is a little prodigy. Picked up letters, numbers etc age 2 w minimal effort on my part. Sleeps thru the night. Memorizes everything and understands everything I say. A bit intense about learning but very easy and happy so far.


I guess my point is what I've learned from my kids is so little is in our hands. i would probably have been super sanctimonious if my 3rd was my first. Since they're my 3rd i recognize how much of their temperament, interests, abilities are inborn and I don't take credit.

Our job as parents is to make our home a castle. Our kids shouldn't be compared to other kids or each other. Each child is a spark of God and a unique soul, and our job is to maximize their potential. We don't know which average kid will end up helping millions of people, which special needs kid will inspire people, which brilliant kid will help the world and which will become a career criminal. We just have to do our best and pray.

Perfectly stated. I totally agree. Kids teach us so much if we are humble enough to let them!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a really good sleeper to start, but both of my kids were within normal margins for behaviors and milestones. Very early readers, super-duper smart. I feel like I'm on a tightrope of good luck that can snap at any moment despite my efforts and good intentions. So I'm always quick to take compliments but attribute them to luck, genes or shrug my shoulders because I'm not a better Mom (by a long shot) than anybody else. One day my chickens will come home to roost, I think it's a matter of time and magnitude for all of us. Don't get cocky!

OP here, I feel the same way! I had an easy baby and now an easy toddler and I am very careful not to get smug about it, because these things have a way of coming back around, as you said.

Humble brag.

Op, please delete your smug, self-congratulatory thread.

[Anonymous]

I have teens now. I have noticed that some women who were very rigid and controlling with young kids and judgmental of others who didn't follow whatever they had decided was the magic rule for raising kids have tended to struggle more with their teens.

I think that the underlying issue is that raising teens well requires mental flexibility. However, rigidity can be a way of getting through the day when kids are young and it's all new. It can be talismanic to adopt a position that, for instance, breastfeeding is always best if you are a mom who is struggling with breastfeeding. It gives purpose and a framework for getting through a tough day. If your baby is hungry and you aren't sleeping, I think for some women it's helpful to not see nuance and for them to believe they've found the one rule that everyone should follow.

But teens are a lot more complicated and sort of the definition of nuance. What I have seen is that women who really leaned into rigid rules-based parenting for younger kids are more likely to struggle with teens, if those women don't learn mental flexibility. If they can't deal with nuance, they aren't capable of advising their kids how to navigate tricky social situations or how to manage teen emotions.

I am not sure what OP meant, but I have see the pattern above play out.

[Anonymous]

The only sanctimonious parent I know well is a dad. Super annoying. They have the sweetest child, and I love the mom dearly, but his self-congratulatory bragging about all his techniques that he used that resulted in such a wonderful child is almost unbearable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only sanctimonious parent I know well is a dad. Super annoying. They have the sweetest child, and I love the mom dearly, but his self-congratulatory bragging about all his techniques that he used that resulted in such a wonderful child is almost unbearable.

Oh god, I know someone just like this. It seems even worse in him because the bragging has that condescending, mansplaining air to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect some view me as sanctimonious or smug because I really like to follow rules and I am pretty forthcoming about sharing things I’m proud of my child for. But I also share the s^{% out of my problems so IDK.

I feel like in this town sometimes sharing a bit of good news marks you as a sanctimonious harpie. But if your kid walks at 9 months or gets a coveted spot on the fencing team or is admitted to a magnet and your friends are weird about it, good on you and boo to them.

I agree with this - I think sometimes you just want to share and it can be taken as bragging. I was an FTM with a pretty great baby, and I wanted to be able to tell my friends when he hit milestones, etc, without it being obnoxious. I was really sensitive to this, too, because my own mother was obnoxious (always talking about how her kids did everything early, were so brilliant, etc), and I didn't want to be like that. So anyway, I think there is a line between: "my baby crawled today! Yay!" and like, going on and on and on about it and acting like your better-than because of it, because you are such a great parent or whatever. There are people on the receiving end who perhaps have inferiority complexes who take the former thing and turn it into the latter thing in their own minds, even when it was not the intent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moms who are really sanctimonious and smug are almost always covering for something. They are sharing their greatest successes (or the things they just got lucky with, like a great sleeper) specifically because they feel insecure about other stuff. The minute you realize this, they become easier to take because it's not about you. Just nod and say "Oh wow, it is amazing that your child has never even encountered a screen in its first four years of life -- congrats!" and then move along.

But I don't think these mom are then destined to have some parenting crisis befall them. I think thy'll deal with the same stuff everyone deals with. I just think it can be harder to deal with it if you are also dealing with insecurities and shame so intense you walk around trying to convince everyone that you are a parenting expert with all the answers. No one is! That's the great thing about it.

I find it easy to talk to and relate to other parents because I view us as all in this messy experiment together. If someone comes across something that "works" and I'm struggling, I'll try it! And I have no issue sharing both my challenges and my triumphs. It's normal. That's how friendship should work anyway.

I agree. Most of the moms I know like this are younger moms, moms who have less formal education than their peer group, or moms who didn’t have good parents as role models. I think they are so anxious about doing things right or being perceived as a failure that they get sanctimonious about breastfeeding or alternate vaccination schedule or proper discipline for a two year old or whatever.

And yes, some of the kids I know have the problems you might expect if that kind of dynamic continues through adolescence, where mom can’t handle the child failing. I think it kind of screws with a kid to feel like they have to embellish every success and hide or explain away every failure. However, far from making a kid who thinks they are awesome at everything (as popular culture likes to claim), you create a kid who believes that who they really are isn’t good enough at anything, and they have to fake it.

So, they either rebel or become a classic Freudian narcissist.

So, yeah, good for the kids if they rebel against that crap. And good for the moms of they gain enough perspective to realize that, as the above poster said, parenthood is messy, and we are all in it together just figuring things out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only sanctimonious parent I know well is a dad. Super annoying. They have the sweetest child, and I love the mom dearly, but his self-congratulatory bragging about all his techniques that he used that resulted in such a wonderful child is almost unbearable.

Do we know the same person? He's a little tone-deaf when it comes to boasting about his kid. Also, and that's what makes it so cringe-worthy, his child is sweet but not the talented genius he thinks she is. Now she's a teen, it's getting rather obvious to everyone except him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t noticed this- possibly because I actually like my friends??

+1 I've noticed bad things happening randomly to most if not all moms. There isn't a "your Insta post in 2015 bothered me" karma goddess taking revenge for you, OP.

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