Ok, SuperMoms, this one’s for you. I’m giving up trying to compete with you.

There are children out there living with abusive parents, kids with no food, no shelter, no hope while you spout off about organic-free-range-quinoa-essential oil-attachment parenting-rear-facing-five-point-harness bullshit relentlessly.

Listen to me:

If a child is fed and clothed, it doesn’t matter if the sustenance came from a breast or a bottle or whether the clothing is organic cotton. Formula isn’t poison no matter how many times you say it is. Stop raining judgement down on mothers about whose situation you know nothing. Some kids are picky eaters, too, so bragging about your kale-chip eating kids to the mom finding it difficult to feed her kid anything remotely healthy doesn’t help. You realise some adults are picky, too, right? It happens, and they’ll be just fine.

If a child is strapped into a car seat approved by the government, why do you feel compelled to force your opinions on people about the age their child should move to a new seat? Does it somehow make you feel like you love your child more because you’ve left them rear-facing till they graduate high school? The seats on the market are tested and approved; making a parent feel any kind of guilt about the one they’ve chosen isn’t helpful, it’s cruel.

If a family gets sleep, exactly how they make that happen is none of your concern. Maybe crying-it-out isn’t for you, that’s ok, but it works for some people and again: none of your business. And if you’re not into co-sleeping, that’s ok, too, but know that the call for others isn’t yours. Even when you think it’s in everyone’s best interest to agree with you, remember that opinions are not facts.

Buying pink for girls isn’t going to turn them into pining princesses awaiting rescue. Telling boys they’re “handsome” won’t reinforce negative gender roles.

Cloth diapering isn’t worth arguing over. Toddlers with soothers? Who cares. Extended breastfeeding, McDonald’s Happy Meals, screen time. . . if all the energy used to argue and judge was put into consciously parenting our kids so they grow into happy, caring members of society, I think that’d be a really great thing.

This comes to you from an attachment-parenting, long-term breastfeeding, bed-sharing, McDonald’s-eating, disposable-diapering, alternative-learning supporting person (whose kids eat kale chips and sushi) who just really feels like it’s time to move past all the judging and support one another in this hard-enough journey of motherhood.

xo