Bad Mother

Someone told me at church today that I'm a bad mother. In front of other people. As if I don't feel guilty enough without the public recognition.....

Maybe her opinion is based on an accumulation of observations of me and Bennett over the last year and a half. In that case, perhaps she is right. Otherwise, I'm taking her opinion with a massive boulder of salt. But still, who wants to be told in front of a crowd that they are a bad mother?

So Saturday I took Bennett with me to the Leadership Training broadcast at church (which, by the way, was really excellent). I had only expected that it would be an hour long and Bennett did GREAT in that first hour. He wasn't too noisy, he stayed right by me on the bench. He was a good kid. Then the second hour came. Needless to say, the control went out the window. A 19-month old does NOT sit still for much and even one hour was pushing it. But two? Ok, now maybe I'm a bad mother because I even thought that I could learn something at the meeting with Bennett in tow. Agreed, I'm a bad mom all the way--lesson learned by me! During the second hour, Bennett needed to push the limits and he wandered up to the front of the church and ran behind the choir seats. He really wasn't making any noise, but it was slightly distracting to see his spike of hair as he ran from one side of the bench to the next. If not for that straight up spike of hair, you wouldn't have really known that he was up there. So, big deal. I let him play. No one was speaking from the podium since it was a broadcast so he wasn't bugging anyone.

So, on Sunday, he gets in his mind that it's ok to go up there again. Bad idea. I realized my mistake. But, too late. He made a mad dash as soon as church started. I caught up to him and took him screaming out into the hall. After a while he settled down and we went back into the meeting. The little bugger escaped again and this time he made it. He wandered around on the stand and I finally coaxed him over to the side. Of course, he screamed like mad when I picked him up...more time in the hall.

Anyway, the organist had to tell me later that I should never have let him on the stand on Saturday because I was teaching him that it was ok to do it on Sunday. He could have been hurt, gotten his head stuck in the organ, something about calling the fire department, blah, blah. "Bad Mother" she said.

True, I am pretty stupid. And I often think I'm a bad mom. But, really??

The lady that said this was older and never had kids. So, basically I don't care what she thinks. Plus, she's a pretty wacky lady on a variety of levels. So when she said I'm a bad mother, I didn't say anything. But now I'm thinking--sweet. In her book I'm a bad mother. Which basically means that I'm doing things in a different way than she would.

Seriously, she's wacky. If she had kids, they no doubt would have been wacky. If she approved of my parenting method, then I would really be offended. So I'm a bad mom. (yawn) What's new? Bad and proud of it.