What To Do When Someone Criticizes Your Parenting

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

Have you experienced how people will cheerfully insert their uninvited parenting feedback into a conversation, without a care as to how it might affect you? Whether it’s your parents or your friends, they feel the need to tell you what you should be doing with your little ones, and how you should be doing it.

Maybe these people feel that you handled your child’s meltdown wrong, or you didn’t get your child’s bedtime routine just right, or they’ve decided that you allowed your child’s manners to go to shit. Any time an unsolicited critique is volunteered, it has the potential to make even the best of us second-guess our parenting.

Please keep this in mind: The words only other people’s opinions. We have no obligation to allow anyone else’s judgment to become part of our narrative. Only we decide if other people will affect how we parent our child, or if we allow their words to affect how we feel about ourselves.

Your Business Is Nobody Else’s Business

If you catch yourself wondering what others will think if your child talks or acts a certain way, stick with the facts, your facts … not someone else’s opinion.

Spending any of your precious time or energy saving face under the glare of other people’s viewpoints takes your focus away from how to truly support your own child.

Our kids watch us closely. Allowing someone else’s uninvited input to influence how we behave not only puts pressure on us, but also puts pressure on our children because they see other people’s opinions are more highly regarded than your own. Children depend on us to provide leadership to them by making and adhering to our own decisions. If we weaken our authority by being wishy-washy, our kids learn not to take our rules seriously because we’ve shown them how easily we change our mind based on what others think.

In fact, one of the most beneficial skills to teach our children is to value their own opinion most and then train them just how to develop and trust it. If we don’t show them a good example of how to do that, they will also become susceptible to caving to peer pressure.

Four Reasons to Let Go of Placing too High a Value on Other People’s Unwanted Opinions

1. People will always feel the need to nitpick at something

Even if you are Martha Stewart, friends will point their finger, finding something to judge. Typically, it starts with, “Well, that’s one way to handle it but have you tried {insert unwanted parenting advice here}.”

An easy way to dodge their “helpful” tip is to say, “Thank you for the advice.” Then confidently remind the advice-giver that you have a firm grasp on the situation. As much as you may appreciate someone’s intention to help, you know your child best. Being firm about your decision-making will leave the door less cracked the next time someone wants to question your authority.

2. Your self-worth isn’t defined by anyone’s opinion other than your own

You might think the approval rating you get from your peers is self-validating, but it’s really not. Have you ever found the few times you’ve veered from your own instincts; you’ve looked back and realized you should have stuck with your original thought?

Maybe your daughter’s boyfriend is throwing a party, and his parents won’t be home. You have reservations but your other mom-friends accuse you of being too stern, they even call you a buzz-kill. Does their opinion and verbal attack call your self-worth into question? Don’t let it. Your instincts are on point for your child and for your values and rules. Your mom-friends won’t be the ones to pick up the pieces should things go south at a party with no adults. By sticking to your guns, you aren’t any less “cool” for standing up for what you believe in, and your kids will respect you when your decision-making isn’t weakened by what others think.

3. Being a people-pleaser pleases no one, especially yourself

Keeping everyone else happy just adds to our current state of exhaustion. The rule of thumb is that when everyone else is happy, typically we aren’t. If we conform to another individual’s views all the time, it brings us unhappiness. Don’t go with the flow just because it will make other people happy, that includes your child. Being a parent means inevitably pissing the kids off. And that’s OK. Sometimes those dagger eyes filled with disappointment mean you are doing a pretty stand-up job.

4. What works for someone else might not work for you

We are all different. Our kids are different, our parenting strategies are different, but most importantly, our personalities are all very different. One size never fits all. The same solution doesn’t solve all. Your mom-friend may tell you your response to both of your kids sneaking out isn’t as effective as her quick-to-punish techniques. Chalk it up to her solution working better for her. You are only in charge of your family and how you decide to handle your child’s behavior. Walk to the beat of your own drum, and do what’s best for you.

Ask Mom’s Positive Parenting Solutions for Blocking Out Others’ Opinions

• Stick to your own facts, not someone else’s opinion. Pay less mind to what other people are doing.
• Block out the noise. Believe in your own parenting techniques and leadership.
• Follow your individual intuition. Your own parent instincts won’t ever steer you wrong.

If you’re struggling with a grandparent who keeps making comments about the way you parent your kids, you may need to set healthy boundaries.