What To Do When People Judge

My most challenging parenting moments are parenting through aggressive dysregulation while someone watches.

The hardest part is not managing the aggression, keeping my children safe, or staying present instead of dissociating. The hardest part is managing the judgment. Real or perceived. Being watched during a meltdown is incredibly hard.

It might be a family member during an upcoming visit. It might be your spouse, who wishes you used more strict, disciplinarian approaches. Or who checks out mentally when things get tough. It could be a friend during a playdate who looks at you with huge eyes, or a stranger's head shake at the grocery store.

Being watched is intensely vulnerable. Someone else is seeing what our reality is actually like. They are present in the hard stuff, the moments we pretend never happen. The moments that are so painful, we can hardly reconcile them ourselves, much less explain them to someone else. In intensely vulnerable moments, we are tempted to go into performance mode, to showing the other person just how good we are. But this doesn't help us. It doesn't meet our true need.

Our first need is to stay connected to ourselves and our own experience. When we go into performance mode, we step away from our experience and our needs, and into a role that we are playing to meet the expectations of another.

Meet your real need by staying with yourself.

Meet your real need by staying with your child.

Thoughts that may help:

• I am here right now.

• I am with my child.

• I can ignore you.

• Our needs matter most.

   

Our next need is for practical support through an extremely difficult time. If a family member, partner or helpful stranger is standing and watching, you are allowed to mobilize them into action by issuing clear requests for support and help.

"We need a cold bottle of water. Could you get one from that case?"

Sometimes, staying focused on ourselves and on our child's needs is too hard while being watched. Sometimes that person is too frozen to step in and help. In that case, what we actually need is space. You are allowed to tell someone to find another place to be while you manage this meltdown.

"Could you step away? We need space right now."

When judgment meets extreme vulnerability, we are in a toxic recipe for shame.

Shame sounds like:

• I am a bad mom.
• I am always messing everything up.
• I can't get it together.
• I am so stupid.
• I am bad at this.
• I should never have become a parent.
• I am too much, this is all my fault.
• Everyone else can do it. Why can't I?
• When people judge, we are ripe for shame.

When judgment hits, your thoughts may spiral into darkness. Yet this is also a crucial moment to step into your power and claim your strength as parent.

• I am doing my best, and in a relationship of trust and love, my best will always be enough.
• This was a hard one, and I'm feeling so vulnerable.
• I’m strong.
• I am doing great.

When people judge, step forward in self-love and claim your power, your strength, and your bravery.

You are parenting through extremely difficult circumstances. Some people are out for a walk, and you are on mile 24 of a marathon. Their pebble of judgment cannot match the mountain of strength that is inside you. You are so brave. You are so strong. You choose connection and trust over everything else. You are loving your child through all their pain. You are honoring your needs, even though extremely vulnerable situations. You are doing it.