I’ve been thinking a lot about judgment lately and how we judge those around us constantly. I come from a family of…let’s call them “alert” people. I grew up in a family of lawyers and teachers, two careers that put the people who practice them in a position to observe a lot of behavior and make actions based on what they observe.
It has bothered me from time to time how quickly people rush to judgment about everything from what someone eats to what they wear to the company they keep. As a teenager, I hated the phrase, “you don’t want to get painted with the same brush” in reference to my friends. Admittedly, there are signs people send out with every choice they make. What we choose to show the world is what we have to assume others will use to develop a picture of who we are as people. However, I’ve always been hesitant to rush too quickly to judgment because I feared I could be wrong, or overly harsh, or otherwise misled by what people chose to show me when, in fact, they are someone else entirely.
As a parent, I’m now hyper-aware of my own compulsion to put voice to what I notice about people. I didn’t always like it when I heard it at home as a child and now I hesitate because of the lesson I’ll be teaching my own children. But then…..
Well, we’ve come into contact with some other families lately who have some things going on that I may one day have to explain to my children. Such as the child in the neighborhood who never seems to have been fed or the parent who seems to have had an extra glass of wine before bringing the children out to play after dinner. I say “seems” because I can’t be absolutely sure. Still, as a result of what I see, I don’t leave my older child at certain homes while I run home to change the younger one’s diaper.
My struggle is this: how do I explain my hesitation without burdening my children with concepts they can’t really evaluate on their own yet? How do I know if I’m even right about what appears to be going on in other families or with other people? As I get older, I get more confident in my ability to “judge” appropriately based on what I observe but I often fear I’m being too lax, so as not to be too judgmental, and I also often fear I’ve fallen into familiar habits and am too quick to react.
I’d be interested to hear how your express your own concerns to your children. What do you say to your own children when you have concerns about their friends or the neighbors? Do you keep it to yourself and create situations that work around the issue or do you explain your concerns to your children and what that means for how you do things? How old were your children when you first started to explain that maybe you didn’t want them to play with the kid who’s too rough? What did you say? I’d like to hear…
