Can you be friends with a mum with a different parenting style?
One of my best friends is a super-mum. Kids always immaculate, food always home-cooked (and low sugar and organic AND preservative free).
She is choc-full of rules and follows through if they don’t obey them. She has schedules on her wall and star charts (that she actually puts stars on for more than a few days). She is the mum, that on some day,s I wish I was, if only I had the energy.
She is possibly the polar opposite to me.
Helicopter to my free-ish range.
Her Felix to my Oscar.
Her Marsha to my Jan.
But just because I let my kids have ice-cream with toppings (and a flake) when we are together and her kids get frozen watermelon, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.
Does it?
I say this in reference to a recent debate spurred by an article on Babble. The author came to realise that her and an old friend’s parenting styles were so vastly different that she could hardly bear to be around her old pal anymore.
“But what was supposed to be a relaxing time to catch up with old friends that weekend, became an unrelenting four-day exhibition in the travails of neurotic parenting. My friends put the HELL in helicopter parenting - whirring over their poor child’s every move, fretting over his every glance…
So much fretting, worrying, indulgence and indecision went into the welfare of this kid that the entire weekend became about him. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to my friends...
Halfway through the weekend, I found myself watching the clock, waiting for them to leave. As they hovered and gesticulated over his every move, I found myself thinking, 'Wow, I wonder if we can be friends anymore.'"
No matter what the shared history, the paths forged together, the life spent, she was willing to cast it aside because of her friend’s parenting neuroses.
It made me sad.
My friends hold the keys to my memories. They are the women who know who I was and what I have become. They have shared my secrets and shouldered my worries. They know me better than myself. I couldn’t imagine casting them aside because of the way they told their children how to dress bugged me.
When my friend and I first had children she went down the Gina Ford scheduled baby, while I went down the feed-on-demand sleep-in-my-room/bed/arms route.
Sure, it was annoying as hell when I wanted to catch up for a coffee and she couldn’t leave as her baby was on his scheduled nap. But as I wandered the streets with my baby in his sling, I can’t ever remember thinking that it was time to cut her free.
Hell no. I wished I could be that strong.
I have some friends where things go the other way, friends who allow their kids more freedom than mine. My children often beg me to be more like these mums. Why can’t we drink soft drink, they ask? Why can’t we watch those movies? But he is the same age as me.
You hold firm because that is what you believe (for now) and together my friends and I laugh at how different we can be.
Pause for a moment and appreciate these unbelievable animal friendships. Post continues after video.
For me, it could be that I simply don’t have a heck of a lot of friends, so I treasure the ones I do. I am sure that at times, they find frustrations with the way I parent, with the decisions I make, but I imagine they would either tell me to pull my head in or just ignore me (once again) and continue on with our interwoven lives.
Sure when you become a parent it dominates your life and has an impact on every decision you make but it doesn’t define who you are, does it?
I am sure for every person there are reasons to cast an adult friendship aside - betrayal, deceit or simply growing apart - but to forsake one, even for a short time, over a different way of bringing up your kids seems to me to be a waste.
Good friendships are so bloody rare, don’t throw them away. Cherish them. Laugh through them, because one day, before you know it, you will need them.
Are you and your friends different types of parents? How do you get on?
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