Small and I were getting dry after swimming at our local pool this morning and I heard a little boy ask his mum for help with his laces.
‘Can’t you see how busy I am?’ she barked at her son, balancing a MacBook pro on her lap while simultaneously punching numbers into her calculator.
She was clearly stressed. And every bit of me wanted to jump over the bench and help the boy tie his laces. He didn’t look in the least bit surprised by his mother’s reaction to his plea for help. But there I was…judging.
Right there and then I was judging that poor woman when she could have easily been on a hateful deadline with an even shoutier boss.
There’s something in the air at the moment as I feel everyone is judging each other. Call me over-sensitive or just plain hormonal but whether it’s a comment from a friend, a glance from a stranger or simply an untimely-overheard conversation, I feel we’re ALL being judged more than ever.
It could be over something as small as the snacks we allow our kids to eat or as large as whether we have a career or are full-time mums and also seems to stretch to what/if we smoke or drink or who has had NITS again…
The bottom line is that all this judging and being judged is totally and utterly exhausting. So today I tried my best NOT to judge that mother. Who knows what was happening on her laptop and whether she had shown her son a million times how to tie his own laces…keen for him to try a little harder for himself.
And I now want you all to pass the non-judge message on – so that we can break this chain of judging. I’m sure we’ve all got better things to do.
This article first appeared in my Mum About Town column in The Lady Magazine.