I'm bringing this up before Pigtail is too old and it seems pointed.
It's not pointed. At least not yet. It's a legitimate question.
So far, I consider our parenting style to be pretty "middle of the road." I think most people consider their parenting style to be the same. But even this middle road is WIDE.
I'm wondering - in advance - how you handle a friend or relative that parents in a totally different way, but who has frequent contact with you or your child or your parenting choices.
A good friend of mine in L.A. has a ten-year-old. She shares carpool duty with a few other moms from the neighborhood who send their child to the same magnet school. One day, my friend was running late getting the group of carpool kids from school to their next activity. She did a quickie McDonalds run-through and treated the giggling girls to McNuggets.
Later in the evening, she said to one of the moms at drop off, "I ran through McDonalds for dinner because we were pressed for time, hope that's okay." And the mom replied, "Well, it's really not."
Now, my friend certainly didn't know that the little girl's family had a McDonald's aversion. She wasn't trying to offend in any way. And I guess I don't blame the other mom for making her opinion clear. Although, I think I would have handled it with a "Well, that's not something we normally choose for our family, but it's okay this once."
But I wonder: On parenting issues from McDonalds to spanking, how do you handle someone who does it differently?
Do you try to limit you or your childs amount of time with that person? I have a friend who told me in earnest that she would not let her child come play at my house because we have the television on constantly and they are a tv-free home. I wasn't even stunned by her statement. I sort of shrugged in an We're-Not-Over-Getting-Over-This-One way.
But what if you don't want your time to be limited? You don't want to ruin a friendship over it, or worse, a family relationship. Will this be something you can weather or will this be something that naturally separates you for good?
What if you're the only one who handles the differences with care? Or if you're the one with strong boundaries that the other mom doesn't seem to share?
I have so many questions on this topic.
If you have experience with this, I'd love to hear how you handled it. I'm serious when I say that we haven't encountered such a dilemma just yet. But I know it's near.
