Keep Quiet
I have a friend who has three small children. She told me
recently that before she had children, she didn’t really get the
things that people with children told her. She wasn’t always
convinced by their claims of tiredness or logistical problems,
she didn’t necessarily believe that children could squabble that
much or be such hard work, she sometimes just didn’t under-
stand what they were talking about. Even when she had two
children, she didn’t really get what people with more than two
children were telling her. Now, however, she says she finally
really gets it, and it just isn’t like she’d imagined.
Yo u ’ d h a v e t h o u g h t t h a t i f y o u h a d t w o c h i l d r e n y o u ’ d k n o w
what life was like for people with three kids. But you don’t. In
fact, you don’t even know what life is like for other people
with two children who are different sexes from yours, or fur-
ther apart in age, or when there’s less money, or the parents are
working different hours from you. Even apparently similar cir-
cumstances can be deceptively different.
And we all have our own personalities and values and
strengths and weaknesses. I know one person who is widowed
and hates spending time with happy couples because it
reminds her what she’s lost. I have another widowed friend
who has no problem spending time with couples because she
doesn’t see it in relation to her own marriage. Neither is right
or wrong, but both have their own histories and attitudes.
So what am I saying? Essentially, don’t judge. Try walking a
mile in someone else’s moccasins before you presume to know
what his life is like. My own mother had one of her children
adopted when he was a few weeks old. For years I thought