Understanding Mom Friend Vows

The world of Mommy blogs and Facebook is abuzz at times as Moms and parents in 2014 try to identify with the feelings they have about all of the many choices in the world today. Many of them that get circulated, at least to my inbox or newsfeed, are positive and are trying to break down some of the hypercritical judgement that I think most everyone feels these days. Although I enjoy many of them and feel they are in the best spirit to help us be more understanding of each other, I do feel at times that they fall short.  As I was thinking about this and my own friendships, new and old, I felt like I needed to write some vows to my fellow Mom friends, to both my current friends and those whom I hope to meet and make in the future.

What is a vow? A vow is a solemn promise, according to my Google search for a good definition. In my mind that means, a serious promise, one that I, the person making the vow, will not take lightly.

So these are my vows to you, fellow Mommy friends:

Understanding Mom Friend Vows

• I vow to not give advice, unless it is solicited.
• I vow to remember that what has worked for me, with my children, is a sample size of 1 (God willing it will be more than one in the future) and therefore it is statistically insignificant and does not make me an expert.
• I vow to respect you and the choices you are making for yourself and your children. Unless I feel that your child's safety or emotional well being are in danger, I will make every effort to respect you as a parent.
• I vow to be honest with you. If I choose to do things differently than you, I will respectfully voice that. Our friendship doesn't have to be based on our agreeing to raise our children the exact same way.
• I vow to acknowledge that my parenting choices are based on the fact that my family is made up of 3 (currently) unique individuals, who all have different experiences, opinions and feelings. And most likely your choices are based on this fact as well. 
• I vow to minimize judgement. Most likely I will fail here, because I am human and to me that means being an imperfect being. As a human being I make thousands of judgements a day, which are very necessary for my survival and existence, so to turn off my judgement, is very hard. Yet, I vow to be consciously aware of this and to do my best to not let my judgements effect our friendship.
• I vow to demonstrate my parenting style by respecting you as an individual and a friend.

Let's be better friends!

I wrote this with Mom friends in mind, but I think it could apply to Dads, parents and any relationship.