THE GOSSIPS LOVE THEM!
My little nephew was eager to tell me about his field trip to the zoo. “I saw zebras! The ones with stripes. And the monkeys were talking at me. But I didn’t know what they were saying so I kept walking.” My niece—his mother—had chaperoned the trip. She was not as enthusiastic.
She had forgotten her son’s bagged lunch and had to rush home. “I was mortified,” my niece said. “I almost didn’t return in time for the bus. I heard one dad say: ‘She is chaperoning our kids and can’t even remember her own son’s lunch?’ I felt so stupid. It wrecked my afternoon. You should have seen how those parents acted.”
I didn’t need to see those parents to understand my niece’s distress. Aren’t we all familiar with the eyerolls, nudges and whispers that comprise gossipy, parental judgment? It was sad to think of my niece berating herself instead of enjoying the day at the zoo. So I shared a similar experience that had allowed me to gain new perspective.
When my son, Ian, was nine, he played basketball on Saturday mornings. The one-hour practices took place between ten and one, and the teams rotated times. I dropped Ian off for (what I thought was!) his ten o’clock practice and went to the supermarket. When I returned to the gym, Ian came over to tell me his practice was actually at eleven. But the coach of the ten o’clock team had let him play so now Ian would have two hours of basketball! It thrilled Ian, but….
Embarrassing Mom Moment.
Why didn’t I check the schedule more carefully? How could I be so scatter-brained?
Three mothers, whose sons had finished their practice, passed by as they exited the gym. And there was the behavior my niece saw at her son’s nursery school. The nudging, eye rolls and whispers heightened my mortification, even though this Embarrassing Mom Moment (“EMM”) paled beside many of my prior EMMs.
Later that day, my friend, Carolyn, called. She was sitting in the bleachers when Ian first came into the gym for the wrong practice. The three mothers, who were several rows behind, launched into a loud discussion about my lousy parenting. “How could that woman be so stupid? Is it so difficult to keep track of practice times? Does she drop Ian off at random street corners and drive away?” Carolyn, a rather feisty character, turned around and blasted these mothers for being so judgmental. She apologized to me for providing the details of the exchange, but she was angry.
After hearing these criticisms of my parenting abilities (or lack thereof!), I briefly considered moving to another part of the country under an assumed name. Then I was concerned about Carolyn. The fact she was so agitated because of these gossipy women was more upsetting than the actual gossip! Why should she care what they said about me?
Come to think of it, why should I care? These mothers were not my friends. Ian was fine. I didn’t hurt anyone. I wasn’t the first mother to make a mistake, and I was already resolved to double-check the practice schedule. Listening to Carolyn’s distress made me realize stewing over this type of gossip was a waste of time.
It was an “a-ha!” moment.
I told Carolyn that while I appreciated her loyalty, she did not need to be concerned if my future EMMs were met with similar judgment. If people wanted to gossip, it was their problem, not mine.
I realized the goal of some people isn’t to be a good parent, it’s to be a mistake-free parent. The perfect parent. The type of parent who heads every committee, runs every fundraiser, coaches every team. The parent whose child is always on time and perfectly prepared for the event at hand as well as every contingency including: a monsoon, bear attack or lunar eclipse. During a desperate attempt to achieve that state of perfection, some parents look for weaknesses in their fellow parents to boost their own egos. And the result is gossip.
Judaism understands the power of words. It discourages us from speaking gossip or listening to gossip and giving it new life. But what about when we, as parents, are the object of that gossip? It says in Proverbs 10:19: “Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues.” There are times we need to speak up and defend ourselves or others. However, when our first instinct is to respond either verbally or with internal recrimination, we give the gossips a power they do not (or should not) have. When our EMMs becomes another’s entertainment or feeds her insecurity or her determination to be Parent Numero Uno, we should remember it is more important to focus on improving ourselves than to win nods of approval from strangers.
After that conversation with my friend, Carolyn, a weight was lifted. Not that gossip in its various forms never bothered me again, and I occasionally (and shamefully) indulged in some gossipy behavior myself. But from then on, the raised eyebrows of others were less likely to raise my sense of parental inadequacy.
My niece appreciated my story and claimed she felt better; determining future reaction to gossip about her EMMs will be up to her. This is a daunting task in today’s world when social media mixes with eye rolls and whispers. But I suggested she think twice before allowing the gossips to prompt external or internal damage control. All mothers who commit an EMM (which is to say, every mother) should remember gossips do not possess some magical, mystical Parenting Report Card with an “A” emblazoned at the top. As parents, we beat ourselves up enough. We don’t need other people to do it for us. And while words can have great power and cause tremendous damage, let’s treat gossip about our EMMs in the same way my little nephew treated the meaningless chatter of monkeys at the zoo. We half-listen and move on.
This article was published in The Jewish Advocate on September 28, 2018.
