If you hired a babysitter or a nanny and caught them staring at their phone instead of watching your kids, you’d be livid. If you walked into a room and discovered a teacher or a grandparent or anyone yelling at your kids, you’d be difficult to stop. If you heard someone make a snide remark or tease them or bully them, you’d put an immediate end to it.
And yet . . . you do some of these things all the time! You feel your frustration rising as they refuse to listen and bam, you grab their arm and yell, “STOP IT NOW!” right into their little faces. You’re ignoring the track meet. You tune out their incessant attempts to get your attention. Worse, your attention is elsewhere while they’re playing in the pool . . . and for what? For an email? For a text? To scroll Twitter? You think you’re funny and you like to joke around . . . but if you saw someone else doing it, you know what you’d call it? You’d call it bullying.
We’d never let anyone else get away with what we rationalize or excuse of our own behavior. That’s not to say you’re abusive or a bad parent—not at all. It’s just a reminder: Your job isn’t just to protect your kids from other people. It’s to protect them from your own bad habits, your own temper, your own flaws too. It’s to demand of yourself what you’d expect from anyone to whom you’d entrust your children’s safety. That is to say: you have to demand the best of yourself.
No excuses. No double standards. Watch yourself as you’d watch a nanny cam. Trust but verify, just as you would a new school or day care. Ask yourself: Would I let anyone else get away with what I’m doing right now?