Mama vs. Mama

It was a very rare occasion the other day, when the kids forgot they had a mother to torture, that I was able to watch an episode of Dr Phil. The show was about child abuse and they had this poor mother of a very troubled and behavior problem ridden child on. First she told her story, then Dr Phil showed a clip of her carry out the various punishments she tried to correct him from his problem behavior. She washed his mouth out with soap, made him eat hot sauce and stand against a wall. All the time I was watching this I was thinking poor mother, she wants to help this child so badly, she wants him to just behave...

Then came the audience reaction. The audience was full of mothers and they were out to crucify this lady. They judged her like it was the Salem and she was the mother of all witches. They called her an abuser and they were all appalled at her tactics.

To be honest, I had to turn it off at that point. The mother just sat there on stage, all alone, probably pretty much like she does everyday. All alone, just trying to help her child, to teach him the best way she knew how. It was so disheartening for me to see all these mothers turn against a fellow mother. As a mother, you know what all other mothers go through: the love, the joy, the ups, the downs but most of all the hardships.

And more often than not we mothers are all alone during these hardships...all alone on the battlefields of raising a child. So why aren't we mothers banding together to form an alliance, an army, a union, to ensure that we support each other in good times and especially the bad for the greater good of raising our children to make this world a better place?

The first lesson I learned as a mother was not to judge other mothers. No one is perfect and we shouldn't try to give this false example to our children. We are human. We are women. We are mothers...

Besides, many of us got a taste of the soap or a taste of the hot sauce and lived to tell...I sure did!