>On Dealing with Naysayers

I’ve been blogging for about 2 1/2 years now and in that time have fielded a lot of questions from new moms, stepmoms, and moms of teens and tweens.

But I’ve also gotten my share of criticism, mostly from mothers who refuse to believe that I could possibly have any idea of what I’m talking about since my stepdaughters aren’t my own. Even though they live with me seven days a week. Even though I’ve been taking on a huge share in the duties of rearing them since they were 8 and 10-years-old.

One mom (a woman I like, by the way, although we differ on this issue) even determined that since my girls are now 16 and 14, I couldn’t really speak as someone with 4 children. Instead, she asserted, my workload was more equivalent to that of someone with 2.5 children.

Can I get a collective “Yeah, riiiiiiiight” from all the parents and stepparents of teens out there? And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that poor .5 of a child. Is he half a child, or is he only around half the time?

Other moms have pointed out that there’s a huge gap in my knowledge, between the age of my oldest child and the age of my youngest stepdaughter when I met her. Well, these moms are absolutely right. I know nothing about the 4 to 7-year-old crowd, so why do I bother to write at all? I might as well just turn in my computer now, or at least stick to the topic of kittycats and popsicle stick crafts, because clearly, I can’t be trusted when it comes to writing about children.

My point with all this is that I’ve come to the conclusion that all of us will be criticized at one time or another and told that, as parents, we couldn’t possibly have any idea of what we’re talking about. Because we’re adoptive parents or because we’re stepparents, because we’re white or because we’re black, because we raise our kids in a small town or a big city, because we’ve never shopped at a consignment sale or because we only shop at consignment sales. Because our kids are in daycare or because they aren’t, because we opted for natural childbirth or because we chose an epidural, because we homeschool or because we use the public school system. We will never, ever be good enough for someone.

I won’t waste my time appealing to all the moms out there to be more accepting or more inclusive of other moms’ choices and lifestyles. That’s simply not gonna happen. But I will appeal to all the parents out there to ignore the naysayers and go with your gut. You know when something feels right and when it feels wrong, when it’s working and when it isn’t. Ask for help when you need it, but don’t let somebody else tell you what you do and don’t know about raising children. And don’t let your label, whether it’s “foster” or “step” or “single” or whatever, get you down.

Okay then. As you were.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.