Cutting People Slack

Before I had my own kidlets I remember feeling like an outcast from other mothers. I or they would strike up a conversation and it would very quickly go to how many kids you had and once I'd say none, the conversation would end. I was quickly dropped to them in conversation because I wasn't a mother like them. Apparently I wasn't good enough or interesting enough to get to know because I was childless...

Then after I had my first child and now with my second, I completely understand. After you have a child, quoting Smashmouth's wise words, "your head gets smart, but your brain gets dumb." Your brain changes immensely after having a child, your wiring for taking care of your child and constantly asking "where's my baby, how's my baby?!" (see 'Mommy Brain') overrides everything else, up to and especially your adult speaking skills. My brain has to work so very very hard to retain information others have given me and spit out a sentence not only properly but appropriately. Holy cow it's weird how hard it is to have conversations; to start them, to continue them, to finish them, it's all just very exhausting to figure out how it once worked. You have to start at square one it seems with developing your social skills. When someone does also have children though it is easier to converse, simply because your brain and life is already deep in the thick of everything about your kids, so vocalizing becomes a lot easier. I'm intimidated now by others who don't have kids because they can speak with such ease, genuine concern, and tactfulness. I don't have those skills even close as strong anymore. To remember enough about a person to strike up a conversation and ask about certain things in their life that they've already made mention to me previously, takes a lot of digging deep into my mind to find. Meanwhile if I am succeeding in really listening to someone and conversing with them, guaranteed my children are being completely neglected because I am no multitasker when it domes to human interactions. Hopefully they haven't ran away in the time it took me to partake of a simple weather conversation with a stranger passing by at the park.

I'm not saying all mothers, especially in baby phases, are handicapped in their social awkwardness, but I (with great hope) can't be the only one who has a hard time. I've said things that don't make sense and came off rude I'm sure. I will just put out a blanketed apology, as I will butcher it if I say it in person, to anyone that has ever felt like they weren't interesting enough because they didn't have a child, that is simply not the case. I'm coming out of my brain mushiness more and more after having my second kidlet, but it truly has taken a lot of effort to get my social skills up to par. One thing you must always remember is you are awesome even to the wordless parent, I mean "hey now, you're a rockstar!"

So my hope is for someone reading this who has felt as I did before I had children to please cut those mothers slack; I so wish I did. Those poor exhausted awesome happily content wonderful parents that I mistook as rude were actually just more focused on the raising of their babies and saving brain energy to better parent. It was never that I wasn't good enough.

Furthermore it is an ever evolving lesson to myself that generally speaking people don't mean to be mean, and if they are coming off as such, there's probably reason enough to give them the needed benefit of the doubt.



Heaven's slice is cutting people slack.