Recently, I have made a real effort to avoid Facebook; don’t get me wrong, I love the networking site since it allows me to stay in touch with my friends and family that I would otherwise not get to see. However, over the last year, I have grown increasingly irritated with a lot of the posts that I see; there is just so much negative, hateful trash out there to see. I have hidden many individuals from my page that share this type of material regularly, but still some of their posts get through and make it to my timeline.
This morning, I decided to check my feed and found a picture that another mother, a “friend” on Facebook, had taken. She was in a parking lot and snapped a picture of another mother with her child. The mother and child did not have on their coats. The kid was crying.
Now, I agree, it is cold. Everyone needs a coat on. But I would never post something like that for a couple of reasons.
- I think it is incredibly rude to take a photo of another person without permission. Especially one’s child. I would be highly upset if I caught someone taking a picture of my child.
- You don’t know the situation. Maybe, the child had just thrown up on it in the car. Maybe, the mom was going to grab it out of the car a second later.
I realize that it is human nature to judge people. We are all guilty of it, but the world does not need to know your every thought. Instead of sitting in the car passing judgment, why not ask if they needed some help?
It kills me how many people are quick to pass judgment on others. The comments that were posted were ridiculous and mostly from other mother- many that claim to be good, Christian parents. Maybe I am crazy, but all I could think about was how rude it was to take the picture and judge this person not knowing her story. I considered responding myself, but refrained. I feel like that would just be more encouragement for her to post similar posts in the future as I look at such posts as a cry for attention.
Everyone has a bad day. We could all use a little help from time to time and a little kindness. Maybe, before you look critically at another parent next time, you should think about what the Bible says, “Love one another.”
ornerydame 
Totally agree with this post. I really have to stop and think before I post on FB, not because I am doing anything like that but just to be sure it doesn’t come across that way since tone can’t be read in printed words.
I have learned more about some of my friends by their postings than I would have liked to have known. In some cases it has been TMI, in others it has been enough to make me question having any future interactions with them, which makes me sad. And it isn’t that they disagree with me or have different perspectives, but how they defend or justify them.