Farrah Abraham is probably used to being called a bad mother by now. The trial by fire that is parenting is tough enough, and she’s been undergoing hers in front of millions of viewers. So every time she shares a picture of her kid or uses her mouth to say words out loud, there are going to be opinions. Most of them are negative.
The latest in parenting moves that’s caused reproach? Calling her 7-year-old daughter Sophia “stupid.” And sure, that sounds awful on its face, but we’d like to propose that talking a little smack about her kid doesn’t make Farrah Abraham a bad mom. It makes her a regular one.
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For context, the insult wasn’t thrown at the child, and it came while things were a little hectic in the Teen Mom star’s household. The family was getting ready to go out for an Easter shindig, and Sophia did what 7-year-olds sometimes do, which is to say that she checked all the way out and refused to cooperate. When Abraham dangled the consequence of having to miss out on the fun, her kid flung a stool at the wall, which prompted Abraham to call her a “heathen” before telling her own mother that her daughter was “too stupid” to get ready.
And yeah, that sounds a little jarring.
It also sounds really frustrating and a lot like what most moms we know would do when their kids are literally throwing stools at the boundaries of our love for them to see what we’ll put up with. And we’re moms. So we’ll put up with a lot. A whole lot, because we love our kids. It’s just that sometimes we don’t like them very much. Because they tend to act kind of stupid sometimes.
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Venting your frustration as a parent is important. Ideally, you’ll find a healthy parenting expert- and reality show-watcher-approved method of doing that, such as petting a therapy raccoon or knitting tea cozies.
Sometimes, though, the therapy raccoon is nowhere to be found and your child has flushed your knitting needles down the toilet, so you’ll get angry and you’ll turn to your spouse or your best friend or your mother and say something like, “Why is this kid such a little asshole?”
And that’s a reasonable question because children — being the small humans that they are — will inevitably and eventually display asshole-ish tendencies. We all will. Inside even the sweetest tween or the most dedicated PTA mom is a slumbering asshole just waiting to be unleashed. Literally everyone you have ever loved will be an asshole to you at some point in your life, and you are not required to refrain from pointing that out just because you love them. Nor would anyone with an ounce of sanity assume that you no longer love your kids or are no longer capable of being a good mother just because you blurt out whatever’s on your mind in the heat of the moment.
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With that being said, there’s a reason that apologies were invented, and it’s for the times when we blurt something out in the heat of the moment. Chances are very high that one day, Sophia will see this particular episode of her life play out on a screen. It’s unavoidable. And knowing that someone called you stupid hurts, even if you understand that they were angry. Even if you, yourself, know what it’s like to have your niceness filter ripped out in a frustrating moment. And as adults, we expect the people that hurt us to apologize. As parents, we need to be cognizant that our feelings aren’t the only ones that matter.
And if we’re going to engage in a little recreational smack talk, we have to understand that turnabout is fair play. Stupid is as stupid does, and there will come a day when our own kids will turn to their friends or your spouse or their grandparents and wonder, “Why is my mom being such a huge asshole?”
And we’ll know exactly where that venting mechanism comes from. Whew. Now, can someone pass us the therapy raccoon?
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