To begin, you should understand my humble definition:
The Smug Mother is the one who questions you about what you are doing with your child. Breast feeding? Bottle feeding (god forbid)? Co-sleeping? Feeding solids? Organic? Gluten free? Giving anything with sugar? Letting your child cry it out? I could go on, but you get the picture.
The Smug Mom asks you these questions so that as soon as you answer, she can tell you how SHE does it based upon her pure intuition and innate knowledge base. She then throws in a few books or articles she has read purely to make you believe she doesn't believe she is the know it all that she believes she IS and does consult some resources which although they are written by experts in the field she thinks they are a crock and she could run circles around them. She goes on to say that you should really look into these resources since you're most likely screwing up your child as you speak, but implies that you should really listen to her since you will be better off. Okay, she may not exactly say that, but you know just as well as I do, that's what she means. I'm sure you have met one or two of these Moms.
So there I am in the grocery store today picking up some milk for my daughter. There are lots of people with carts by the milk refrigerators, so I am waiting until I can get my cart in to get what I need. My daughter has been experimenting with her vocal cords to the level that could shatter glass so I was distracted. As the traffic around the refrigerators thinned out, I see two Moms talking and they have kids in their cart both about toddler age. They looked like they were friends, until this nice elderly gentleman moved his cart and I was able to get closer to the milk and to their conversation. One of the Moms (Smug Mom) was seemingly dominating the conversation and using a tone that sounded like a mean kindergarten teacher talking to her student (Innocent Mom) about something that was so obvious, duh, the sky is blue. Smug Mom was actually looking in Innocent Mom's cart, telling her that she shouldn't buy anything but organic milk if she was, in fact, going to buy milk from Safeway anyway because as far as she was concerned she wouldn't be caught dead doing that. Okay, she didn't say the last part, but it was definitely implied. She took it one step further and told her she would never give her daughter the animal crackers she also had in her cart that I actually had in mine too! She didn't see that because thankfully, I never got close enough to the supermarket cart nazi. When she got through with her diatribe, she thankfully took her cart and herself out of that area of the grocery store and hopefully left the state.
I caught Innocent Mom's eye and held up those same animal crackers that I had in my cart and said, "My daughter loves these"! She smiled, and I smiled back.
WTF?! Let's drop the Mommy superiority complex. We are all in the same boat! Who are we to judge what another Mom does unless we walk in her shoes?
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