I Won't Complain About My Kids If You Won't

It feels good to complain. It felt good in med school to complain about our hours and our residents, then in residency to complain about our med students and even more about our hours. It feels good as attendings to complain about our patients, or what we get called about when taking call. It can feel good to complain about our friends, our spouses, our parents. About the weather. About where we live. Complaining makes us feel special, better, because look what we have to deal with! It is the lowest form of bonding, the cheapest and fastest way to feel connected with someone else.

It’s especially easy to complain about our kids. For one thing, what we deal with as parents is so relentless and yet so unseen that complaining feels like our way of getting some acknowledgment. For another thing, there is so much to complain about. My two year-old never stays still (eye roll). She’s always whining. Can you believe the baby is still waking me up at night? It’s so annoying when they don’t put away their toys. It’s gotten to be an almost accepted rite of passage—hey look, it sucks to have kids, but at least it feels good to complain to each other about it.

I think it’s important to be open and real about our struggles as parents, but I’ve been increasingly convicted that complaining about our kids is not a good habit to fall into, for a few reasons.

It tears down rather than builds up. Complaining doesn’t go anywhere positive. It allows us to write off our kids’ behavior instead of actually taking the effort to understand or change it. It helps us feel inclusively smug or prideful without helping us actually become better people. That’s the difference between complaining and vulnerable sharing—the former is an end unto itself; the latter tries to go somewhere better. When we relate our struggles honestly, we think about whether the time and place is appropriate for sharing. We are open for advice and suggestion. We are offering encouragement and solidarity. We are building each other up.

It’s a bad witness. It struck me one day: do I complain so much about my two kids that people wonder why I want to have a third? What must people think about kids when they hear parents complain all the time? Dave says he reads Facebook posts all the time from moms who have nothing but negative complaints about their days with their kids, and it’s a real turn-off.

Our kids overhear it. This is like the stealth bomb of parenting. Your kids hear and see EVERYTHING that you do. That time you muttered under your breath? Yup. That time you farted and didn’t say “excuse me”? Yup. One day, if they haven’t already, your kids will hear you complain about them. Can you imagine anything more destructive to their sense of self? To their ability to believe in your unconditional love? Plus, kids repeat the behavior that is reinforced. If all they hear is you complaining about how they are “so whiny,” they will believe they are whiny, and they will whine more.

It’s what we signed up for. It’s not very compassionate to say “suck it up,” but it’s true: you want to be a parent? You signed up for the possibility of sleep deprivation on any given night, a twenty-minute routine to get everyone buckled into the car, sticky fingers, spills, toys everywhere, exposure to bodily fluids. That’s just how kids are. Sure, it takes a bit to adjust to a new sense of “normal,” but that doesn’t make it any less normative. We might as well complain about gravity, or having to eat.

The Bible says not to do it. Yeah, I had to pull this card. Probably the two most compelling verses are Philippians 2:14 (do everything without grumbling or arguing) and Ephesians 4:29 (do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen). Not to mention all the stuff God says we should be doing instead (give thanks, count it all joy, etc).

Here is where I confess that I complain easily. There’s a mother of two I’ve gotten to know, and for a long time I felt like something was weird about her until I realized that I’ve never heard her complain. About her kids. About anything. And I realized, if I want to complain less, I’m going to have to be intentional about it. When people ask how the kids are, do I usually have something negative to say? Do I have friendships that are based mostly on us complaining to each other? Do I complain in my heart about my kids? If there is a pattern of negativity, maybe it reveals some issue I need to examine in my life. It’s okay to explore that and be real about it. But it’s better not to complain.