I Would versus You Should

Being a parent means - among many other things, of course - the ability to become insecure at a moment's notice. There goes another parent with another kid, doing something differently: what do they know that we don't? There's a couple kids doing something our kid hasn't done; what were we supposed to do differently? Someone else mentioned a program/activity/school/technique we haven't heard of; why didn't we realize we could/should be doing that?

And therein lies the tricky part. Being a parent also means developing the ability to see someone doing something differently without taking it as an implicit comparison (and worse, a judgment) with what you're doing. With so much information about parenting, with so much grist for conversation, with so many people doing so many different things that could conceivably be relevant or applicable to our own experience... it can be very useful to remember that just because someone is saying, "I would ____" - we don't have to hear it as "You should ____."