What makes a Mom a "Bad Mom"?

Hello again! This is not what I was going to blog about. I have several different things I have been meaning to hop on and say but today this is what is trying to crowd my thoughts so I figure I will just get it out of the way and write my other thoughts later.

So what makes a Mom a "Bad Mom"? The news has had a lot of stories over the last several years of "Bad Moms". Some of them deserved the title and I'm not sure others did. For example, the mother (I can't remember her name) who was being prosecuted because she left her child in a car for about two minutes while she was standing near by (I think the article I read said she was less than 30 ft away from the car). Now while I don't think it is a good idea to leave your child in a car unattended, I will confess I have done it a few times when I needed to run back in the house and get something or situations similar to that.

I guess what really bugged me about her whole story was that she was there to help her other daughter and a friend who had worked very hard to save up money to donate to the Salvation army deliver the donation. Wow, what a terrible person! Come on people, it was raining and the little girl had fallen asleep on the trip over to the Wal-Mart to deliver the money. The mother pulled the car up to the curb (It bugs me that people do that too, but I am trying to look beyond that right now because I feel there is a bigger issue to tackle) and since the baby was sleeping and they were not going into the store she got the two other girls out and locked the door. Walked thirty feet away and took a few pictures while the girls dropped their hard earned money into the donation bucket. She then heads back to the car only to be stopped by a female officer of some kind (I don't recall what kind of an officer she was) and told she could not get back in the car. The officer then proceeded to ask her a lot of questions and the mother began to get concerned so she called her husband to ask what she should do about the situation. Her husband said, "Don't say anything else until I get there." So following the advice of her husband who was trying to look out for her she stopped answering the questions and did not say anything else. The officer saw the lack of answers as a sign of guilt and by the time the husband arrived the police had handcuffed the wife and were taking her into custody.

Now, I want to be clear, I think the mother made some mistakes and I think the officer made some mistakes but the biggest mistake (in my humble little opinion) was that the DA had no more sense than to continue to try and take this case to trial. Eventually it was dropped but the trauma that it caused this family was ridiculous. Whether it was handled the best way or not, all she was trying to do was take her daughter and a friend to donate some money to a cause. I have seen with my own eyes mothers that have done things a lot worse. Instead of getting the people we should be getting we are wasting time on "Bad Moms" like this poor woman. This thing just go WAY out of hand.

A Mother is a human being and as such we are prone to make mistakes at times. As I right this I can think of many things I have done as a mom that I would love the chance to go back and do differently. However, it does not work like that. We learn as we go and hope we are doing the right thing. All we can do is pray for our children and care for them as best we can. We will make mistakes along the way but hang in there because making a mistake does not make you a "Bad Mom" it just means you are human.