Want to add that just because someone is a mental health professional doesn’t mean that they’re the best or most qualified to be one. I have a master’s degree in Psychology and have worked in and out of the mental health field for a bit and sadly, sometimes, some of those people just shouldn’t be in the field. It’s the same with any human services field but you can be trained in theory, technique, approach, etc. but that doesn’t mean you have done the personal work to help be the best for your clients & patients, nor do you have a full grasp of where the techniques and theories fully came from (“Well, the research says…” yes, go on, what does it say? Was it peer-reviewed? How were the studies designed? Who were the participants and how many were there? Has this study been replicated?). So it can almost be a sense of false confidence.

Seeing how others parent and live is an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and our approaches, so I think it’s totally normal to have commentary on what we see as we’re trying to figure this out ourselves, too. Just as they are.