Give me your worst parenting stories
January 4, 2008I need them. For my mental health.
And no, not the stories of other horrible people messing up—the stories of good, virtuous you messing up.
I need to know that you can be a good parent and still deeply, deeply suck at it, at times. Today, for instance. When I yelled so loudly at my son that my throat still hurts. (Did you know that mittens are an instrument of torture? That socks are painful? Neither did I, until I met Henry.) Thank god I don't have a deadline tonight because I need this glass of wine. And I need to go to bed before 8. And wake up in a few years, when he's able to dress himself.
Speaking of deadlines, a new Wonderland is up!
And now it's time for you to share your Stories of Parental Ineptitude. I know you won't let me down.
Now that I think of it, I'm holding a contest. The Parental Ineptitude tale that amuses me most will win...something. I haven't thought that through yet. My deep and abiding respect? Something like that. I need to have more wine and think about it.
Reader Comments (240)
Only to realize that the little angel had brought me breakfast in bed.
My sister came home from a party one night complaining that her foot was killing her. My dad, who is a physical therapist, checked her out and told her it was fine. A few days later, still in pain, my mom takes her to the doctor. Turns out the foot was broken! whoops
My mom always tells a story of how one day, when my sister and I were little, she completely lost it. She locked us both in the bathroom -to keep from killing us- for a few hours. Only when our whimpering had stopped did she let us out.
The Scene: Mother and Father are packing up the Family Car for a restful one-week "vacation" at The In-Laws;
The Daughters are being stubborn and fussy about getting in the Family Car in a timely manner; there is much poking about and dallying. Six and Five, in particular, are bickering non-stop while Father tells them for the kajillionth time, "I SAID, get in and buckle up." Five and Six continue to complain and whine, and do not comply with Father's command. They are acting like children of the Devil. Mother makes one last trip to the house to lock the door. Moments later, when she returns to the Car, Five and Six are tightly strapped into their car seats, and there is an eerie silence. Six is barely holding back tears. Mother looks at Father and raises her eyebrows, as if to say, "WTF happened while I was gone?" Father is in the driver's seat, jaws firmly clenched together. Before he has a chance to say anything, Five blurts out: "Dad's not nice! He called us... TWERPS!"
("Get into the car NOW, you twerps!" is still our favorite Father quote, three years later.)
Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone :)!
The story I am going to share though is something that my mom did to me. In my house the abuse was all emotional, which even my mom admits to. One night my mom decided it would be funny to make me think I was going deaf, so she spoke only in whispers. When I asked why she was whispering she said she wasn't and that I must be going deaf. I was old enough that I never totally believed her, but she wouldn't stop. It was incredibly annoying and it went on long enough that I started to get a little bit worried that maybe I really was going deaf.
oncet upon a time there was a parent [that parent may possibly have been me] who decided to take a shower. whilst doing so, her youngest son (all of three-years-old) figured out how to escape the house through his bedroom window. i went to check on the boys, realized that we had a run away...and yelled to the five-year-old to go outside and look for his brother. then i grabbed some shorts forewent a bra and shoes and ran out of the house.
i have decided that the kid is drowning in a neighbor's murkey scum covered pool. the surface isn't moving, so i move on, but it is still in the back of my head that he's in there. then i check the neighbors to the other side. i go to their door to ask them if they have any holes in their yard, when the kid saunters up in a t-shirt and undies BUT NO PANTS.
at this point i realize that i have lost the five-year-old.
i yell at the youngest like the world is at an end (if your brother hadn't left to find you he wouldn't be lost!)and throw him in the van. on the way i see two teen girls. i ask them to send the kid my way if they see him.
and i continue driving up and down the street calling the kids name. i might be exaggerating, but i think someone asked if i had lost the dog again. *ahem* not that the dog ever gets loose.
i go around the block. no kid. by that time, i may have been a little hysterical.
at this point i return to the neighbor's house to talk to them again. the teen girls appear with five-year-old in tow. i had missed him because he had just kept going up the street looking rather than gone around the block.
so, let us review, shall we?
the neighbors witnessed a shoeless, braless, wetheaded woman hysterically running up and down the street, and then driving up and down the street, in an effort to find not ONE, but TWO of her children.
takes a bow.
and they all lived happily after. (relatively speaking)
I even have a photo of that.
But, a "small red square" that is still present the next day IS a bruise.
That said, I truly feel for you spending a weekend without the child - that must've been the worst kind of seemingly endless torture.
Here's one of my "proudest" moments. We adopted a little girl who'd been home for about 3 months. Needless to say, she'd had some difficult nights since she came home. Me, a new mom, summoned for the second or third time, half-asleep and already sleep-deprived, stomped into her room and demanded in my snottiest voice: "What in the name of GAWD could you POSSIBLY want?"
Oh yeah. Proud of that one.
So one day, I'm about to kick off another round in the Battle of the Clothes, when there's a knock on our door. It's one of the building maintenance guys, saying he just needs to check our smoke detector.
I say, "Sure," with my mind only on getting this guy in and out so I can try to get my kid in clothes, and forgetting that we'd taken the smoke detector down the night before because it had gone off while we were cooking dinner. I explain, shame-facedly, why it's not on the wall and go to find it in its usual place (we have this problem a lot), and it's not there.
So there I am, calling my husband to find out where on EARTH he may have stashed the smoke detector, while this poor repair guy stands there trying not to look at my naked son cavorting on the couch, and doing things like bending over to look at the maintenance guy from between his legs, giving everyone in the room a disturbing view of his anus.
I'm working towards having my own wing in the Bad Mom Hall of Fame, in case anyone's curious.
A few weeks ago my now 2 year old and her almost 4 yr old sister were jumping on the guest bed while I vacuumed the room. Once it occurred to me to that someone would likely get hurt I looked up...just in time to see the 4 yr old go flying off the edge of the bed. She landed on the corner of a wooden chest and got a nasty 6" scrape and bruise across her chest. Saw that one coming! Too late.
My mom should get some sort of award. When I was little and throwing a tantrum she would throw me in the tub and run cold water on me!!
That was, until Claire. She was about 3, and had been on my last nerve all evening. Mostly, bless her heart, because I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Her mother had left detailed instructions, especially about bedtime. I glanced it over - diaper, bath, etc. Piece of cake. Except when I left the room, Claire starts screaming. "But we didn't pway! Want to pway! Puh-weeeeeez puh-waaaaaay!" "No, we already played, no more playing. Go to sleep."
I was just about ready to scream, so I walked back to the kitchen to cool off. There, on her mother's list, I see the last part of her bedtime routine: say her prayers.
The poor thing just wanted to PRAY!! I ran back, and let her ramble on and on in her "pwa-rers" through her hiccup-y half sobs just about as long as she wanted! Man did I feel like a heel.
In kindergarten my son came home one day saying he was really hungry. When asked about the lunch we'd sent with him, he said he couldn't eat it because the bread in his sandwich was "blue." Parental eyes were rolled, because it's so annoying when the kid's imagination is put to use giving bullshit excuses.
The next day we made him a similar lunch, including another sandwich. Which he also didn't eat. But this time, the teachers pulled my husband aside when he picked my son up, to gently point out that the bread in kid's sandwich was moldy. I checked the remainder of the loaf, and it really WAS blue in places. Who knew bread mold was blue? Nice of us to notice.
I'm certain that for the rest of the year his teachers checked his lunch carefully before letting him take a bite of anything.
Still, another mom at our daycare has a real winner story. She ran into a store and left her 3-year old in the carseat, listening to her favorite CD. Okay, not kosher. Someone saw her daughter in the car, and called and reported her (via license plate number) to child protective services, who called her and made an appointment to do a home visit. She felt chastened and really humiliated, but that isn't the good part of the story. The good part is the day before the visit, she was carrying her 1-yr-old down the steps, slipped, fell, and got his leg caught between banisters, breaking it. Yeah, she broke her baby's leg 24 hours before she had a CPS appointment.
I ratted on Santa when my son was 6 and my daughter was 5. Well he did ask and it was January.A couple of years later my then 7 year old daughter asked me. "Mum, does Santa visit children who still believe in him."
When she was 2 1/2 years old my husband took my son to the toilet leaving me and my daughter on the beach. Except that she went with him and I thought he knew. The couple who followed her back to me must have thought I was the worst mother in the world. The first I know that things didn't go according to plan was when DD reappeared on the beach. She's obviously fine so no need to panic. The couple who found her on a busy road clearly thought I should have been upset.I failed to fasten my son into his baby seat twice. You'd think I'd have learnt.Dora (thinking backwards in time here)
It was very cold and snowing and we were leaving the grocery store. My daughter was 10 months old at the time. I placed her in her car seat, turned the car on, heat on high, and then shut the door to protect her from the wind as I went around back to place the groceries in. Immediately upon shutting hte door I heard the CLICK of the doors locking.kid in car.car on and heat on high.child fully clothed and locked into car seat.doors locked.
I panicked. screamed. Other mom's tried their key fobs in the hope of helping to unlock my car. My child starts to scream. top of her lungs. The store manager calls the police. Someone lends me their cell phone to call my husband. Who proceeds to jump in his car at home with the spare set of keys and sets off for the WRONG fucking grocery store.
30 minutes later, the police arrive (after the first cop responded to our call only be redirected to someone having a heart attack at the other end of the parking lot). OUR cop must be about 20 years old and childless because he is totally unflustered by the primal screams coming from the car. Even the store manager is getting annoyed with him. He starts to tell us that he cannot use the jimmy to open the door until I sign a release, then is so pathetic with the tool that i grab it from him.
by now, my husband has realized his mistake, shows up, and we open the car ONLY after my child has passed out from the extreme heat and screaming. I called my mom (crying hysterically) on the way home to tell her that I now know that my husband is the VERY LAST person you want to have in your lifeboat after he went to the wrong store, hated me for having made the mistake and INSISTED that the car doors do not lock in that situation. I actually had to perform a demonstration for him in the driveway when we got home.
For months, she wouldn't let me gas up the car while she was in it (and I got a new car one week later - still hate that f'in Grand Caravan). I still wonder why I didn't break a window.
Now someone please tell me that my child is not scarred from this. I know that any tendency towards claustrophobia will DEFINITELY be my fault.
Now... I have another story that was purely accidental in nature and even more traumatizing for me involving him... but that is another thread I would think.... stupid parent accidents.
For what it is worth, my son and I are doing quite well (and wife). We have a very warm relationship that does not encourage being the stupid tough guy.... he knows it's very okay to cry, etc... he asks for daddy to snuggle with often, so I have nurtured away much of my past gruffness.
PS. I still kind of feel like mittens are torture.