Bad parenting moments

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My Bad Parenting, a rather liberal and laissez-faire kind of parenting, seemed most detrimental to other children in my son’s orbit. I can think of two dreadful examples.

BAD PARENT EPISODE #1: Appropriately enough for the timing of this post, I lurves me some Halloween. Around 2009, we were living in Jakarta and my son (in 5th or 6th grade at the time) was attending an Australian school that catered to a wide range of ethnicities. This was a great opportunity to share the joys of American-style Halloween with kids from Indonesia, Australia, India, and wherever my son’s friends happened to come from.

Thus, I arranged a Halloween sleep-over party. We did some games and cake decorating with spooky themes that went quite well. And then I decided the kids should CARVE JACK-O-LANTERNS! And so, I gave a bunch of kids ages 10-12 pumpkins and knives and let them have at it.

Yes, you can guess what happened. Luckily, the child who gashed his hand was the Australian boy, whose mother was extremely cool about it. I couldn’t apologize enough, but she was awesomely calm and took it in stride. What the hell was I thinking?

BAD PARENT EPISODE #2: This occurred in the same general time frame, ie when my son was in 5th or 6th grade. One of his friends was from a pretty conservative Muslim family. The mom visited our home and had several meaningful conversations with me before she allowed her son to do unsupervised visits with us, but she decided (incorrectly, it seems) that her son would not be exposed to inappropriate influences by hanging out with a non-Muslim American kid.

We were always quite liberal with our kid in regards to media - in 5th grade, my son’s favorite movie was Harold and Maude (frankly I was impressed that he even understood why it is such a great movie at that early age). While we didn’t expose him to movies much more “adult” than that, we also didn’t keep “off limits” movies in a spot that was out of reach. It did not occur to me (A BAD PARENT) that my son was going to randomly reach for an inappropriate film.

I was horrified to wander into the entertainment room and discover my son and the boy from the very conservative Muslim family watching Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America: World Police. (If you aren’t familiar with the movie, let’s just say it’s pretty racy. One sex scene, using puppets, features Cleveland Steamers. Hilarious for sure, but … not nice, folks.)

Needless to say, I shut it down immediately. Apparently the friend never told his parents, as it did not affect the friendship. Whew.

22

And racist, just to hit all the low points:

“I’m so ronery, I"m so ronery…”

23

Have you tested or suspected ADHD? I had this kid. Would do homework and never turn it in. Yep, years later in University tested positive for ADHD. Then little bro at 15 tested positive and was a world changing event. Then last summer, I tested positive (“ya think dad?”), and Concerta has changed my life.

Jus’ sayin’

24

I’ve had many. Especially with a special needs child very much on the autism spectrum.

I was herding my eldest, a single child at the time, to get ready for school. She was in the master bathroom.

“Dad, I don’t feel so well”

“Quit yer faking. I’m so tired of this act.”

10 second pause and blew chunks all over.

25

When in 4th grade, I fell climbing over a fence. Told my mom it hurt and she said, “If it is broken now, it will still be broken after dinner.” It was.

Or when the 4 of us were driving her crazy, and she just wanted to get away from us for a few moments’ peace. The only room with a lock on the door was the bathroom. So as she went in the bathroom and closed the door, my 2d oldest sister decided to stick her finger in by the hinges. Snapped that finger right off!

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What?! Really?! Was it able to be reattached?

27

Aaaccckkk. How horrible.

28

I think, with kids (I have none of my own but I was one), the thing is to throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks. There is no real way to tell what they might have a knack for or enjoy so you put them in dance classes and have them play several instruments and try several sports and have them read many different books, movies and so on.

Hopefully something clicks with them. Most of the things won’t. I’d think that is good parenting though. Exposing them to many things. Even learning to deal with failure when some things don’t pan out.

29

One day my kids said they wanted to watch some movie that was on soon called Candyman. I didn’t know anything about it, but it sounded like a movie for kids. They were about 8 and 10. I was on my way out the door, and told my husband. I came home in the middle of it, horrified at what was on the screen. They kids were pretty terrified. If you haven’t seen it, it’s very frightening - way too gruesome for young kids. My husband had just assumed it must be okay, since I told him they wanted to watch it, and he knew I liked scary movies. I said, “Didn’t you think it was too horrible?!” He just shrugged.

30

My kids were in high school, and had settled down to Saturday afternoon uselessness by watching one of those teen slasher movies. I happened to walk in the room when the teens in the movie somehow managed to have a truck rearend a parked police car. The poorly secured load on the truck was metal rods or pipes.

The truck stopped when it slammed into the police car. The poorly secured load shot over the cab of the truck, crashed into the passenger compartment of the police car, and one metal rod impaled the skull of the cop sitting in the driver’s seat, and protruded through his face.

I walked over to the TV and turned it off. “That is enough of THAT.” I got some backtalk, but I remained firm. The kids probably watched the rest of the movie when I wasn’t around.

I was a mean mommy. My kids were not allowed to watch the Simpsons. And if I’m in the room, my grandkids may not watch SpongeBob Squarepants.

Now that it’s just the two of us, Mr VOW wants to watch those disgusting horror movies. I remove my hearing aid and hold my book up higher so I can’t see the TV.

~VOW

31

It was slightly past the first knuckle and, yes, it was reattached. I just think of that as a perfect example of the joys of parenthood. Your kids are driving you crazy, all you want is a few moments peace, and you end up with blood all over the place, having to take 4 little kids to the ER.

(Oh yeah - dad was out of town and mom didn’t drive!) :smiley: