Great Moments in Parenting

In My Humble Opinion
21

In the fall of 10th grade, I was having abdominal cramps daily and thought I was just constipated. I complained to my mother. She blew it off and didn’t think it was necessary to go to the doctor. I tried different fiber cereals, drinking more water, etc. I was in daily pain after every meal and still nothing was done.

TMI warning: Finally, 6 months after the symptoms began, when I started bleeding out of my ass, she figured we’d see the doctor. I had a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. My life was never the same, but that part isn’t my mom’s fault.

My story about my own parenting is from Christmas day this year. My 21 month old was building a tower with her new foam blocks and, after they fell, she said, “Oh shit”. I told my mother about it the next day and asked her if she remembered my brother with the potty mouth swearing in front of her this weekend. She said, “No, but I remember you doing it a few times!” Oopsie.

22

I’m sure there are others, but these are the ones that are coming to mind at the moment.

We were having corn on the cob for supper one day, and while at the time I didn’t love the stuff, it was still something I would typically eat (I was a picky child!). So my mom puts a small one on my plate, and everyone digs in. I go and take a bite of it, and it’s hard as rock - I couldn’t get any of it off at all! So I put it back down and tell my parents that it’s no good, I can’t eat it. They start yelling at me, telling me I have to eat, or I don’t get dessert, I’ve always liked corn before, what’s wrong with this one, blah blah the usual parent stuff to get a 9 year old to eat. I try again, and of course, the corn cob is still rock-hard, and I put it back down, and at this point my brother and sister are teasing me too, and I’m mortified and in tears. Finally, as there wasn’t any other corn left, my brother finally says “I’ll eat it, then!”, grabs my tiny corn cob off my plate, goes for a bite… and nearly breaks a tooth! It must have been an ear of cow corn or something; it really was inedible! My parents felt terrible for not listening to me! I forgot what I actually ate for supper that night, but I did get my dessert!

Near our apartment in Germany there was a Canex corner store, and they allowed neighbourhood children to go and help the cashiers bag the groceries/items and make a few DMs to spend on candy or whatever. Once, when my mom was away and my dad was taking care of us, my 7 y.o. sister went over to the store and bagged groceries for a couple of hours, and made a fair bit of money (maybe 20 DM or so? I don’t remember!) She came home and showed the money to my dad, telling him “Look at the money I made bagging today, daddy!”

My father, who hadn’t been paying much attention, misheard her.

“Look at the money I made BEGGING today, daddy!” is what he heard.

He angrily took the money from my sister, yelling at her about how we weren’t poor (we really weren’t!) and didn’t need to go BEGGING, and she was going to bring that money back to the store and find a way to give it back to the people who gave it to her, and she was grounded! That was the one and only time he has ever spanked any of us kids.

I’m not sure who figured out what the mistake was (me, or my brother, or maybe my mom came home in the next day or two?) Trust me, my dad felt AWFUL! He gave my sister the money back, plus a little extra, I’m sure, and pretty much has been apologizing for it for 15 years. My sister still uses it against him once in a while!

23

My parents weren’t as nasty as y’alls parents (I kid!) but I was just told this story this weekend:

I really wanted a Pound Puppy for Christmas, so my dad got me one. The dogs came with the option of having a name printed on a tag for the collar, so my dad filled out the card for me and sent it in. I guess I had wanted the name “SPARKY” but he had written “SPARRY” and I supposedly threw a fit over that. Perhaps I was waiting so long for the tag to come back that I was exasperated to see that it was wrong when it finally arrived.

However, the key to the story is what I found out this weekend. When my brother brought it up my dad’s face turned bright red and he slinked off to a corner. Apparently the spelling mistake was caused by him writing-while-drunk.

I assume he was explicitly careful when doing things for us kids when drunk from then on. I don’t recall any other serious infractions after that.

24

When I was about 15 my grandparents and brother were at the beach. There was this little hill that we would climb that ran to a small paved road. I was standing at the top of it when my younger brother dared my to run down the side.

In my excuse, I’m a guy, so I’m a moron. I did it then about 3/4ths the way down I fell and scraped my knee and hands. Nothing serious, just a few rocks in my skin and a bit of blood.

I run over to my grandmother (it’s amazing how quickly you can become like a little kid again when you hurt yourself) and show her what I did.

She looks at me and asks, “So what did we learn?”
Me: “Not to run down hills.”
“Good.”

I still use that line when a friend does something stupid.

25

When I was around 5 or 6, my dad and brother went to the park to try out some model plane or car or something that they had. They took me along, I’m guessing at my mother’s insistence - I don’t remember. At any rate, when they were done playing, they left and went home, completely forgetting about me. I remember coming to the realization that I was all alone and how traumatic it was. After a couple of hours, my dad returned frantically to the park to pick me up, but he made light of it. He thought my mom mollycoddled the kids too much, anyway.

The next incident is somewhat in the same vein. When I was around 8 or 10, I walked with friends to that same park to play, and ran smack into some playground equipment. A bar cracked me hard right across my forehead. I had to lie down in the sand for awhile, and then staggered dizzily home with a huge elongated goose egg stretched across my forehead. My mom wasn’t home, but my dad was. Again, he dismissed it lightly as being of no importance at all. I went inside and and lay down, but was crying and in great pain. When my mom got home and found out, she gave him hell.

26

How my parents guided me through my teenage years–I’ll never know the depths of their patience and forgiveness. My own daughter was WAY more responsible, goal-oriented and low-maintenance than I was. I thank her for that regularly.

Nowadays, I hear myself echo things my mother told me, and am particularly proud of two maxims she instilled in me, and which I am proud to live by still:

*Things are transitory–people count. Sometime in my childhood, I inadvertantly broke a pot, spilled the plant all over the floor, cleaned it up and still dreaded the rebuke. Mom said it was okay–I dealt with my mess, and my safety was more important than her pride in an object. Brady Bunch episodes, be damned.

*Don’t wish your life away, Julie. Also known as Carpe Diem, seize the day, etc. She always called it on me when I’d wish to be 16, or out of high school, or done with some burdensome task. To this day, I think of Mom when I fill in my calendar. My favorite songs and stories riff on this theme.

The two greatest pieces of advice I ever received. I have navigated myriad situations and decisions in my adult life keeping those touchstones in my head.

27

A year or so ago, I was on a long phone call with my oldest son’s neurologist, so I waved my oldest and middle son off to play in their upstairs bedroom. Five minutes later, I heard the neighbor’s 2-year-old grandson screeching, “Baby! Hi, Baby!” from the neighbor’s front porch.

My sons had finagled the child-proof locks on their bedroom windows, and were on the roof. The 2-year-old was about to tumble over the peak of the roof, and the 5-year-old was perched about four feet below him. My neighbor and I both called 911, and ended up with 5 police cars, 2 state troopers, and 2 fire trucks. One state trooper crawled through the bedroom window to hang on to the boys, until the rest of the backup arrived, and then seven firefighters hauled out ladders and hauled my kids off the roof.

The boys thought it was the neatest thing ever, that they got fire trucks and policemen to rescue them. I’ve never been so scared in my life. We replaced all the windows and locks, and it’s like Alcatraz now. I was told that it was quite the story of the day at the local diner the next morning, and many were amused.

28

When I was about 7, my family owned a little 50cc Indian motorcycle, about the size of a toy (but the right size for a little kid - and a real motorcycle, not a toy). My family went to a dry lake bed to ride, and my father, who had been drinking, ordered me to ride the thing. I didn’t want to, but we were not permitted to say ‘no’ about anything. Ever. So I got on, and I rode in a big circle while he yelled at me to go faster, and when I came back around to the VW van, he told me to stop. So I pulled…the front brake.

The bike stopped and fell over on me. The exhaust pipe had no cover. I wound up with 2nd and 3rd degree burns all up and down my leg. All the way home he told me it “didn’t hurt”. He was driving drunk. Of course it did hurt HIM. He didn’t feel a damn thing.

My mother never took me to the doctor, I’m pretty sure she was afraid of CPS if she had.

I have other stories. Although he did apologise for some of the others. If he believed he was the cause. The time he “playfully” throttled me in line at a hardware store and I collapsed unconscious at his feet from a blood-choke? No. I was only horsing around: he didn’t do it. The time he zapped me with a cattle-prod (same store) and I screamed? He turned it on himself and admitted he was at fault. The time he made me lose my balance going up the garage stairs into the house and I fell over backward and hit my head on the concrete floor? He took the blame for that one. :stuck_out_tongue:

Drinking was involved in almost every one of these. Dammit.

29

Required link

30

when I was but a small child, my parents decided to remove a blackhead from my nose by squeezing, tweezering, etc, and finally managed to rip off the end of my nose.

To this day I have an odd little bump on my nose. It doesn’t bother me really though because its unnoticeable to other people, and its perfectly centered on the tip of my nose.

31

My dad and I were playing this cool game in our front yard when I was 8 or 9. He was laying on the grass at the top of a hill and I would back up against his feet and he would push out with his legs and launch me down the grassy hill. I was going faster than my legs could go and I usually wound up rolling and tumbling at the bottom, then I’d go back up the hill and do it again. Which was great fun until I landed wrong and broke my arm. REALLY broke my arm, right above the wrist my arm did about a 45 degree angle. Gruesome to look at but it didn’t really hurt all that bad.

32

I had a break like that, but it was entirely my own fault. However, my mom did insist on taking me home to change my clothes before we went to the emergency room. I think she, like Parsnip’s mom, didn’t want to take a dirty child to the hospital. I mentioned it to her when I was grown, and she said they’d taken me to the family doctor, who put a splint on it, so it wasn’t like she just ignored it in the interest of getting me cleaned up. And in her defense, I truly don’t remember any pain in that whole time.

33

Growing up, my father was a die-hard that a family with two cars was wasting money. One Saturday he was out at the hardware store with the car while Mom and us kids were home. I was playing in the backyard a rather intense game of ‘hide and seek’. I chose poorly and climbed to the top of a neighbor’s outdoor stone chimney BBQ grill. Determined not to get caught, yet trapped, I leaped headlong off the top and landed in a pile of cinder-blocks. I was bleedingh profusely from several spots, but mostly from a gaping head wound as I ran to my Mom. A neighbor who had a car their took me to the hospital.

Not two months later, Mom had a new station wagon.

34

I am so in love with this thread! I don’t have any kids yet, but I’m screwed (I know…that’s how you get them).

35

I remember when my friend karate-threw his sister out of the kitchen and into the livingroom. He warned her to stop pestering him, but she did not listen. Needless to say, her parents were mad at HER for acting up and they told her that she better have something broken or she was in big trouble when they got home (from the hospital). She ended up having a broken collarbone.
And then, there was this day in gym class…
We were made to run laps around the gym when it was too cold outside to use the track. This consisted of running up and down some stairs. Klutz = stairs, not a good combo. Especially when you throw in a crowd of kids rushing to get their laps done first. Anyways, I overstepped and went sliding down. By time I stopped, I wanted to die - not from pain, but from the humiliation. I knew something was wrong with my foot/ankle because it didnt feel right. I propped it up across my other leg and my foot went limp. Pretty good indication it was completely broken.

When my Mom got there, the teacher told her he was sure the ankle was broken. Instead of driving me to the E.R, she took my to the family DR office to have it XRayed (I remember the doc giving her this “look” wondering if she was out of her mind). He had called the hospital upon my arrival, while they took the xrays, and told my Mom to get me over there, they were waiting for me.

36

One of my guiltier moments occurred when my oldest was in first grade. Up till that point, we were unfamiliar with the local school system and the fact that they are the most weather hysteric district in the country. One winter morning it was starting to snow and quite windy, but no too bad - so I dressed her up in her winter gear and she went to the end of my driveway to wait for the bus. Five minutes later she returned to say that no other kids were waiting and that school had probably been canceled. “Nonsense” I exclaimed, there’s not even snow on the ground, the bus is just running late - and I sent her back out there.

Well, my poor little 6-year-old stood at the end of the driveway in sleet and wind for another 40 minutes before I let her back in and checked. Sure enough, school was canceled.

Now I know better, during my kid’s high school careers school has been canceled for cold temperatures, fog, and anticipated snow. Also, if there’s a snow day in the beginning of the week, on more than two occasions they went ahead and cancelled school for the rest of the week on Tuesday. In all cases the roads were completely clear by Thursday.

37

My Dad left my brother as collateral at a fuel station.

He’d pulled in, filled up and then realised he’d left his wallet with Mum, so he made my brother stay behind with the attendant while he went to find Mum and get some money.

He was only gone a few minutes, but I still find that story amusing - probably because I wasn’t the child he exchanged for a tank of petrol :smiley:

38

I’ll give an example of my own parenting.

DS sits in a booster seat at our dinner table. He’s big enough now that he can get down with assistance, rather than being lifted.

A few weeks ago, after dinner, he asked, “Mommy, will you get me down, please?” I took this to mean that I would be assisting him down, yet he meant would I lift him down and therefore did none of the work himself.

The upshot was that I essentially shoved him out of the chair and he fell onto the floor, gaining a goose egg on the brow in the process.

Boy did I feel like crap.

39

This happened when my daughter was about six months old and still woke up for 2am feedings. One night I got her bottle warmed up, settled her in bed with me, and drifted in and out of sleep while she drank it. At one point she dropped the bottle behind the bed, so I reached down, grabbed it, and put it back in her mouth. She didn’t seem to want it anymore but it was nearly full so I kept putting it back in her mouth. She ended up drinking a little bit and promptly barfed all over me.

Now fully awake, I turned on the lamp and noticed that it wasn’t the same bottle I had originally given her. Oops. I had no idea when the other one had fallen behind the bed. I totally deserved to be puked on.

40

Ew. Poor Little Derkins. I could totally see myself doing that, though.

A few months ago, my daughter came home with her first hickey. I was working out, and she walked in, and I stopped, cocked my head and said “Whass thaaaaat?” She asked what, and I told her to go look in the mirror and come back. She came back into the living room, mortified, and I said “Well now you’ve done it… now we have to have The Talk again.” I continued to work out while she sat penitently on the couch and I explained in the most flat and pedantic way possible what happens when a man and a woman love each other very much, or are very drunk. And that visible hickeys are tacky, and that’s reason enough to refrain. All of this was meant to be humorous of course (except that last part).

A couple of minutes of silence followed. Then my daughter smiled and brightly asked “How many slut points do I get for this?” I laughed and said three at most, ya amateur. So she asked “Hmm… how many did you get that time you (nevermind)…?” I said “Honey, I’m 35 years old. Trying to award me slut points now is like asking me yet another Arts and Leisure question 15 minutes into a game of Trivial Pursuit. I already have that chip.”

As I proceeded to Downward Facing Dog, I looked through my legs and saw my daughter sitting on the couch looking at me and smirking. I smirked back and said “Slut!” which she countered with a giggle and “Bad Example!” And that’s how we referred to each other for the rest of the evening.

She hasn’t come home with any more visible hickeys, though.