I’m not just talking about abusive parents who have had their kids removed from their care.
I’m also talking about parents who routinely make poor child-rearing choices. Like overly indulging their children or being in denial over their children’s worrisome red flags. Or parents who are mean to their kids, but not so mean that it would rise to the level of calling in child protective services.
If you were friends with a bad parent, would you say something? Or just mind your own business?
Lol, if you ask my wife the kids are bad parents that she’s constantly tut-tutting 
The grand child seems to be doing ok to me though.
Kept my mouth shut when it was choices I wouldn’t make but basically harmless. There were a couple cases I ended the friendship (let it organically die). A couple because I didn’t like how their choices impacted my kids and once because I was just appalled (not abuse, just really yucky).
I am friends with a couple who are horrible parents. I offered a little advice early on but after a couple times I decided just to remain friends with them and avoid the results of their actions ------ their daughter. Its worked for the last 10 years so I can live with it.
I ran into a few inept, silly parents while rearing mine. A couple of parents very close to being considered neglectful. I never said a thing. A best friend of the lil’wrekker’s was in the big, fat horrible situation of trying to come out about his gender I.D. This person was born female. Was the classic tomboy up to junior high. And things became very different. She spent many days and overnights at our home. I think I was probably the first person she told. Sad, but I didn’t have enough info to guide this child. I encouraged her to talk to her Mom. Big mistake. She still transitioned to living as a male, taking the testosterone and getting ready for top surgery.
I think this childs parents are stupid and evil. They are completely estranged. But, still I’m not gonna get into it with them. I don’t have a relationship with them any more.
My sister is an idiot who decided to home school her kids for no discernable reason. Two years ago they left their kids with my parents who are in their late 60s and drove through the hurricane hitting Houston to three airport to find one that wasn’t closed so they could spend the hurricane vacationing in Las Vegas while my parents kept their kids alive. This year they decided to put their kids in public school but the start of school conflicted with their vacation schedule to they left for two weeks and let my mom figure out how to get the kids (5 & 7) to school for the first time ever.
We were friends with a couple who decided to raise frustration-free kids. They used to visit once a year, staying with us. The last time was close to 50 years ago. Their daughter was about to cut a page out of my 5 yo daughter’s favorite book when my wife stopped her. The parents would not intervene and I think they were unhappy that we frustrated their daughter. We never invited them back. I have sometimes wondered how the kids turned out. I know the parents have divorced, but that’s all I know.
Wait - Beck - what happened in your story? Were the parents not supportive? It sounded like they were, but maybe I misunderstood.
I babysat for a couple who were bad parents decades ago. They spoiled the kids, and they were completely out of control. I guessed they might have been adopted, because they were older parents, and the kids didn’t look a thing like either of them. Not great evidence but it softened my opinion of them a bit if they’d had trouble getting pregnant, adopted and spoiled the “miracles” they were given. The wife was a slovenly housekeeper. The husband had a vintage Mercedes whose leather seats STUNK of stale cigar smoke, as did their whole house. It was nauseating. After maybe my third time sitting for them (with the third time being the worst) I never sat for them again. No amount of money was worth it.
Oh, no. They kicked him out of the house at 16. He hung with supportive families, ours included. He graduated early and got a good scholarship in a Texas college. And by all accounts is doing well. The parents somehow blamed me for it. I never gave the kid advice except to talk to his Parents. I was woefully unprepared to help him much, but to offer a place to crash and eat.
Him and his family are estranged. No contact.
I am super judgey of other parents. Everyone has a bad day and it’s not always the parents’ fault if the kid is awful, but if I keep a mental tally of red flags. And I’ll talk to my kid about the things I hear and see. I’m pretty foul-mouthed, but I think my kid should wait till at least the last year or two of high school before swearing around adults, but friends’ kids swear at like 10. So we talk about how that’s ok for that family but not ours.
A few months ago I saw a woman wheel her carriage overflowing with kids into the grocery story, turn around, and walk back out towards the door. Every single woman at the front of the store all froze and stared until the weirdo came back over to her cart and we all made eye contact. “Can you believe this shit?” So someone like her? I wouldn’t be friends with her.
There are people who I saw do moderately crappy things to their kids (or be kind of rude to mine) a decade ago and I still give them dirty looks. So I definitely don’t become friends with them.
I’m struggling more with the “weird” things than the “bad” things. I met a family who had kids in middle school and those kids (no health issues) had never had a soda. I get that it has no nutritional value and isn’t necessary, but I wouldn’t want my child being the American teenager who never had a coke. Ever. Their tween daughter didn’t know what periods were and that just baffles me. What if she got a nasty surprise some day and didn’t even know what it was? They’re not religious or flaky. Just… weird.
Theres a big difference in not having a coke or other soda and not understanding how their body will work.
The first one I have no problem with. I never bought my kids soda for at home use. They had them at restuarants and with their own money out and about. They got more than enough with out my help.
Knowing the pertinent biology of your body is important. That borders on neglect. Not call in CPS neglect, but still.
Sure; one of my kids qualifies. The sad thing is that he and his spouse don’t see that their kids’ behavior is a direct result of their parenting. I don’t stick my nose in or offer opinions on it.
My brother treated his stepkids better than his own children. His two sons rarely spoke to him as adults. His daughter stayed in contact, engaged him with his grandchildren, visited often, called, etc. His response to her efforts was to completely cut her out of his will, instead giving most of anything of value to his stepdaughter.
Watching other people parent is like George Carlin on driving: everyone else is too extreme one way or the other. Half the moms at the park smother their children, don’t give them any independence or the freedom to explore. The other half? They ignore their kids and star at the phone too much! And activities! Half my son’s friends are enrolled in way, way too many things and sorely lack free time to just develop and explore: the others are just being neglected, no one trying to build up their talents or help them find their passions. And clothes! I swear to god. Half these moms bundle their kids up too much, to where they are nearly suffocating, and the other half leave them to freeze, totally irresponsible. It’s amazing how I always find the happy middle and no one else can.
More seriously, I have a lot of opinions about parenting teens–I’ve been teaching a long time, and so I’ve seen a lot of variations–but generally speaking, there’s a lot of right ways to raise kids, and most of the time, it’s fine. I’m less judgmental as I age. The only thing I can’t stand are people that love to tear their kids down, that return every compliment with an insult or an undercut, that make dire predictions based on nothing, that try to pull me, the teacher, into their shaming game. Those parents are rare. I could never be friends with people like that.
My DIL tends to put too many rules on her small girls. They don’t seem to suffer too much. I did get into it with them once about the girls screaming bloody murder cause they wanted no part of a Santa Claus picture op. I thought it was cruel to make them do it. Some kids just don’t like that stuff and no one ever died becsuse they didn’t sit on Santa’s knee. It never has came up again, so I guess my words were heard. Maybe.
My wife and I live near to where she went to college, and we are friends with many of her classmates. Virtually all of them have kids.
So I have my opinions about various things and mostly keep them to myself, but there is one couple who have a four-year-old boy and just recently had their second child. Their house is completely unsanitary and overcrowded with junk to the point of being dangerous. The floors and walls have the appearance of not having been cleaned in years. And the house stinks of cat urine and maybe other things that I don’t want to know about. There are broken windows and shattered glass lying and top of furniture and things like that.
So I’ve made clear that my son is never allowed to go into that house. Playing in the yard outside is ok.
A woman I know is the stereotypical awful mom to her two grade-school aged daughters. She cooks dinner (badly) one night a week and they eat leftovers from that the next night. The other five dinners are cereal, fast food, or a pizza. The last time I ran into her, the 7 year old was wearing a shirt that, in Netflix’s colors and font, read, “and chill”. Either she doesn’t understand the meaning, or she does and thinks it’s funny. Oh, and her SO just violated his probation and is back in.
I know a couple that basically completely changed after having their daughter. I wouldn’t describe them as “bad parents,” but they are rather more like… too into being parents, if that makes any sense. They suddenly believed in a whole lot of hippie woo bullshit, and then everything suddenly had to be about the kid. They are good parents, I suppose, but bad friends. I don’t see them anymore.
We basically cut off ties with a relative of a relative after a disastrous restaurant incident in which the parents lost their shit over a kid being not hungry or whatever. It clearly was part of a recurring power struggle, but the fact that the parents couldn’t keep their shit together in public was disturbing. It’s one thing if a kid has a meltdown. This was two adults having meltdowns over a kid in public.
Man, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky or I have a very small circle of friends. Worst thing I recall was a woman who would cut her kids’ meat at dinner - when they were in MIDDLE SCHOOL!!! Those kids are now all married with kids of their own - I wonder if they cut their kids’ meat like Mom did…
My daughter has a friend who “home-schools” her kids - at 8, her daughter still couldn’t read because the mom let the kids set the agenda. That, to me, borders on neglect.
It’s funny how things change, too. When I was a kid, I remember my mom boiling anything that came in contact with my youngest sibs. I’m pretty sure I never boiled anything that my daughter used. And when my granddaughter picks up a toy off the floor and puts it in her mouth, her mom says “Strengthens her immune system.” 