have you ever watched parenting fail and had to bite your tongue?

In My Humble Opinion
21

This is minor on its face, but it was indicative of bigger issues. A former coworker of my husband had 3 kids roughly our daughter’s age (one a year older, one the same age, one 2 years younger) and we’d occasionally get together at each other’s house for dinner. One time, I think when our daughter was 8 or 9, we were at their house and I watched the mom (a SAHM if that matters) cut up all the kids’ food. Like I said, minor, although at that age, our daughter knew how to use a knife and fork just fine.

Fast forward 3 years - we’d moved away and they’d come to visit, so we all went out to dinner. By this time, all of the kids are in middle school. Guess who was still cutting their meat?? :rolleyes: That was the last time we saw them and the kids are in their 20s now - I hope they’ve mastered cutlery by now…

22

A couple of instances come to mind. A very very good friend would tell her young children Okay ten more minutes and then you go to bed. Ten minutes later, repeat. And repeat. She did not follow up with her directions. Her daughter turned out to be a lovely young woman regardless, but her son makes me cringe. He has no respect for his long-suffering mom, who has a ton of problems, physical, medical and financial. Mom has to move from one house to another and who’s helping her with the heavy stuff? Me. So you’ve got two middle-aged women, one who’s on disability and the other with arthritis wrangling furniture up & down flights of stairs and onto a pickup truck. Where is Sonny? Nowhere to be found. Grrrr.

Another was an incident my daughter and I saw in an airport. It took us five minutes to pick our chins off the ground. Family consisted of a mom and a dad and a young boy child maybe about 8 years old. They were apparently waiting for grandma’s plane, or some such thing. The child is up and down off the chairs, the windowsills, whatever. No control. Then he says he wants ice cream. No, say the parents, we don’t have time before grandma’s plane. “Oh, yes, you do, if you hurry!” responds the brat. “Go! Quickly, quickly quickly!!” And they did it.

23

As I often say, just because it isn’t as bad doesn’t mean it’s good. No, parents shouldn’t beat their kids and they should feed them and look after them, but they should also give them age-appropriate discipline.

I saw a parenting fail one day in a department store - a young child in a stroller saw a teddy bear she wanted, and her mom said no. She gave out a bellow, and her mom took the bear down and gave it to her (presumably to buy it for her). You just taught your kid how to get what she wants - bellow for it after you say no (although in all fairness, she probably had that lesson a while ago).

24

I hear ya, except it’s my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law. Wonderful mother-in-law, only she babies her son - he’s still living at home, no job, no driver’s license, not going to school, barely helps around the house, they buy him smokes and everything - and he’s 30 years old! A freakin’ grown man who should have been out of the nest 10 years ago! He has no damn clue about how to exist without his parent’s roof over his head. No disabilities either, just a lazy bum who was never expected to be independent and has absolutely no ambition.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad - she gets visibly upset whenever my husband (on his own since age 18 or so, good job and own home) or his sister (on her own since age 18 or so, living in various cities around the world) make a “dig” about their lazy bum of a brother.

His parents are finally thinking about moving to a retirement community but they’re concerned about where his brother will go. :rolleyes: Apparently hints have been dropped for him to live with us - my husband and I are all NO WAY IN HELL. I said: “I’ve never wanted a child and I certainly don’t want a grown man either.”

Parents: you’re not doing your kids any favours if you never prepare them for the “real world” then make them get out there and experience it!

25

You mean a grown child. He doesn’t sound like much of a man to me.

26

The worst I’ve seen is when a couple of former friends of mine used to bring their then-toddler son over to our house for dinner frequently. I think he was 18 months old the first time his mom yelled, "Say ‘May I have a bite?!!’ and slapped his hand very, very sharply when he reached for something on her plate. It was awful. Poor thing had no idea what had happened and was just learning to talk. She would yell at him in restaurants, too, when he was 3-ish and trying to touch her after his dinner. He wasn’t leaving his seat, just leaning toward her for contact and she would yell, “GET OFF ME!!” very loudly regardless of where we were. I felt so bad for him. Then there’s the added “benefit” of her bellowing in a restaurant.

I was also on the phone with a friend of mine who lives in another state. She had put her daughter to bed two and a half hours before we’d even gotten on the phone and the little one just kept coming out of her room. Her daughter must’ve been about 3.5 and it was 10 o’clock at night, well past bedtime for a kid that age. Instead of physically picking her up and putting her in her room or just getting off the phone so she could deal with it, my friend kept trying to cajole her, then started this stupid debate with her over going to bed. Then she put the girl on the phone to talk to me. I got off the phone almost immediately after - I couldn’t handle listening to them. Drove me nuts.

27

My upstairs neighbors are raising three children (with one on the way) who will almost certainly never be contributing members of society after coming out of that home.

28

I watch/hear about my ex’s way of parenting all the time. My kids are 6 and 4. She doesn’t let them outside to draw unless she’s right there. I don’t think she takes them to the park often, and when she does they are not allowed to use the equipment ‘wrong’ like climb on the outside of the monkey bars.

Funny enough she’s gotten on my case for the way I raise the kids. She sent my daughter inside once when she came by even though I was watching her through the window, that was open.

I’ve kept my mouth shut and let the kids play how they want for the most part when they are with me. They also usually behave in restaurants and stores for me.

29

My first introduction to my (now) brother in laws kids was his son trying to strangle my son because they wanted the same toy. He was 3. Over the next 4 years he got steadily worse and was clearly in charge of the house. Both my husband and I and our inlaws tried to make suggestions but they were very defensive and resistant to change. Their daughter was extremely ill and was not expected to live to her teens so I think a lot of both the parents and son’s reactions were impacted by that.

The family moved to England when the kids were 6 and 7 and the behaviour expectations of the school helped them to see the benefits of discipline and they began to enforce the same standards at home too. A couple of years after that a new treatment for my niece significantly improved her quality of life and she’s in college now and while not perfectly healthy she has a normal life expectancy. Her brother is both brilliant and a pleasure to spend time with. He has one more year of university left and already has a couple job offers

Even after it seems like all hope is lost for the kids and parents change can still happen. It’s worth it to keep trying.

30

This is very minor compared to what’s been posted, but it just happened to me yesterday. My best friend of 20 years has two children, ages 5 and 2. She is often very impatient with them either when they fail to learn something new right away, or when she gives them mixed messages and they don’t grok what it is exactly that she wants them to do.

She and I were talking on the phone yesterday and her 5-year-old son kept interrupting her to ask her questions. She kept saying, “Please don’t talk with me when I’m on the phone,” but would then continue to talk to him and give him attention. This happened several times, each time she answered him with more and more irritation, until finally she snapped, yelled at him, and put him in Time Out for pestering her.

I really wanted to say, “Have you ever thought about ignoring him (within safe reason) when you’re on the phone? If you tell him not to talk to you but then keep talking to him, he has no reason to stop. You’re reinforcing his behavior and then getting mad at him for it. That’s pretty silly.”

It’s worse when she’s trying to teach him a skill and she gets impatient with him when he doesn’t learn right away. She yells at him, he shrinks back, and then she irritatedly tells him, “I don’t care if you make a mistake, I just want you to keep trying.” Well, you can’t yell that message at a little kid – all they’ll hear is your angry tone, and they’ll stop trying.

I have (gently) said this to her before, but because I don’t have kids, she doesn’t listen to me. It’s frustrating. Edit: I should add, I’ve worked with children in a classroom setting, so I know something about behavior management. I’m not a parent, but I’m not talking entirely out of my ass either.

31

Yeah. This. (Although I’m surprised that your best friend and you differ so greatly on parenting philosophy – I think I’d have a hard time being friends with someone who was so different. Perhaps that’s a female thing, though.)

HA! If it weren’t for the three kids, I’d wonder if you knew my mom. She cut up our food for us for a really long time… definitely through middle school, I’m embarrassed to say. And yes, indicative of bigger issues. Though now that I’m in my 30’s I have mastered cutlery, I think :slight_smile:

ETA:

Bingo on the bigger issues.

32

I see a lot of parenting fail, which is pretty scary when you consider that I really don’t get out that much. Unless I am directly affected by it, though, I usually don’t make comments to the parents. It’s almost never effective. I WILL tell a kid to quit bothering me. Yeah, I’m mean and horrible. And kids need to learn that there are mean, horrible people who don’t like kids.

33

My boss has an adult son who is a qualified teacher. He is employed and I suppose he must earn whatever teachers earn. Not peanuts, anyway. He lives at home and pays not one penny to his Mum and Dad for room and board. Mum does all of his washing and ironing and all of the cooking and housework. He leaves his shoes outside of his bedroom door at night and she polishes them. She pays for his car loan and his telephone contract. He owns no clothes that his mother has not bought for him. And when I say bought, I mean she goes to the shop, without him, and buys him socks and underwear and shoes and jeans and sports clothes and suits and shirts and jumpers and ties and whatever else, with her own money. If he doesn’t ike them, when she takes them home to him, she takes them back to the shop and changes them for something else, that he thinks he might prefer. Now, I only know this, because she tells her staff these things, like she’s proud of him and his life. Which is baffling

During the school holidays last year, he went to Laos for six weeks. And had to call his mother to send him money, because he had none left. She did.

I happened to meet this idle lump in a pub a few weeks ago and he tried to chat me up. When I turned down his offer of going back to his house (ie, my boss’s house!!!) for a quickie - classy - he said
“I’ll tell my Mum” :smack:
True enough, when I went to work the following Monday, his mother wanted to know why I wouldnt go out with the golden child. After all, he was a great catch, being a teacher and all. And so handsome and stylish. And a qualified teacher. And much more handsome than my boyfriend. And I wan’t getting any younger, I ought to remember.
Holy shit.

34

And I get that. But then we’ve got parents in here who want to point out the specks in others’ eyes regarding their “parenting fails” like the following:

So we’ve got one parent who makes her kids play safely on playground equipment, perhaps slightly to strictly, and one multi-tasking mom who instructs her son once or twice on proper behavior and then disciplines him when he ignores it. :rolleyes:

Yeah, let me know when all these paragon parents see someone come to school wearing the same clothes for three days in a row. Then we’ll talk parenting fails.

35

I’ve become a lot more tolerant of parenting fail since I’ve had one golden child and one child that defies every parenting trick I know.

I’ve learned to accept how little control I have, and just love them as hard as I can. I’ve also become wise enough to not take credit for what the golden child has become.

36

I hate this. I see a lot of truly appalling parenting when I’m working in the pediatrics side of the ER. Generally I don’t say anything since none of it rises to the level of abuse (so far) and I’m not a family therapist. But when they tell the child to be good or I’ll give them a needle I will stop my history and exam to ask them not to use the doctor as a threat. After I’ve finished explaining that when you make the doctor into the bogeyman all you accomplish is to make visits to the doctor more difficult for everyone involved a lot of them still don’t seem to get it but at least I tried.

37

A friend of mine has two little kids, let’s call them Cody and Nicole. Cody had strep throat, so mommy took him to the doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics.
A week or two later, Nicole started coming down with something. When mommy came by to pick her up, I mentioned it. She said, “she started getting sick a couple of days ago. But she should be fine because Cody had some medicine left over so I gave it to her.”

I had to seriously restrain my tongue. She managed to, with a single action, give two children an incomplete run of antibiotics, as well as putting her daughter at risk by giving her medicine a doctor did not prescribe.

It’s folks like her who are burning out our good antibiotics.

I limited myself to asking her “please make sure Nicole finishes the full bottle” two weeks later when she actually got strep, and had a proper prescription.

38

n/m; deleted

39

Oh my god YES. My sister in law is PAINFUL! She has two kids (age 2 and 4). First thing is she spoils them to death.

4 year old has his own iPod - which he has trashed. I estimate they have about 2000 toys in the house. 4 year old screams, kicks, punches his mum and then laughs… 2 year old bites his mum (never done it to me). Worst part is tea time… I’ve had dinner with them many times and it always goes the same…

4 yr old wants food about half an hour before tea. SIL gives him food. Tea time comes and he’s not hungry… SIL and her husband are perplexed and spend the next 2 hours trying to get him to eat using bribery, sometimes he sits on his mums lap and she spoon feeds him… If he doesn’t eat they get really angry and yell at him or try to give him “time out” - which consists of spending quality time hugging and kissing him. This is the only time I ever see them attempt to punish him… Sadly it’s not his fault.

Drives me bloody mad…! She is very similar to the woman OP described… Thinks her child is a prodigy and laughs when they’re naughty.

I could go on and on… They bought a 40 grand car even though they are always complaining about money, etc… It is brand new they’ve only had it for about 4 months… Kids have destroyed it already. She lets them eat and drink in the car so there are food scraps and smells like off milk.

4 yr old doesn’t even have the basics such as saying thank you, or washing his hands after the toilet…

I’m now avoiding them like the plague…

40

I yelled at my daughter last night, not one of my better moments. I didn’t want to be bothered, she kept pestering, I lost it. I apologized later, of course.

My wife does some things that I disagree with and that many here would disagree with - she makes sure Sophia has a full calendar (relatively speaking), and she’s very, very, very insistent on education and homework: it’s a 24/7 process at our house, something that I never lived with growing up, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, Sophie is smart as a whip and that’s something I give her mother credit for… Sophia isn’t a kid who is internally-driven to be smart, she’s smart because we insist upon it. She’s also funny as hell, and has a good heart - last year she volunteered over 120 hours working in the church, the food bank, the park(s), etc.

My sister… OMG, it’s stunning how badly she parents, especially considering that we all grew up with the meme that Sis was going to be a great mother because she worked well with kids, becoming an elementary school teacher, etc.

HA!

The kids staying up late is common. Whining is common. Education is so not a priority there that… eh, just let me tell a story:

OK, so I flew in one Friday afternoon during the school year and was going to stay at my sisters that weekend before my business meetings Monday afternoon in Orlando. We were having dinner, and I asked the younger daughter, who was in the second or third grade, how school was today:

“Great! We had free day today because it was Friday, so I watched a movie and played a couple of games, and…”
“That sounds fun.” (to Sis) “Is it the end of the quarter or something?”
“No, why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering about the ‘free day’ and why they didn’t have class. If it’s the end of the quarter, it makes sense.”
“Third-graders and lower don’t do class on any Friday. It’s a free day.”
:snorts: “Are you serious? Why?”
“They’re young and they don’t need the pressure. So our school doesn’t give them classes on Friday.”
“But we had class on Friday when we grew up, Sis. Sophie has class every Friday, just like…”
niece butts in “Ewwwww, Sophie has to go to class on Friday? Does she have to take tests?”
“Well, of course.”
“Poor, Sophie.”

Uh… no. Poor you, kid. Poor you and your brother. Sorry that your mom and dad are OK with this. :frowning: