The worst things you've done to your kids

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My daughter took her guinea pig outside in the backyard for some grass and sunlight. We warned her all the time NOT to leave him alone. Sure enough I looked outside and he was alone in an empty bucket. I went out and got him, leaving the bucket tipped over and returned him to his cage.

When daughter came home, I asked her where Timothy was, she said “I forgot him outside in the bucket”, I replied she’d better go and get him and wash up for supper.

She went out back and saw the tipped over, empty bucket and came in saying “He’s gone…”

I looked at her with wide eyes “Gosh, I hope that cat I saw earlier didn’t get him…”

She burst into tears. I felt badly, but I still thought it would be a good lesson. Finally after a minute of tears, I told her to go to her room to get herself under control and we’d go look for the Pig. His cage was in her room.

It took a few minutes to dawn on her what I’d done, then she came downstairs to tell me how “mean” I was. She never left him alone in the yard after that.

22

Well, exactly. This thread is for nice lighthearted, if slightly painful stuff that we mostly did without thinking, or accidentally. Let’s face it, you’re absolutely right - the worst things we’ve done to our kids are probably things we don’t even realize, that they’ll have to work out with their therapists as adults.

But the two “worst” I can think of at the moment are:

When my son was about 2, he had a big plate of strawberries and powdered sugar with whipping cream to dunk them in. As god as my witness, I thought there were two left, so I “stole” one and ate it…and it turned out it was the very last strawberry. The look of betrayal and sadness on his face that Mama ate his last strawberry! I felt awful, of course, but at the same time, it was so funny - tragedy (and guilt) out of all proportion to the event.

My daughter provided me with a moment of sheer terror and panic. She was only a few months old, and still at the “potted plant” stage - couldn’t sit up, couldn’t crawl, couldn’t scootch, couldn’t even roll over. So I arranged her carefully and safely on her favorite blanket in the middle of the living room floor and then I went to the bathroom. 90 seconds, tops, and I came back and she was gone. Just…gone. No baby, no where. Guess who picked that minute to learn how to turn over…and over and over and over, until she rolled herself under the couch?! Today, she loves to hear the story of “the day Mama lost her under the couch.”

23

Well I ran over one of my sons with a truck when he was 3 or 4 years old. Does that count? He was fine but I had one of the scariest moments of my life.

We had 2 boys 14 months apart, kind of like delayed twins. We lived in an apartment complex at the time and the boys were playing in the grassy area with the other neighborhood kids. I was going to the store and I checked to make sure where all of the kids were. Then I turned to look over my shoulder while backing out of the parking space and I felt the front tire go bump-bump over something, like a rock. Got out of the truck and number one son is laying on the ground crying.

He had apparently saw me leaving and wanted to go so he ran for the door of the truck and got knocked down. The front tire ran over his knee. An emergency room visit, a little ointment and a Band-Aid later and he was fine.

He is 28 now and still has a little scar on his knee where Dad ran over him.

24

This comic illustrates one of my worst mistakes:

Crowbar Benson-High Speed Shoulder Ride

25

This happened to my son about 15 years ago.

We have this stereo system that takes about 3 seconds to fully power up before it starts playing the radio. My son, who was just a toddler, was fascinated by the huge knob and all the buttons on it and had been playing with it. Of course wife and I had turned it off so we weren’t too concerned, but what we didn’t see was that he had turned the volume all the way up to 100% and had been hitting the power button. Due to the delay in the startup, it didn’t do anything when he would hit it and then immediately hit it again, but that one time he waited just a little too long, he experienced the full power… and it scared the bejeebers out of him. He bawled for the next hour and never touched the stereo again for the next few years.

Poor kid.

26

With nine kids over seventeen years, I’m sure this isn’t the worst thing I’ve done to any of my kids, but this one fits the tone of the thread and was pretty recent…

My family went with me to the Bronx Zoo, this was probably back in May or so. We were walking around the Africa area and there were hardly any African animals to be seen, but there were plenty of peacocks roaming freely around the zoo. When we got to the area where signs indicated there should be zebras, we didn’t see any, and I joked that maybe the peacocks had eaten all the zebras.

My (then) two-year-old looked at me with the saddest, scaredest face and said…“Peacock…eat…zeeba?” (yes, just like the crocs in Pearls Before Swine) My wife and I spent a good long while re-assuring him that he didn’t need to be afraid of the peacocks and that the zebras were no doubt just sleeping.

27

I’m sure the zebras were fine, but maybe kids should be a little afraid of the Bronx Zoo peacocks. They have serious attitudes and no fear. A peacock stole my two-year-old’s lunch right out of her hands … previously I was convinced they wouldn’t get THAT close to a person, but I was wrong!

28

Got this story from a friend of a friend: Daddy was out of town, in Florida, on business.

Kids had a record of being monsters on car rides, and mom would try the “if you don’t behave we’re turning this car around RIGHT NOW”.

So Mom planned on taking the kids down to where Dad was on business, and having a family vacation after his work stuff was done. BUT, she got everything loaded up and ready to go two days early.

So when she said “behave, or we’re turning around” at the start of the trip, she meant it.

Sure enough, kids were raising hell within a half hour. She took them back home… and they were very, very subdued.

2 days later, she said “Are you ready to behave? Are you sure? OK, we’ll try it again”.

The kids were angels.

Back to bad parenting moments: We took my daughter and a friend to an indoor waterpark near home when she was about 10. They were playing around, and after a bit the friend came to me and said “Moon Unit fell down and she’s crying”. I went to her, and yeah, she was upset - but after a bit she calmed down and went back to playing in the water.

We stopped for dinner on the way home, went back to the house, then Moon Unit started wailing in pain again. Her friend was howling “Moon Unit broke her baaaaaaaaaack”. Friend goes home, I finally decide to call the doctor (this is a Sunday Night) fully expecting to be told “it’s a sore muscle, take two aspirin” etc.

But listening to the howling, he said that maybe I oughta take her to the ER.

Long story short: she HAD broken her back.

OK, it was just a compression fracture… (and nothing to do about it but painkillers for a bit) but I’d have just ignored it. Whoopsy.

29

Oh, and coming from my parents raising me, the most memorable (and of course my parents were far from perfect but did well enough all in all) was the day my mom forgot me at the library.

It was at a shopping center about 2.5 miles from our house. My brother needed something at another store, and I begged to go along to swap out my books. Mom was insistent that they were just going to be 10 minutes and there wasn’t time, but I begged. So she let me come along.

I was in and out in well under 10 minutes. So I went outside and waited. And waited. And waited.

Over an hour later, 9 PM and the library was closing, so I walked home. In the dark, along the shoulder of a very busy road, with no streetlights. Nearly there, some neighbors spotted me and gave me a ride the rest of the way.

I got home, went into my room, dumped my books, then went down to the rec room where everyone was watching TV. I sat down without saying anything. Mom didn’t comment either.

Finally, I said “Thanks for leaving me at the library!”.

Mom was horrified :p.

Why didn’t I ask the library people to call home for me? No clue - bear in mind I was 10 at the time and perhaps lacking in judgment.

The other story was when I was not quit 4. Dad had taken us 3 younger kids to Mass. At one point, I noticed that my oldest brother (just turned 8) was not with us so I asked Dad where he’d gone to. The answer meant nothing to me: where on earth was “Communion”?

So I decided to look for him back in the car. Got to the car, saw he wasn’t there, and headed back to the church.

My dad liked to park about a block and a half away from the church to avoid the crazy parking lot. And this block and a half included a very busy street.

So I don’t really remember being hit by the car, just a vague sensation of a thump and then I was sitting on the sidewalk with Dad and a few other people around me.

I was fine (though some might argue differently ;)) and thought very little of it… until one day when I came home from my freshman year at college and was chatting with Mom, and mentioned “when I was hit by that car” and her face went :confused::confused::confused::eek::eek::eek::mad::mad::mad:.

Yeah, Dad had never told her this tale. I felt bad for him - she called him into the room and “expressed her displeasure”.

30

When my 10-year old son was 6-8 months (I can’t remember exactly when) was just learning to stand up, i was lying on my bed and walking him around by holding his arms. Well, of course he eventually fell, but instead of moving my arms down with him, i tried to keep him upright. Well, dislocated shoulder ensued :frowning: I didn’t notice right away, but finally my wife and I noticed he was holding his arm funny and when we figured out what was wrong, we drove straight to the ER. As we were waiting, just handing him off to each other to hold, popped his shoulder into place, and he was fine. We both felt really bad, and to this day it seems like it was a bad thing, but he recovered great and is a fine kid, so I guess it DID turn out okay :slight_smile: