By MIA FREEDMAN
So it seems that UK Prime Minister David Cameron left his daughter at the pub recently. Look, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha did leave their 8-year-old daughter, Nancy, at the pub but it’s not like she was playing on the pokies in the corner while they got smashed.
The Camerons were at the pub with their three children and two other families for lunch. When they went to leave after their meal, the PM went home in the car of one of his bodyguards. He thought Nancy with in a car with his wife and their two other children, Arthur, six, and 22-month-old Florence while Samantha Cameron assumed their oldest daughter had jumped in the car with her dad.
The Guardian reported:
David Cameron and daughter Nancy
The couple’s daughter Nancy wandered off to the toilets while they were arranging lifts and they only realised she was not with them when they got home, the Sun said.
The prime minister rushed back to the Plough Inn in Cadsden, Buckinghamshire, where he found his daughter with staff.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “The prime minister and Samantha were distraught when they realised Nancy wasn’t with them.
“Thankfully when they phoned the pub she was there safe and well. The prime minister went down straight away to get her.” Downing Street said the incident happened “a couple of months ago”.
The Prime Minister found Nancy helping out the pub staff when he raced back 15 minutes later – no doubt utterly utterly mortified (the PM not the child)
Oh I do love that story. Because even when you are the leader of your country, with all the security and support staff that come with the job, you can still have a massive PARENT FAIL moment.
If you have kids, you’ll have your own to tell. And EVERYONE has a story about the time their mother knocked them over in her desperate attempt to run away from a rogue Catherine Wheel (remember cracker nights?) that hadn’t been properly nailed to the tree and was zhoooshing wildly around the garden. Wait, was that just my Mum?
Since I’ve dobbed her in, I should also confess about the time in her first term of school last year when my own phone rang at 3:15.
“Oh, hello Ms Freedman, it’s Coco’s school calling. It seems Coco hasn’t been picked up yet.”
“Oh my goodness!” I exclaimed. “My mother always picks her up on Thursdays. She must be running late! I’m so sorry!”
“It’s actually Wednesday, Ms Freedman.”
“…………………”
The best part of this story is that my nanny works on Wednesdays. When she asked if she should pick up Coco, I’d said “No, no, Mum’s getting her.” Then my husband had said to me “I feel like picking Coco up from school this arvo as a treat” and I’d said “No, no, Mum’s getting her.”
So just to recap – there were three responsible adults available to pick up my child from school AND YET NOBODY CAME BECAUSE HER MOTHER DIDN’T KNOW WHAT DAY IT WAS.
Score.
What’s your best PARENT FAIL story – dob in yourself, your parents or any other parent you know. We promise not to tell anyone.
Comments
137 Comments so far
I’m actually blaming my husband for this one, but my son fell down the stairs last week. He hadn’t closed the baby gate properly. I saw him toddle off down the hallway and the next thing, thud thud thud…
He was absolutely fine at the bottom, not even a peep. He just looked a little confused. I, on the other hand, was completely inconsolable for hours and FURIOUS with my other half.
I’m still angry about it, come to think of it. I just can’t push what might have happened from my mind.
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but it didn’t happen…..I’ll bet he’s more careful from now on.
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My parents both forgot us at various times. But there were two particularly epic fails.
Once I was all dressed up for a uni ball and they were dropping me at a friends house for us to go together. I jumped out of the car and promptly fell over in the gutter. They merrily drove away leaving me sprawled on the street with my friends parents rushing out to help me.
But the best was that my sister and I were put in boarding school for 6 weeks while they went on a trip to Europe (half work half holiday). If that wasn’t enough indignity, Mum was very jetlagged when they got back, so jet lagged that when I excitedly ran down to see her she didn’t recognise me. I had to stand there saying Mum, Mum for several minutes before she clicked that it was her daughter in front of her. She will never live it down.
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When I was about five and my younger sister two and half, mum and dad had a bbq one evening. We all played with our friends while the adults – including my mum, a paedeatric nurse – had a few wines. After dinner, mum realised that my sister kept sneezing and running her nose. Had to have a good look with a torch – it turned out to be the ball of a ballpoint pen, which my very clever sister had shoved so far up her nse it had gotten stuck.
I have a very vivid memory of a group of adults giggling like loons, holding my sister still with her hair off the side of the kitchen bench with my dad holding the torch and my mum trying to get a pair of long-nosed tweezers up her nose to extract the ball-point. Classy.
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as an early childcare educator Ive lost count of the times parents have forgotten to pick up their children. the dad blames the mum and vice a versa.
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I’m surprised this stuff doesn’t happen more often. When you’ve only got one kid to look after, that seems complicated enough.
But things seem to get exponentially more impossible to keep under control with every additional kid.
I don’t have any first hand experience, but everything I read about child rearing scares the crap out of me.
I don’t know how the majority make it to adulthood!
Ipomen Scarlet
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Just read this article on the same topic and it made me laugh out loud.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2012/jun/11/david-cameron-daughter-baby-fishmongers
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I was teacher to a 3 year old boy, who was gradually starting to smell (over 2-3 weeks). The smell was so bad that if he came close, I would gag. Grandma became so concerned that she took him off to the doctor herself. Turned out he had a small piece of rotting sponge up his nose. Massive parenting fail.
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Oh my god! If it smelt that bad to you, imagine how it would smell UP YOUR OWN NOSE!
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When my third was about two weeks old I went to get a picture framed, I was happily chatting away to the lady when I suddenly yelled, “the baby!” I had totally forgotten to get him out of the car. I grabbed the other two and ran out of the shop and there he was peacefully asleep, blissfully unaware of my abandoning him. Thankfully it wasn’t a hot day! I was so used to only having two children that I forgot him. whoops!
Just this year I was in the car on my way to pick up my eldest from school, on the way I received a phone call from the middle child’s preschool asking me where I was. I had totally forgotten him. Whoops again!
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Me too, Sarah!! I went to aftercare, picked up the youngest from the long day care room, hop in the car , get down the road, phone rings. ‘Umm..mrs Maven – have we forgotten something?’
Only miss 9 at aftercare….
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Terrible mothers unite!
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I accidentally locked my then 1 year old in the car with the keys after leaving the salon bc I didnt want my freshly done hair to get wet (it was raining that day). Thankfully my husband was working in the area and was able to bring his set of keys to unlock the car. Definitely not getting Mother of the Year anytime soon.
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13 years ago, my 2 week old baby was on our bed and my partner and I decided to break out the brand new video camera. We started bickering and fighting over who would hold the camera and why it didn’t seem to be working. Suddenly, we hear our little one start to cry loudly. She and all the blankets she was lying on were on the floor. Later, we stared horrified at the video as we watched her slide to the floor on the slippery dip of blankets as we could clearly be heard arguing like teenaged siblings. We erased the vid quite hastily!
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I was about 13, and while my mother was on the phone I headed to a neighbours, my mother assumed my 3yo sister was with me… though she wasn’t.
After her marathon phone call to an old friend, she came outside to call us in…. which is when we discovered missing miss 3!
I will never forget how frantically we roamed the streets calling her, my mother waved down a passing police car, the officers were great, making sure we all stayed in one spot while they searched a vacant house and land area… The worried officers came into our house to advise they felt it was time to call for back up, when Sleeping Miss 3 was located behind the sofa in a home made cubby! About 4ft away from the phone! not only a fail, but a fail shared with the police for added embarrasment
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My parents left my younger sister – the last of four – on the doorstep in a bassinet when we went away for holidays. We didn’t realise she was missing until one hour outside of Canberra.
I also have a feeling I’ve embellished this story over the years for dramatic effect until I reached one hour. It may have been just down the road – my parents were so fantastic I had to pin something on them.
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You win! I don’t care if you have embellished the story – it’s hilarious!!
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My husband and I were out for walk with our two year old ten days after my c-section with our second child. We were playing one two three wheeee where we swung him between us. Neither of us know how it happened but somehow he flew out of our hands and ended up getting a green stick fracture in his leg – never playing that game ever again!!
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My sister was playing one, two, three whee with her baby son (aged about 2), and they dislocated his shoulder…
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I dropped my three year old off at Day Care, and I was almost at the car when one of the staff came running out.
“Um, I think your son is sick?” they said. So I went and looked at him, and he had these two massive golf ball sized lumps on each side of his neck. Which I hadn’t noticed at all.
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I had similar. My 18 mth old boy, who does boy things like jumping off tables, took a tumble down the stairs while running after his sister. I soothed him and sent on his way to get on the swing, totally not noticing the golf ball on his head and cut under his eye! He was tough though, not complaining about the massive bump.
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Partner and I were taking our daughter to the doctors for a check-up. At age two she was standing up on the bench seat leaning over the back while we sat on either side. The doc came out and we both stood up and started following the doc completely forgetting the reason we came and our daughter….who promptly fell off the bench. Epic fail….but no permanent damage to our daughter.
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My son fell off our bed. Twice. Under my watch. After I told my husband off several times for leaving him unattended on the change table. He was fine, both times, but I felt awful.
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Friend of mine’s kid got a carrot stick jammed so far up his nose it had to be surgically removed. It had been there for DAYS.
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Thats not so bad, at least she was trying to feed him carrots, thats a good thing!
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And they keep telling us that carrots are good for our health….
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My friend and I used to have a joke: “Who’s got the baby?” Especially once the second child arrived… It was a way to ensure that all were accounted for, but also because the first time we went out WITHOUT the baby we both actually started to panic until we remembered he was safe at home with Daddy!!!
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Both my babies fell off beds when they were little. One on to a concrete floor.
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Mine have both done that, too. More than once…
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Both mine have done that on a few occasions too – the first time I rang my mum in tears, and she said, “don’t worry darling, having a baby fall off a bed when you’re meant to be watching them is a parenting right of passage. Congratulations”. My mum always knows how to reassure me!
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My 7 month old son rolled off the bed two days in a row onto a concrete floor, no underlay under carpet. The second fall broke his collarbone. The fail safe plan we had in place after the first fall failed as instead of rolling off he slid off the end. Didn’t factor that move from bub in.
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My mum made my sister walk to school on a broken ankle for a week.
Admittedly the doctors stuffed up the x-rays but still..,.
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I sent my daughter to school with a broken arm, I knew she had hurt it the night before when she fell of the monkey bars, but she was rather a whingey child & I thought she was just being overdramatic….whoops!
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Guilty. My daughter had a little slip and put her hand down to catch her fall. She screamed blue murder but we just assumed she was being her usual dramatic self and put some ice on it.
3 days later she was still complaining so we took her to the hospital, it turns out she had two broken fingers. Oh the shame.
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Easliy done, my GP confessed to doing a similar thing with her youngest, made me feel so much better.
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When I was a little girl (6) we went to Greece on holiday with the family and family friends. I fell asleep on the tour bus one evening and my family and friends decided that they should go out for dinner anyway AND LEFT ME ON THE BUS! I have had quite a bit of therapy since then
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After Madeline McCann’s story, no-one would do that now!! Glad it turned out ok for you, Lana
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My dad forgot to pick me up on my first day of kindy! I haven’t let him forget it : P
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I took Ava to the park when she was about 12-months-old. We came home, pottered around, I put her to bed, she seemed a bit grizzly. I thought, ‘Why is she grizzly?”
MAYBE BECAUSE SHE HAS AN OLD LEAF STUFF TO THE ROOF OF HER MOUTH.
Well played, leaf. Well played.
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My daughter (18 months at the time) opened her mouth for the doctor to check her throat. There was a 3 cornered jack ( a type of hard prickle) in there. It had been there for a while, the sharp ends of the prickle had been dulled by her constant sucking on it. *Still Blushing*
Seriously, Poor David Cameron and Mrs Cameron. It is not enough that this happened, but it has to be all over the front pages. Those English papers seem so merciless.
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My mum once dropped my brother at school three days before school actually started.
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A friend of mine was trying to be the fun, cool new stepmother to her boyfriend’s 4 year old. After the 4 year old’s delighted reaction to milk and pancakes coloured with food colouring, my friend got the bright idea to add food colouring to her bath. Blonde child with pale skin + 1 bottle of blue food colouring in the bath = Blue Oompa Loompa.
The child’s mother wasn’t too impressed, to say the least …
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A whole bottle?!!!?? Holy moly!
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She wanted the water to be “really blue” (she’s usually really clever, I swear!).
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This.
Winner!
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Hahahahahaha that’s fantastic. I can just imagine the mother’s reaction. Oh dear
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hahaha – the kid dyed on her watch.
love it.
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Too funny!
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That just made me decide to never let the ex’s new woman meet the kids…
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o my god! hahaha
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