This isn’t one of Emma’s kids – we promise!
Is it just me or has parenting turned into one big test? It feels like there are new opportunities to stuff it up every day. And as a mother of three, I get triple the opportunity to FAIL.
Don’t get me wrong. I think I score okay on the big picture stuff. I’m patient. I read stories. I sing lullabies. I listen. I care. I label the behaviour and not the child. I cuddle. I try to lead by example. I pick my battles. They know they’re loved unconditionally.
It’s more the day-to-day admin side of parenting that really needs some attention at our place. Here’s an audit of recent events:
1. Banana left in school bag for the entire school holidays. FAIL.
2. Dreadlocks in the four-year-old’s hair. No, not as a fashion statement. FAIL.
3. Under 7’s soccer. Forgot to bring back the man-of-the-match trophy – the one you are only supposed to keep for a week. No trophy for this week’s man-of-the-match. FAIL.
4. Left kids with a babysitter and no instructions on what to cook for dinner. Kids had take away pizza. Again. FAIL.
5. Two tiny dots of green mould on the back of the four-year-old’s ballet leotard, discovered after the ballet class, possibly as a result of being left in a bag with rotten fruit. (See above). FAIL.
6. Fifteen minutes late for the school Easter Hat Parade. Pretty much missed the whole thing. ‘Didn’t you see me darling? I was standing just over there’ FAIL. Oh, and I forgot the camera! FAIL.
7. Fillings in the eight-year-old and six-year-old’s teeth. FAIL.
8. Several play dates and sleepovers yet to be reciprocated. ‘Maybe Max can come over next weekend sweetheart. Yes, I know it’s been four months’. FAIL.
9. Avoiding story time at Manly Library – for two years – because of an outstanding $78 fine. FAIL.
10. Only sent out thank-you cards to half the guests from the four-year-old’s birthday party. FAIL.
11. RSVP’d to a birthday party and then completely forgot it was on. No show. No present. FAIL.
12. Borrowed the children’s Christmas money from Grandma and only paid it back last week. FAIL.
13. Eight-year-old singled out by her teacher as suitable for a special ‘gifted and talented’ drama enrichment weekend workshop. Took too long to fill in the form. Workshop full. FAIL.
14. Did the Premier’s Reading Challenge, but forgot to fill in the form. No certificate . FAIL.
15. Slip of paper in the bottom of the school bag, with important information about the next parent get together, discovered after the get together had taken place. FAIL.
And this last one may be the worst. It’s the one I’m most ashamed of…
16. Missed four calls from the children’s school. Called back two hours later to find the six-year-old had been in sick bay but had given up waiting for mum to pick him up and was back in class. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL!
Anyway, I confessed my failings on the radio this week (one of the perks of working as a producer on Richard Glover’s Drive Program on 702 ABC Sydney is we get to embarrass ourselves on air sometimes). I was hoping some people might call in with admissions of worse parental failings… and I wasn’t disappointed. Thank you so much to the following people, who made me feel just a little bit better:
1. The woman who left her four year old in a toilet at a petrol station, driving a couple of kilometres down the road before realising he was missing.
2. The man who was wondering why his baby was crying, only to find he’d pinned the nappy to the child as well as the nappy.
3. The woman who sent her daughter to school dressed as a princess for ‘P’ day – on the wrong day.
4. The man who told his son to stop complaining about sore ribs and then discovered – weeks later – that the ribs were cracked.
5. The woman who got home from the playground, took her daughter’s shoes off and realised yesterday’s socks were still stuffed into the toes.
6. And all those lovely people who called in confessing to forgetting to pick their children up from soccer, ballet, school, camp, music lessons…
What’s that old saying? ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’? If this is true, my three must be pretty tough by now. I like to think I’m teaching them how to cope with chaos. Still, I wonder if an extra cuddle will compensate for the life the eight-year-old might have lead on the stage – if only her mother had filled out that form for the ‘Gifted and Talented’ weekend.
Emma Crowe works as a Radio Producer at 702 ABC Sydney two days a week. The rest of the week, she can be found driving a people mover around Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
To hear Emma confessing her ‘failings’ on live on 702, click here.
Confess your parenting fails – and if you don’t have kids, what were your own parent’s failures?
Comments
236 Comments so far
also, christmas day last year my dad took my 5 year old cousin on his motorbike for a ‘gentle ride down the driveway.’
he did a wheely
she fell off.
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every year my family stays at a resort up north. a few years ago after an exhausting drive we arrive and hurry off to the grocery store to do the big shop for the week. 5 kids, 4 adults, and about 50 bags of groceries all piled back to the apartments we were staying at and we start preparing dinner. but we cant find the tomatoes. we’re all madly looking, emptying bags, someone even runs back to the car to look. ‘where are the tomatoes!?’
20 mins later we recieve a call from the resort front desk.
my 4 year old brother was found wandering around the carpark by himself in the dark…with a bag of tomatoes.
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I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time, but this just made me laugh so much! Good to know you all noticed the missing tomatoes but not your brother… Great story to save up for his 21st.
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This gave me the best laugh ever!! Hahaha pinning the baby as well as the nappy and socks still in yesterdays are the best! I am crying from laughter! Love it! I would never judge anyone for any of this, its too hilarious! And clearly everyone including the children are still alive!
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My parent’s fails always had something to do with fancy dress.
One year I was sent to my ballet Xmas party where all girls were princesses, fairies etc I begged for an outift like that, but mum ran out of time. For you Victorians out there, I got sent as Gary Ablett, the Geelong footballer, in my brother’s football kit.
Next disaster was the Easter bonnet parade. Mum forgot. Went to supermarket, purchased a ribbon and a packet of hot cross buns. Tied it to my head.
Mum reckons it’s character building.
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that’s hilarious!
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Ahahahahahahahahahaha! Your mum is a friken genius with the hot cross buns!!
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I have tears running down my face from laughing so hard. Brilliant.
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Oh god, me too. My kids are looking at me strangely but I can’t catch my breath for long enough to tell them why I’m laughing/crying…
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Hotcross buns and ribbon! Your Mum is freaking awesome
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Seriously laughing so hard here! Tears of laughter. I can’t think what would be worse for a little girl. Being sent to school as Gary Ablett or with a packet of Hot Cross buns tied to your head!
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I’ve got 3 kids 8, 6 & 7months
When my eldest was 6 months I had him in the jolly jumper..yeah I didn’t do it up properly and her smacked his face on the floor :/
Also When my eldest was 4? I opened the car door a bit to hard and whacked him in the forehead Nice big golfball lump there
Then when my middle child was 1-2? She was in the toddler seat of the 3wheeler pram…I was pushing while talking to my hubby I seen her..silly me stopped quickly lol she fell forward hubby caught her and she said SH*T! Yup perfect timing honey…
The just today with my now 7month old…I was laying on my bed with him, he woke from a nap I wasn’t ready to wake up fully yet so I put his fave movie *Cars 2* on the iPad and closed my eyes..yeah he backed off the side of the bed lol he stood there for a moment I tried to catch him but he fell and bumped his head :/
I don’t know if you would call this a fail because I haven’t been well and it has affected my strength but I get the kids to carry him cause he gets really heavy! He’s 7mths and weighs 11kgs :/
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Ohh forgotthe many many times we forgot to pick them up or the also many more times we were late for school…we live across the road from their school so there’s no excuse lol
Also my hubby told me of the time he went on his trip to Canberra with the school they just came out of the museum he came out nd they had all left got to the hotel do e a count and check came back together him haha
Not a parent fail but I still laugh haha
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At least the jolly jumper accident was in private. I had my 8 year old in a trolley (toddler). I suddenly reversed it and she fell out and hit her head. She started screaming, so people started coming over to help. One woman said she would help, she was a midwife at the local hospital. Without thinking I said I was a child health nurse, so she asked where I worked. I quickly backpedaled and changed the subject so she wouldn’t think we were all neglectful idiots.
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“5. The woman who got home from the playground, took her daughter’s shoes off and realised yesterday’s socks were still stuffed into the toes.”
This one is GOLD!
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I’ve done that! Eeek!
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Kind of similar, but much more mortifying – My husband dressed our son for Kinder with the same pants he wore the day before. Thats was not the problem. The problem was that he failed to notice that his underwear (also from the previous day) were stuck in the leg so when my poor son sat down for roll call, the teacher noticed a pair of underwear lying on the floor which my son was honest enough to admit was his. So the poor teacher spent the whole day trying to work out how he came to Kindy with two pairs of underwear – one which he was wearing and the other which fell out the leg of his pants in class!!
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Here’s an uncle fail – a guy I know was playing pool and doing the break shot. The ball skipped over the balls and knocked his three year old niece squarely in middle of the eyes.
She went to school telling everyone her brother beat her up!
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I was left behind/forgotten many many times by my mother, but she was always far more horrified by this fact when it was her turn to do the run and pick up other people’s children too!
Dad did better. Hanging upside down from monkey bars and I told him not to tickle me because I would fall off. Yep, he kept tickling, yep, I fell and landed on my neck. To this day he still cringes and gets distressed whenever the story comes up.
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I sent my son to his expensive private school (with an equally expensive strict uniform) in his PJs one day because I just couldn’t be bothered with the morning argument and I had to get to work. FAIL!!
I could see the looks of disgust from the other mothers, but the teacher was fine with it (she was a very sympathetic woman). Turns out the whole class was jealous of Mr Pyjamas so they planned a PJs day for the next week for everyone.
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So much win! Fighting fire with fire, I like it. I’m sure your son would have survived even if the school hadn’t responded quite so well
Bet he wouldn’t argue about getting dressed in the morning again either 
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I have a parenting book that actually recommends doing that!! Actions have consequences so I’m all for it!! LOL
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Happy to hear that my approach is “professionally” endorsed.
When he was smaller I could get him undressed, but he would refuse to get dressed so I used to do the school run for his older sister with him in the nude in the car seat.
Once he realised that I would call his bluff on any of the toddler crap he would pull, he was much easier to manage.
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“What do you mean I can’t ignore the colds of my immuno suppressed daughter, like I do for my healthy robust son? Pneumonia you say? Hospitalisation you say? Take a week off work to stay with her at the hospital you say? Cancel holiday as now have no leave left you say? Hmmm. Bugger.”
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Or, in my case (still cringe rather than laugh although its ten years ago) …oooh, it’s not gastro? It’s appendicitis? And it’s just started to burst? And my three year old needs emergency surgery? FAIL FAIL FAIL
Still, she’s perfectly fine now
and everyone I know with kids take stomach aches really, really seriously!!
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oh i love my mum but she has some good fail stories!
When i was about 5 she sent me to school with glandular fever even though i had whinged that i was feeling unwell, she did the same to my brother when he had the beginning signs of the chicken pox.
Even recently she told me to not call in sick to work because i ‘looked fine’ and it turned out i had pneumonia and ended up in hospital!
My favourite though is when she forgot to strap me into my pram as a toddler and we were walking to the corner shops and i flung myself out and onto the concrete path and grazed my whole face.. oh my dad made her feel awful about that!
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Mr 5 fell over on the trampoline, we gave him panadol, told him it was just a pulled muscle, encouraged him to walk on it, it was only sore because he hadn’t used it – 5 days later we found out it was broken
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My Mum tells the story of leaving me and my younger brother, aged about 3 and 1 with my Dad while she ran a few errands. Upon her return she found my Dad, beer in hand reading the paper and my brother and I barefoot and playing with toys on a tarp which had been spread out smack bang in the middle of a brutal patch of bindies. Apparently Dad had struggled to contain us and this was his solution…my poor Dad has never lived it down!
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That is genius!
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Not my parenting fail, but my dad’s! A few years ago he and my mum minded our small kids (5 and 2 yrs at the time) for the weekend. My dad managed to supervise my young son walking straight in front of my daughter on a swing. My son ended up with pretty impressive bruising on his head. For the next week while the bruising went down I always thought it would be ironic if someone reported the bruising to children’s services and they took my kids off me and gave them back to the grandparents!!
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I just thought of another one…My MIL was visiting when daughter number 1 was 8 months old. We were in the games room playing with the baby while hubby was playing pool. I was showing the “pretty colourful balls” to bub and I dropped not 1, but 3 pool balls on her head! Needless to say MIL had another reason to add to her list of why she doesn’t like me…
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A few years ago, I drove 40 mins to an appointment for my eldest child only to realise when the lady for taking the appointment came to the waiting room that…
… I’d forgotten to pick up my daughter from school and bring her! rofl!
Fortunately for me, I remembered to go home and get my handbag (yep, one of those days! lol) which meant that I could at least do the grocery shopping! Neither of the youngest 2 kids had noticed that we hadn’t stopped to pick up their sister either!
Major Fail!!
To this day, this remains THE dippiest thing I’ve ever done (and I’ve done a few! lol).
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On my day off I let my 6 year old have the day off so I could pick my mother in law up from hospital, with plenty of time to spare to get him to the dentist. We got stuck in a 40min traffic jam on route to hospital. After pick up I raced to MIL house, virtually dumping her at the door before racing off to the dentist, only to grab all the kids, run to reception, apologise for being 5 minutes late, and … be told my son’s appointment was actually the week before.
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lol – I can relate to some of that:
I’ve rung to double check the time of an appointment to find that it was the day before; and
Many years ago, I turned up for work on my RDO! How embarrassing! What’s more embarrassing is that I did this 3 times over the course of a few years – doh!
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Laughed so hard at the pics thanks so much for a great lift to the day
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My biggest parenting failure was being way too protective of my child, caring too much about the small stuff, the stuff that people can see and judge you for – I didnt focus enough on her emotional needs, on helping her to grow and be her own person.
Like many parents on this site – I made it about me.
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I like this post. It’s not celebrating inadequacy (okay it is a little), but it’s spitting jar-bought stewed apples into the faces of The Judging Parents.
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You could do with a Professional Organiser to help you out – a lot of your “failures” are just admin and you are SO capable of being on top of that
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Try http://www.horder.com.au – she’s based at Northern Beaches and is AMAZING.
ps – even Professional Organisers have lists like yours. They just might not be based around admin & calendar stuff
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My husband was giving our 10 month old daughter a ride on his shoulders, he was galloping around the house and forgot to duck under a doorway. Cue the giant bruise on the baby’s head and the massive break in hubby’s heart when he realised too late what had happened.
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Years and years and years ago I kept fobbing off complaints of a sore arm, only to find the arm was dislocated at the elbow.
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My parents are totally awesome but these have to be said
* I broke my sisters’ arm, she went to mum to say it was broken only for mum to shake the arm and say see it’s not broken…it was.
* Years ago lego land was at centrepoint tower, family went for a visit, family gets in lift to leave…minus one member of the family…me! think I was about 5yrs old..
* My dad was spinning me around on a spinning wheel, got a little to into it and went faster and faster..until I flew off and smacked my head on cerment
* Dad picked me up (walking) from a friends house when I was 15..I’ld had a few to drink (not known to my parents) and walked into a parked car..dad laughed his head off..apparantly he had had a few too!
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Love it, love it, love it!
With 3 kids and would not like to put pen to paper on some of the things I would be failing on over the years.
Needless to say my kids are healthy, happy and resilient.
If you want to talk about my parents, that would be a whole other list…
Need to stop reading Mamma Mia so I can leave work and make it to the Mothers Day afternoon tea at creche on time and not add another fail to the list!
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I am one of 8 kids. Back in the days of no seatbelts and as many kids as you can fit across the back seat we were driving the old road to Woolongong, the one with all the bends, cue a sharp bend, the back door opens and 2 kids fall out. My parents only stopped because the rest of us were laughing so much.
Luckly no one was hurt
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I had to laugh at this one hahaha
My friends mum had a very old station wagon the type with the window that could be rolled down and the back door folded out…except if you kicked the door too hard it would open many many times we’ve had to keep our feet away while laying in the boot cause the car was full LOL
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Love it! How times change. If that happened these days, the parents would be on ACA!
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Im one of 6 and fell out of the car going around a bend too! My mum drove 2 blocks before she finally believed my siblings that I had fallen out of the car (they were prone to story telling)…and came back to get me! My memory of event is that I got to sit in front seat for rest of trip! Win!
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I still feel for that lady who was on the phone when her pram rolled away, landed in a lake and her baby drowned. It was such an innocent mistake for a new sleep deprived mother to make but what a tragedy as a result. She will never forgive herself…
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If parents didn’t have parenting FAILS then what would children be able to use against them for the rest of their lives?
I still love to remind my parents of the times they forgot me at school (and my parents were teachers at most of my schools!)
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my dad forgot to pick me up from a friend’s place when i was about 9 so after half an hour i walked home. He came back 3 hours later frantic only to find me open the door.
Was kinda funny
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Oohhh, come on, you’re only human! I think the problem is that there is this perception nowadays parents should basically be robots!
You are going to make mistakes, and that is OK. These are simply funny anecdotes to share now, and will be things you and your kids look back on and laugh at.
None of these situations have actually put your children in the way of actual harm, so don’t think of them as failures!
Bugger the scorecard and just enjoy your children, I say!
xo
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Well my 8 month old son rolled off the king size bed onto a concrete floor (no underlay under carpet during renovations) one morning. We had left him right in the middle of the bed and we were in the same room so could keep an eye on him. But he woke up and shuffled off. Screamed his heart out but was fine.
Next day after hubby and I vowed never to let anything like that happen again. Hubby places him again in the middle of the bed as he had gone to sleep. I thinking that I was so very clever placed pillows on the side of him so he couldn’t roll off. Didn’t count on him shuffling down to the end and falling off.
This time he screamed worse. We lived in the country at that time about an hour away from any dr/hospital. He settled down, had some panadol but for some reason I couldn’t breastfeed on his right side as he would cry.
A week later we get x-rays as we thought it would be best as we were due to fly out to overseas the next day. Didn’t want any problems mid air. He had broken his collarbone!!!
That is so, so very bad and a huge parenting fail. Thankfully the guilt should be alleviated a little bit due to the fact that there is nothing they can do for a broken collar bone. So shouldn’t feel too bad it took a week to get him to a hospital, but still do.
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My three share the bath. They are 5 year old twins and a 6 year old and it gets very loud, very wet, and often violent (its a big triangular bath by the way, so they fit). Sometimes, after many attempts to calm everyone down and stop the fighting, I will surprise them with a cup of cold water sailing through the air, usually directed at the worst offender – gives them quite a shock!
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I’ve done that too! lol
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Yay! I don’t feel so evil now … Giggle
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I’m so adding this to my repertoire. What an awesome idea!
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I turn the hot water off when my kids won’t get out of the shower. Sometimes I can do it without them realising – they get out in a hurry!!!!
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I have done that a few times.
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‘often violent’ – too funny!
I’ve done the cup-of-cold-water thing on my kids before as well, works a treat!
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Dad throwing the ball for the puppy and calling me to come watch. Dad then throwing the ball – straight into my head – hard. Resulted in a black eye for me, and dad getting a lecture from mum on why “we don’t throw balls in the house”.
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My mum made me play the piano with broken fingers when I was 8. I had slammed them in the car door on the way back from school and she didn’t believe it was that bad at the time ( she only realised about a month later). 18 years later and I still won’t let her live that one down.
On another occassion, when my sister was a baby (about 12months), they were out to dinner and put a couple of chairs together, placed her on them and put their coats on her so she could sleep. They had dinner, payed the bill and left. It was not until they got home that they realised they had left her at the restaurant.
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Regarding the latter: actually, Mum took you back to the hotel room. Dad, believing Mum to be a superhero (as father are wont to do) assumed that she had carried me as well. He went to the bar and had a few drinks. It was only when he got back to the room that they realised I was missing.
And it’s not the only time they’ve forgotten us places. And they’ve had so many ‘fails’ over the years. But you know what? We turned out fine! Well, I did anyway.
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Is this two sisters discussing their views on an incidents from their childhood?
Oh my god, I love that! How cute are you guys?!
xo
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Haha, yes, we’re sisters! Usually this is okay with me.
Our parents may have forgotten us and dropped us (read: you, Steph), spanked us etc but that’s not what defines them. We see them as honest, warm, GOOD people with progressive minds and excellent senses of humour.
And I’m sure all your kids have equally great things to say about you because, at the end of the day, as long as you love your kids, that’s all that matters.
PS: There’s also the story of Mum ironing and hanging shirts from my highchair (who does that?), leaving the room, hearing a bang and seeing a heap of clothes and a lot of blood on the floor. I was informed of this when I was about 14 and noticed that one of my pinkies had a massive scar in the middle (not the brightest crayon in the box). She looked very sheepish as she told me what happened.
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Not exactly a parental fail, but once I was in my primary school sick bay with a bad cold and was waiting for my mum to get off work and pick me up. There was a little seven year old girl in there with me on the other bed, who was vomiting.
After she had finished, one of the office ladies came in and said ‘well, you’ve had a good vomit and gotten whatever it was out of your system, so back off to class with you.’ The kid nodded silently and went back to class. Five minutes later, the kid was back with her teacher in tow, who demanded why the kid was sent back to class. Apparently the kid had gotten to the doorway of her class, then ran to the nearest toilets. The concerned teacher had followed her, to find out she had a severe bout of gastro and had soiled herself whilst vomiting.
I always wondered exactly where my primary school found their office ladies. They none of them seemed to actually like children.
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My school was like that too! The office ladies were so awful and cold, and appeared to absolutely hate children!
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My mother smoked all through my childhood* & for a couple of years at least(probably about ages 9/10) I used to be sent to the corner shop to buy her cigarettes. This might be regarded as a parenting fail, but it’s also possibly the reason I have never smoked.
(* and yes, 3 pregnancies. It was the 70s.)
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Ditto. Excpt my mum only had 2 kids!
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I think every parent that smoked in the 70s used to send their kids to the milk bar to get their smokes. Not a fail by the standards of the day.
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We wrote a long list of things for the boys to find, treasure hunt-style, around the home paddock in order to get half an hour’s peace and quiet.
They were gone for that and more, as we listened to music and read the papers. Lovely
A break in the music enabled us to hear distant screams – they’d been held captive by a marauding magpie the entire time!
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I know it’s bad, but that really cracked me up
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I loved this one so much. Sorry, but it is hilarious.
They were obviously fine!
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Just snorted! Hilarious!!!!!
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I don’t have kids so will just need to use my Mum’s parenting fails. We laugh about it now thankfully.
- Sent me to school on a pupil free day and didn’t come and get me until AFTER RECESS!!! Luckily the office ladies were nice lol.
- Every time we went to Sizzler I would ask for a big red drink and would never get through it. We went once and she said now if you get a big red drink, we aren’t leaving until you drink it all, are you sure you want one? Of course I did and she made me drink it all. Cue projectile vomiting all over the table haha
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My 4 year old was playing in the yard while my 6 year old jumped on the trampoline swinging a hockey stick around his head (as you do). Instead of calmly walking out and taking the hockey stick off him (and permanently removing it), I screamed at him ‘stop doing t or you’ll hurt someone’. Of course I gave him such a fright he let go of the hockey stick mid swing and it smashed into my 4 year old face basically splitting the skin right across his forhead – 2 days in hospital, surgery and internal and external stitches and I was feeling pretty silly.It reminded me of when I was 10 and was on holidays with my parents. We were at one those ‘hole in one’ golf things where you try to hit the ball into the hole in the island. My Dad stood in front of me to show me how to do it and got so engrossed in lining up his shot he forgot that I was there and swung, smasing me in the face and giving me an evil black eye.
I guess the apple never falls far from the tree
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PMSL!
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Oh you poor thing!
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Lmfao!!
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FAIL: no matter how much time I allow to leave work and get through traffic and find a place to park for school functions for children and now grandchildren I am late! Once I left over 2hrs early to attend a school function (determined not to be late) only to be stuck in traffic because of an accident up ahead. When I do arrive on time I feel like Rocky Balboa after winning (in the first Rocky movie) a real champion.
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Heh. Not to be mean but Rocky actually loses in the first one! The point of it all was not that he won, but that he went the distance.
And that right there is our theme for the day!
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I really did think I was the only one! Why do we do it to ourselves – this judgement and guilt?
But I don’t learn much from it. I still scream at the kid for whining about feeling sick only to have her vomit everywhere a nano second later. It happens every year. It’s my personal favourite…sigh
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Me too. I live every day with a sense of failure when I hear or read on FB how amazingly everyone else deals with their lives
(
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They are, for the most part, lying!
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I’m not sure that “lying” is the best descriptor in most cases – possibly more polishing the situation to inspire envy and completely leaving out the hair-raising things that happen between the “Little Jimmy and I at our mother-son yoga class” status updates!
How many people would go to the effort to post a photo of Little Jimmy’s school uniform covered in melted crayon because mummy didn’t check the washing pile before chucking it in the dryer, because she was preoccupied trying to put something palatable on the table for dinner and screaming for SOMEONE, ANYONE to PLEASE pick up the dozens of toy cars strewn through the hallway?
Ah motherhood.
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I wouldn’t believe most of what you read on FB!!
Everyone has their struggles.
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We’re not godesses, we’re not perfect. We’re parents, we make mistakes.
Some of them are hilarious, some leave lasting memories.
But in the end if we love our children & are striving to do the best for them, it’s all good.
Now if you deliberately hurt or deprive your child, that’s another issue all together.
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I’m with you 100% on this one!
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When I was 14 my best friend came to school with bad stomach cramps. She’d complained to her mum (a nurse!) that morning who had just given her some panadol and told her she was probably just getting her period and basically said she needed to toughen up.
Fast forward 12 hours my friend was in hospital getting her appendix taken out. We 23 now and she still doesn’t let her mum forget it!
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I’d been complaining for over a week about my wrist hurting when I was six, after I’d sustained a nasty fall while rollerblading.
Mum and dad told me to suck it up, and when they finally took me to the doctor – lo and behold – broken wrist! Haha, they still feel guilty about it. And the amount of times dad left me at after-school care and wondered why the house was so quiet… Priceless.
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I have mentioned this before, but what the heck.
My Dad tried to fold the pram away once (so mum tells the story) but it would close. He said to ‘it won’t shut properly’ and she replied ‘that’s because your f$%&ing son is in there’.
He might have had a few beers.
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At least he tried to fold it. My friend can’t fold his kids prams so just sticks them in the boot as is!
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As is!? Is their boot the size of a living room?
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Well its really a stroller and they have a stationwagon. he just shoves it in on its side!
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I do that too!
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Oh I had a similar thing happen to me Amy.
When I was young, I was quite the little rascal- always climbing things, getting up to mischief.
Anyway, when I was five, one of my favourite things to do was to climb our hills hoist clothesline because I harboured a deep seated ambition to be a gymnast
Anyway, one Saturday afternoon when my parents weren’t looking I managed to stack a chair on top of a table and climb onto the clothes line to hang off it. Imagine a kid hanging onto the line where you hang the clothes and my feet on the handle.
To cut a long story short- my feet slipped off the handle, I fell off the line and my arm impacted quite heavily with the ground.
I screamed blue murder, my parents came running where I was cradling my arm- the only thing *first aid trainer* father could see was a small cut on my forearm and as there were of rocks around thought it was from landing on that. Apparently my movement and everything way fine.
So my parents left me at home with a babysitter that night while they went to a Christmas party .
Cue six hours later me being rushed to the hospital because my arm was bleeding profusely….And then my poor parents trying to explain what happened once they arrived while dad spelt like a rum dystillery.
Turns out I had a dislocated elbow, double compound fracture and shattering a bone in my wrist. I spent two weeks in hospital.
Almost 20 years later and my parents STILL feel awful about that. Luckily the nurses involved in my care knew my parents and how naughty I was so I think they avoided some awkward questions
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Oops…my comment was meant to be a reply to someone below.
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Same thing happened to my sister. Undiagnosed broken arm, only she went around with it for two weeks and my dad’s a GP. Whoops!!
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No one should feel so guilty! I don’t have children, but look back at my mother’s parenting fails as absolutely hilarious. Some of them are my favourite memories!
We had a very loud washing machine when I was a toddler. On one occasion, said washing machine covered my screaming, as I was stuck outside on the trampoline. Stuck, because trusty plastic chair had fallen over and I was terrified of getting down without it. Mum thought I was in the loungeroom. I was screaming for about 20 minutes. In the rain. In nothing but undies. That were inside out and back to front! Hahahahaha. She took a photo before helping me down
That photo is one of my favourites!
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We used to take the ‘trusty plastic chair’ away so my little sister couldn’t get off….*insert evil laugh*!!
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I Love that she stopped to take a photo first. That isn’t a parenting fail, that is a parenting mega-win!
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I dont think i’m doing too badly, but I recall when I was seventeen (and yeah, perhaps a little lazy when it came to helping on the farm), I was reluctantly rounding the sheep up with Dad, got bitten by a tiger snake, went to tell Dad who cracked it with me for wanting to get out of work. I had to drive myself to the hospital. Six days in hospital and heaps of rehab on leg. Dad was very sheepish and sorry when I got home.
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I reckon this is the winner! Seriously, a tiger snake!
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wow. Just wow. That’s something my mother would have done, only in her case it was a broken collar bone ignored for 5 days…Still love her though
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Entered bright but mildly anxious 9yo daughter for scholarship exam. Tried to play it low key by not arriving on exam day at crack of dawn. Got lost driving to exam centre and arrived DURING READING TIME. Anxious daughter was just about thrown out of car at speed and straight into 3 hour exam. FAIL!
(I bought her Red Rooster on the way home if that claws me back any points at all.)
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When we were younger we liked to play poison ball…. on the trampoline. One day we couldn’t find any balls so we grabbed an exercise ball and it was thrown at my then seven year old brother, who of course couldn’t dodge it and so went over the trampoline with the ball. Now, he was quite the hypochondriac and this wasn’t the first time any of us had claimed we had broken something so Mum and Dad didn’t really believe anything was too bad until the next day when it was pretty clear he couldn’t walk and we finally took him to the hospital. It was only cause of his age that he didn’t need a knee reconstruction but still ended up with a full leg cast and 6 weeks in a wheel chair… this story is probably made worse by the fact that Mum was a nurse pre-children and Dad is a doctor (although, in his defence, he has nothing to do with orthopaedics).
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My friend is the youngest of five kids. Their dad is a doctor and mum is a nurse. One day they were all playing on the trampoline and her sister landed wrong – her tongue got stuck in one of the metal bits. Her dad sewed her wound up and that was that. She then developed a bad lisp and got teased about it for years. Two decades later, as an adult, she went back and had her tongue fixed – and her lisp disappeared.
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Gosh, that brings back memories. We played poison ball on the trampoline too! Only we cranked the danger notch up a bit and had a hose going on the trampoline too……it’s a wonder i don’t have a story the same as yours!!
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I swear trampolines were both the BEST and WORST thing from my childhood – so many injuries but such fun!
One of my favourite games was ten-pin bowling where we would get into our sleeping bags and be the pins and someone would bounce and bounce and then roll into a ball and try to knock us down!
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When P was about 6 months old she had a leaf stuck in her throat for a week before we realised… We just thought she was off her food…
Fail.
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