Parenting Oops!!

All of my Moms and Dads out there…even you aunties, uncles, grandparents, godparents, babysitters and other caregivers…

Have you ever had those moments…? (Wait…let me rephrase the question because, if you care for children, I know that you have…)

How do you feel about those moments when you have just plain failed at effectively caring for the children in your charge?  Those are some of the saddest, most hilarious moments ever!!  And we’ve all had them…

I was watching a “grown-up” movie while waiting for my husband and daughters to come home from a show.  It wasn’t that bad of a movie, but it definitely had some adult themes.  So my seven-year olds are sitting on the couch while I’m at the table talking to them, forgetting that this movie was still playing.  Once my hubby and I were immersed in conversation, I hear my child reading aloud from a text she saw on TV: “You need to hurry up and come home.  I’m horny!”

STOP THE PRESS!!  I jumped up and quickly turned off the movie, mortified to even hear that word come from the mouth of my babe.  While the hubster is yelling “Parenting fail!” I am just cracking up!  All I could say was “You should not ever say that, babe.  Just don’t say that.  Don’t even ask what it means!”  Of course, I will have to have that conversation with her one day…but not today!

When my son was about 7 months old, I was lying on the bed with him one day, super exhausted.  He wouldn’t be happy without me holding him, so I held him in my arms while sitting on the bed.  Suddenly, I feel him roll right off of my lap and onto the floor.  He begins to wail and I feel so panicked!  I never dropped the girls as babies, so this was new territory for me.  Now, to be fair, this bed is only about two feet high and he rolled down my legs, only slightly hitting his head as he fell.  My guilt and shame escalated, however, when a nice big lump began to form on the back of his head.  Hugs, tears, an ice pack and three reassuring calls later, we both survived it.  But at the time, I felt like a complete failure as a mom!!

There are so many moments in the newborn phase that breed those feelings of inadequacy in moms.  Even veteran moms admit to making mistakes or feeling insecure with new babies.  Come on, friends.  With the amount of physical pain and symptoms leftover from delivery, sleep deprivation, baby blues, anxiety about SIDS and a host of other newborn-related issues, who wouldn’t be prone to a few mommy fails here and there?  And what about when our kids get older?  Check out some of the parenting fails I’ve heard from my friends over the years…

• Mom oversleeps and makes children miss the bus to the field trip they have been anxiously awaiting for two months.  They are only allowed to go if they don’t miss the bus.  They missed the bus.
• Dad leaves the petroleum jelly in the toddler’s room and walks in to it being everywhere…all over the toddler, the floor, the bed, the walls and the stuffed animals.  It took weeks to get rid of the “slippery” feeling in the room.
• Mom plans awesome birthday party and makes a big deal out of breaking the piñata…only to realize that when it was finally broken open, there was nothing inside. She didn’t know that she was the one who was supposed to get it filled with treats.
• Mom comes home from work to find a hysterical grandmother pointing up at the roof.  Her 4-year old had fashioned a cape for himself and was about to jump off of the roof, Superman-style! She was eventually able to convince him to come down before he made his leap into broken-bone infamy. 🙂
• Mom gets electrocuted when her 3-year old son sticks a key in an electrical outlet and she grabs him to pull him away. (They were okay because someone came in and used a stick to separate them from the electric current running through their bodies.)
• Dad leaves the front door open after bringing in the groceries and a few minutes later, he can not find his toddler.  The toddler had escaped through the front door and was all the way down the block of the neighborhood on the way to a very busy street.
• Mom pressures teen to complete scholarship applications, then forgets to drop them in the mail and makes the teen miss all deadlines for scholarship applications.
• Or how about this 3-year old who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble?  His closet holds all of the extra blankets and linens, plus off-season clothing in the house.  He takes every item out of the closet and piles it all on the floor in front of the door to the room.  Then, he proceeds to scream his head off for some time because no one can get the door open to get to him. (They eventually have to go through the outside window to get inside of the room.)  Or the time when he dumped every item from the medicine cabinet and the top of the counter (including an electric razor) into the sink, and turns on the water, completely flooding the bathroom.  And there is always the time when he took all the clean dishes from the dish drain on the kitchen counter and put them in the sink to wash them.  He then dumps the entire bottle of detergent into the sink and turns on the water, but he slips and falls into the sink and can’t get out.  It was the middle of the night and everyone was asleep, so by the time his cries awakened the family, half of the house had flooded with soapy water!  And who could forget about the time when he took a baking tin into the living room, filled it with newspaper and set it on fire using his Dad’s cigarette lighter?  Good times.  This little boy needed to be handcuffed to the bed at night!  Just kidding. But seriously…they should probably have put up several gates and monitored him a little more closely.  Thank goodness he (and everyone else in the house) survived his constant shenanigans!

What are some of the parenting fails that you would like to forget?  Remember that this is a family-friendly blog, and some of those parenting fail stories may not be suitable for everyone in our audience.  Ahem…let’s keep it PG-13 please.