Parenting Fails - what's your story?!

[Mrs. Ciz]

One of my favorites was when I picked my son up at preschool when he was about 2, and he complained he was hungry. I told him to hang in there, we had to make a quick stop and then home for dinner. He whined and whined and I couldn't get him to stop complaining, so I turned the music up. After a few minutes, I turned the music down to ask him a question and heard him quietly munching away. Only I hadn't given him anything to eat.

He had found an old (God only knows how old!) school project in the seat next to him with Cheerios glued to construction paper, and had eaten most of the Cheerios. I turned around to stop him and he just smiled... "I found a snack. I not hungry anymore." God touch him, lolol.

Haha! That reminds me of something my DD did one Christmas at my mom's house. My mother still decorates her tree with all the handmade ornaments we made during our childhood. We went to visit my parents for Christmas when DD was 2. She just loved their Christmas tree. I couldn't keep her away from it. When my mom went to pack away all the ornaments, she called me to tell me that DD had eaten all the 25 year old (shellacked no less) candies off of all our handmade ornaments!!!!

 

[lovin'fl]

Tell me about it. We made it through 18 years of parenting without our kids ever having it, and our nephew brings it in twice in 3 months. He is going to live in a bubble for now on! lol I am NOT doing this again!!

Yep. We made it 18 years...DS was 20 and off to college and DDs were at end of senior year. Almost made it through without lice. Meanwhile my next door neighbor's kids had it like 3 times and she'd talk about how awful it was to deal with and I just kept thinking 'thank god thats not me'.

 

[bbak30]

When my oldest DD was about 18 months old, she pulled her elbow out of socket-known as nurses maid elbow. I didn’t think anything was wrong and bathed her and even put her to bed. DH finally said something and we took her to urgent care and discovered it was out. Oops.

Fast forward a few years, I’m now a nurse. An emergency room nurse. Our youngest DD falls out of her bed, she’s 6 at the time. Says her arm hurts. Looks fine. She can move it. Give her a bath and she’s guarding it. I keep thinking it’s fine and she’s dramatic. DH disagrees. We end up at urgent care and it’s broken. Oops. Mom and ER nurse fail there...

Fast forward 2 years. Same DD falls out of a tree. I can tell arm is broken. Take her to the ortho urgent care. Mom win. Nice change.

 

[jaiminee krikit]

DD was 5 our first visit to WDW. We were at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground and I noticed the Super Soaker squirting unknowing passerby's. I decided to put DD where the water landed. It nailed her in the face (which had just recently been painted), and the combination of water, paint, and sunscreen caused a burning sensation in her eyes and all over her face. She was so upset, and I felt like the worst mom ever! I still kick myself for that. And I still make sure to push her out of the way of the camel at MK and Stitch at DS (she's 15 now!)

 

[cruiser21]

I thought everyone that posted on the Disboards was the "perfect parent"...at least that was the impression I've gotten from all the judgemental posts. I'm glad to see that's not the case since I'm a member of the "not so perfect parent club'.

 

[Lilacs4Me]

DD was 5 our first visit to WDW. We were at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground and I noticed the Super Soaker squirting unknowing passerby's. I decided to put DD where the water landed. It nailed her in the face (which had just recently been painted), and the combination of water, paint, and sunscreen caused a burning sensation in her eyes and all over her face. She was so upset, and I felt like the worst mom ever! I still kick myself for that. And I still make sure to push her out of the way of the camel at MK and Stitch at DS (she's 15 now!)

hahaha...that is so something I would do!

 

[Lilacs4Me]

When my oldest DD was about 18 months old, she pulled her elbow out of socket-known as nurses maid elbow. I didn’t think anything was wrong and bathed her and even put her to bed. DH finally said something and we took her to urgent care and discovered it was out. Oops.

Fast forward a few years, I’m now a nurse. An emergency room nurse. Our youngest DD falls out of her bed, she’s 6 at the time. Says her arm hurts. Looks fine. She can move it. Give her a bath and she’s guarding it. I keep thinking it’s fine and she’s dramatic. DH disagrees. We end up at urgent care and it’s broken. Oops. Mom and ER nurse fail there...

Fast forward 2 years. Same DD falls out of a tree. I can tell arm is broken. Take her to the ortho urgent care. Mom win. Nice change.

DH and I were sitting on this retaining wall/bench structure at DS12's lacrosse game a few weeks ago near the goal. He plays goalie and defense and they put him in really quick as goalie at one point, so he didn't have time to put his shin/knee guards on and of course he gets nailed in the leg by a ball. He literally DROPS in his spot and both DH and I burst out laughing, while everyone around us were tsk'ing and gasping with concern about that "poor boy". DH yells at him to pop up and DS12 slowly gets up all the while staring DH down with a death glare. It made us laugh harder. We knew he was fine...he can be such a baby sometimes. But it's always that ONE TIME that you think everything is fine, and then come to find out, something is broken!

And of course, I take older DS to the ER his freshman year of football because his coach thinks he broke a rib, and after spending the entire night awake and waiting, we find out it's a bruise. $800 and 8 hours of lost sleep later, we head back home

 

[lorijohnhill]

Oh, I often feel like the worst parent ever. When my daughter was in second grade, her father took her to the park. She lived climbing the six foot tall climbing wall at that particular park. With some encouragement, she jumped to the ground from the top of the wall. When they get home, he is carrying her in on his back from the car because her foot is a little sore. I look at it, move it around, it seemed fine. The next morning I send her to school, where she has to run laps and do jumping jacks in the morning. When she gets home from school that afternoon, she says her foot hurts. I look at it again and the bottom of her foot is completely black. Off to the ER we go. Yup. Three broken bones in her foot. Total mom of the year.

 

[mummabear]

Not me but DH...

When we were in grad school we lived in on campus family housing, and would walk our oldest add to daycare on campus. Winter snow would often make the walk slow as the snow drifts would often be up to DD little knees. Sometimes we’d pull DD in her sled, other times she’d walk. That day she walked. DH was wondering why she was extra sluggish that day but had her speed up. It wasn’t until they were in the building that he realized why, she lost her shoe in the snow! DH dropped her at the front desk and quickly traced their steps to locate her shoe. Thankfully she was a trooper, but I felt like a bad parent once I heard the news.

When DD was 4 we spent a day at Seaworld San Diego, she had a great time playing on their water play area. She moaned about her sore feet the whole way back to the car (as she had constantly for days when she wanted to be carried) when I went to put her in her car seat I noticed her feet had huge burn blisters on the bottom. The black tarmac had burned her feet! She couldn’t walk for days.

 

[PollyannaMom]

It's good to read these, especially the "wrong medical decision" ones. I am the queen of sending him to school when he turns out to be sick, and keeping him home when he feels fine by mid-morning.

The latest, though not the worst, was last night. - He has been battling allergies big-time this season, and is prone to sinus infections when it gets bad. Apple cider vinegar usually works for me to stave them off, so I wanted him to try it. I knew he would hate the taste, so I actually bribed him to. He tried it right before bed, since he was about to brush his teeth anyway, and figured that would take the taste away.

Massive fail. He gagged so badly he couldn't breathe and threw it up in the sink. Water spilled all over the bathroom, and he now had a sore throat on top of everything else. Instead of helping him, I ended up making him (and me) get to sleep even later...and did I mention finals start tomorrow?

 

[apirateslifeforme]

Mine isn't funny at all, but it sticks out horribly in my mind...

I'm the SAHM of a very active toddler. A little over a year ago, he'd been going-going-going so much, he made the Energizer Bunny look like a slug. It was late afternoon and I was wiped out. We were sitting on the sofa and he continued trying to climb all over me. I lost it, started crying uncontrollably, slamming my fist on the arm of the couch and screaming at him, "I can't take your **** anymore! Get off me! Leave me alone, I need a break from you!" He sure backed off, and the way that little face crumpled was something I'll never forget. I grabbed him, hugged him, and just repeated, "I'm sorry, I love you" over and over. It did make him calm down a little, though.

Come to think of it, I do have a funny one. This past Halloween, we all dressed up to take him out for the first time (he was Frankenstein's Monster, I was the Bride of Frankenstein, and DH was Dr. Frankenstein). We spent all that time dressing up and taking photos, then we proceeded out to trick-and-treat (Grandma stayed home to hand out candy). We went to the house next door and I spent a little time talking to the mom there. Then I looked down and OMG...my son had no shoes on! DH ran back home to get them. So glad we had only gone next door to start, but I must have looked like a real winner...

 

[mjkacmom]

Found out this year that dd15’s nose broke at some point in her life. For years she’s been saying her nose was broken, I told her she was crazy, but took her to an ENT at her request. She will get surgery next year after she turns 16, she has a bad deviated septum.

 

[AndreaDM]

My oldest DD, now 29, is an aspiring author. I'm 99.9% sure it's a Mommy Dearest sequel with me as the protagonist.

When middle child was about 4, I had told her to clean up the toy room. She said she didn't feel good, I told her I didn't want to hear her excuses and to go clean up the mess so we could have movie night. She then vomited all over the floor and ended up in the hospital for a few days for severe dehydration.

 

[RangerPooh]

Lice, I hate it! The summer of 2015 it invaded our house most of the summer in some capacity. The girls returned home from camp with it, must have picked it up from their first camp session that summer. What the camp failed to tell parents until a week later was that there had been an outbreak in their session before ours and the cabins hadn't properly been cleaned. I'm also guessing that a few people must have slipped through lice check in their session. We worked to get rid of it, were in treatment, and then returned to camp a month later. I had spent hours each day combing everyone's hair, and our oldest at the time had thick long hair well past her butt like Rapunzel. A month later they returned to camp for another session, and guess what they returned home with . Took weeks to get rid of once again. This year for camp I'm preemptively having them wash with tea tree oil, hoping for the best.

 

[AndreaDM]

Lice, I hate it! The summer of 2015 it invaded our house most of the summer in some capacity. The girls returned home from camp with it, must have picked it up from their first camp session that summer. What the camp failed to tell parents until a week later was that there had been an outbreak in their session before ours and the cabins hadn't properly been cleaned. I'm also guessing that a few people must have slipped through lice check in their session. We worked to get rid of it, were in treatment, and then returned to camp a month later. I had spent hours each day combing everyone's hair, and our oldest at the time had thick long hair well past her butt like Rapunzel. A month later they returned to camp for another session, and guess what they returned home with . Took weeks to get rid of once again. This year for camp I'm preemptively having them wash with tea tree oil, hoping for the best.

Have them keep their hair braided tightly too if possible, not totally fail proof, but harder for lice to get too than free swinging hair.

 

[lovin'fl]

Have them keep their hair braided tightly too if possible, not totally fail proof, but harder for lice to get too than free swinging hair.

And also coconut shampoos are good.

 

[Disney_Alli]

To go with all the broken bone stories mine isn't a parenting fail (I'm not one) but a teacher fail that happened to my sister. When we were in the 4th grade (and in our 5th year of figure skating lessons) my sister was skating at school and did a simple jump but when she landed she caught a toe pick in our junky outdoor rink and fell onto her arm. The teacher (the school's gym teacher and her homeroom teacher) told her it was probably a "mild sprain" since she wasn't crying and stuck it in the front of her jacket like a sling. The office called our mom but we lived over 45 minutes from the school so they also called me out of class to sit with her in the office to wait for our mom. My mom picked her up and took her to our doctor for x-rays which came back that it was broken so they picked me up and we went to the General hospital to cast it. After about an hour she finally got called back to cast it but as the doctor started to wrap it in gauze he noticed something and decided he should probably look at the x-rays. She'd actually broken both bones in her wrist and while one was a hairline fracture the other needed to be set and they couldn't set a 9 year old's arm at the General so we got back in the car and drove to CHEO (Children's hospital) where my sister waited for hours to be seen and was finally treated about 4 hours later after most of the pain meds had worn off... they also made my mom act as the stabilizer while they set her arm. When we went back to school on Wednesday (we went in late as we'd been at CHEO until after 11pm the night before her teacher was shocked to see the cast and asked if it was "really broken" she replied "yep! Both bones!" That teacher was a misogynistic *** though.