Most parents are learning as the days go by (especially if they are first-time parents) because no two children are the exact same. Besides, it must be difficult to figure out which parenting methods work for each individual child through every new experience.
I assume the parents in the following stories tried...kinda.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
“She Abandoned Her Son And The Stroller”
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“Just south of San Francisco, there’s a town (and a county) called San Mateo. It’s typically thought of as being a haven for middle-class college graduates and folks who can’t afford to live in the city, but it’s actually just as diverse as any section of the Bay Area. As such, there will be times when you’ll encounter both the best and worst that humanity has to offer, like the time that I witnessed perhaps the appalling example of parenting I’ve ever seen.
The scene took place in a Walgreens, which was located right in the middle of downtown San Mateo. The offender was a larger Latina woman who was pushing a toddler in a stroller. She had been slowly wandering up and down the aisles, making a big show of stopping every minute or so to squat down and speak directly with her offspring. Admittedly, I only heard most of these performances, but they were all fairly identical to one another.
Now, that may seem, at first glance, like good parenting. After all, the woman was involving her child in the process of going shopping, which ostensibly spoke to a great level of nurturing affection. The truth of the matter, however, was much more sinister, and it was revealed just after the woman paid for her items (which amounted to little more than a selection of junk food and a carton of smokes) and was leaving the store.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ came a stern voice, ‘Would you mind stopping for a moment, please?’
The woman waved a hand at her and shouted, ‘No, thank you!’
‘Ma’am!’ the voice called again and as I turned to watch, a uniformed police officer stepped into view. He was accompanied by a tall, balding man in a blue shirt that marked him as being an employee of the store. They followed the woman outside, at which point the officer moved to step in front of her.
At first, the woman appeared to act as though she was just a cheerful shopper on a walk with her son (I could only overhear a few words since I was still in the process of paying for my own purchases). It soon became clear, however, that she had loaded her child’s stroller with a huge variety of shoplifted items, and that her attempts at playing it off as a case of absentmindedness were not being received well. The 2-year-old boy, meanwhile, had started crying in evident fear.
What happened next was absolutely absurd.
Having apparently sensed that she wouldn’t get away with her wrongdoing, the woman decided that her best course of action was to abandon the stroller – and her son – and walk away as fast as she could. The officer and the employee were left there, mouths agape, as the toddler continued to scream for his mother.
It wasn’t long before the woman was caught and detained, of course. Still, the fact that someone would be willing to use their child as an accessory to a crime and then leave them behind during an escape. Well, it struck me as some of the most despicable parenting that I’d ever seen.”
That Kid’s Parents Should Have Been Horrified By What That Kid Did To That Cat
“There is a cat that lives in my grandma’s backyard that is the nicest cat I’ve ever met. My grandma caught this little 8-year-old boy throwing the cat by its tail, literally picking it up and slamming it into the ground. Then he would proceed to beat it with one of those plastic foam swords. My grandma, terrified by this, ran out and yelled at the kid, who just biked back home.
My grandma told my mom about it and my mom went and waited outside near where the cat was hiding in some bushes. She saw the kid crawling through the bushes and caught him approaching the cat. She reprimanded him and made him go home. My mom was so horrified that the kid was so nonchalant about the whole thing that she wrote a note and put it on the door of the family’s house, explaining what their 8-year-old son was doing to a living animal. The parents took their son and literally went door to door until they found my mom.
At first, my mom said she felt better that the parents had brought the son to come apologize for what he’d done. This is along the lines of what the parents said, ‘I can’t believe this, how can you treat our 8-year-old son like this? He’s just a kid and you’re over here trying to do our job!’ My mom just looked at them completely shocked and asked them if they knew he was trying beating a cat to death. They just looked at her and spit on the ground right in front of her feet. They told her to never worry about their son’s actions and if she talks to them again, they will press charges.”
“I Had Never Seen A Kid So Scared In My Life”
“There was a kid in the subway that rushed to a seat and ended up – accidentally, I think – knocking down some lady’s purse. The mother of the little guy went on to freak out like the boy had just killed someone. She hooked him out of the seat like a bag of potatoes, threw him to the other side and started to slap him. She urged him to ‘plead forgiveness’ to the lady on his knees. It was nuts, even the lady kept saying ‘it’s okay, it’s okay’. After the kid said the most heartbreaking ‘I’m sorry’ I have ever seen, while still weeping and scared, he receives one big slap that got the people to react, telling the lady to calm down.
I had never seen a kid so scared in my life. He didn’t even move or look up. It didn’t appear to be the first time, though, since she said something along the lines of ‘you know the drill’ and he went to a corner and got really quiet. They left a little bit later with her still pulling the kid by his t-shirt and saying things like: ‘you embarrass me and you’ll be grounded for the rest of the…’and some other stuff I couldn’t hear very well.
After she left, pretty much everyone around started discussing child abuse and things of that nature.”
If She Was Willing To Do That In Front Of Her Kids, What Else Would She Do?
“I used to work with this girl who had been bugging me to come over and smoke and chill with her or whatever. So I finally did, and come to find out she has two kids, aged between 2 and 5. We were in her dining room and the kids were sitting right there as she started to smoke. I started feeling really uncomfortable at that point, and then the youngest one started begging for her attention. She kept ignoring him until he was standing up on the chair, fell, hit his head really hard, and started crying. She then looked at him, laughed, and told him to shut up.
I had to leave.
I talked about it to another person I worked with and we decided to call Child Protective Services. Not more than a few days later, that girl ended up leaving town because she was busted at work for stealing a ton of money. I don’t know what happened to her or her kids, but I hope they made it out of that environment.”
“My Friend Wasn’t Even Bipolar”
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“In high school, I had a friend who was a bit goth, liked wearing a lot of black clothing, listening to ‘dark’ music etc. Aside from the usual teenage angst we all go through, there was really nothing wrong with him.
But his parents couldn’t cope with him not being ‘normal,’ so they dragged him around to psychiatrists until they finally found one who granted their wish and diagnosed him as bipolar. He was put on all sorts of heavy medications which turned him into a shell of his former self. BUT THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. He was not bipolar – I and the rest of our friend group were sure of this then and even more certain in retrospect.
He left home at 18 and moved across the country. He shacked up with some 35-year-old man he met on the internet, I’m sure it was just to escape his parents.
That was some really crappy parenting (seriously, they wanted him to have a mental illness). But also I lost a lot of respect for clinical psychiatry as a profession too. Dosing up children (he was 14 at the time) with heavy meds just because.”
A Mother Insulting Her Son’s Drawing
“Once I was waiting at my doctor’s office and there were this woman and her son. He was busy playing around with the toys in the waiting room. Then he grabbed a Magna Doodle. You know that thing you can draw on that works with that little pen.
Anyway, the kid was drawing on that thing when suddenly, he turned to his mother to proudly present her a sun he’d just drawn. The mother asked him what the drawn thing was meant to be. He replied that’s a sun. Her answer, ‘What the heck? That’s a Sun? It looks nothing like one!’ She laughed, then she deleted his picture by sliding the eraser thing from one side to the other. Then she drew a sun herself and said, ‘This is what a sun looks like.’ And her boy instantly became sad.
The entire conversation between them was sad and the mother had a very annoyed tone the whole time. I can still recall that poor boy’s sad face.”
She Blended At Happy Meal As Baby Food!
“I am related to someone who put a happy meal (chicken nuggets and french fries) into a food processor so her baby could eat it. Yes, I am telling the truth, it was horrifying, she seemed to think it was funny and perfectly normal since she planned on making all his baby food.
The same girl let her kid play up on the roof at 2 years old while it was being repaired and said it was safe because someone was up there. She has been giving him his own 44-ounce fountain sodas since he was 1 or so. She let him take a hammer and destroy the new flooring that was just put down. I could go on and on and on. I finally stopped going around her when her kid put a toy weapon to my kid’s mouth and threatened to blow his teeth out. Not that me being around her was doing any good anyway.”
Parents Just Let Their Kids Do Whatever They Want On The Train
“I once saw a 5 or 6-year-old swinging from the above-head handles of a local train (she had climbed on the back of the chairs to get there). Both parents were wasted, playing on their phones, drinks in hand. During the course of the gymnastic display, the kid’s foot hit the alarm for wheelchair users so the train stopped for the driver to come check if there was an emergency. It all made me angry and sad.
On the same train line, I once saw a mother dipping french fries into her small baby’s mouth so that it could suck on the salt and grease.
Also, on that same train line, a mother put a small bucket down for her kid to pee into. As anyone older than the child would predict pee went everywhere. I mean, I can kind of see the point of having a travel toilet for kids, but the thought process that led them to think it had any chance of success while being used in the main compartment of a crowded and moving train is mind-boggling. I reckon less than 50% was on target. The train runs every 10 minutes and their ticket would have allowed them to hop off and on. Sometimes I think there should be a parental version of ‘Judge Dredd.’
Speaking of trains and diapers, I also once saw a woman change a poopy diaper on a cloth seat without putting a towel down. And, she then left the crap filled diaper on the table when she got off the train. This train even had toilet compartments. They’ve really made the accessibility to child care areas readily available the last decade or so. Up until a few years ago, there weren’t even changing tables in most of the men’s restrooms. There really isn’t any excuse anymore.
Times like that force me to remember I don’t hate kids, I hate bad parents.”
“My Childhood Friend Was Spoiled Rotten”
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“One of my childhood friends was an only child whose rather rich parents spoiled him rotten. They believed that their child was perfect in every way and always believed their son could do no wrong, always blaming everyone else involved but their kid. Even if he was caught red-handed, he was never punished for anything. As a result of never being at fault for his actions, he grew up to be a psychopath.
Within a one year period of graduating high school, he was arrested for attempting to sell child smut films to an undercover cop (he somehow just got probation for this), driving under the influence, assaulting someone while under the influence in college, and he was caught burglarizing a house in the next town over.
So, one thing I do know is that parents need to teach consequences to their freaking kids.
Relatively similar, his parents lawyered up hard, claimed entrapment, bad influences, etc. It took the third violation of his parole (for the burglary) until they finally put him in jail.
He’s only getting two years for his crimes, and he should be out soon, but he’s going to be put on the offender registry when he gets out, so at least some punishment will stick with him.”
“My Friend And Her Father Were My Bullies”
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“When I was a bit younger, I had a very ‘good’ friend who later ended up being my high school bully. In the beginning, she was quite a sweet girl, but it was very apparent that she had some attention seeking issues (later on she would break into my house, steal my things, and tell false rumors about me). She would require so much attention from me that I would start making excuses not to be with her, but my mother found out and told me off. My mom told me that said girl got very little attention from her parents because they were often away, and that´s probably why she acted like that.
That was true. I had never really talked to or met her parents. Not before that one day where one of them actually had a free schedule and proposed to pick her up from school instead of taking the bus. I was invited to drive with her and her father.
The entire twenty minutes of driving, the father did nothing but pick on me. He would ask his daughter why she had such a chubby friend ( to be fair, I was quite chubby back then and she was really pretty for a 12-year-old) and told me I would never get a boyfriend. He even made up these fake stories up about me doing embarrassing things and would try to humiliate me.
The entire time, I just laughed, as I didn´t realize how wrong it was of another parent to tell me these things back then. I also laughed because my friend thought her dad picking on me was funny.
So to the father of my high school bully: Screw you, and you should know I have all the reason to believe that you were a big influence on why I was bullied for years.”
“It Was His Fault, He Didn’t Wear Sunscreen”
“A kid around 8 or 9 came to day camp with second-degree sunburns all over the top of his back and shoulders and he had huge blisters. The kid was wearing a thin white tank top.
When we called the mother to pick him up because there was no way he could have spent the day in our day camp, which would have been outside in the sun all day (and he’s was already so badly burned). We were then told by his mother that the burn served him right and was all his own fault because she told him to wear sunscreen and he didn’t.
We eventually managed to get her to come pick up the kid. While I’m a fan of children learning consequences, that kid was young enough that I’d expect a parent to be able to enforce sunscreen, rather than allowing a child to get dangerous burns, and the consequence of ‘your bad burns mean you can’t go to day camp today and have to stay inside’ is a lot more reasonable than ‘you have bad sunburns so you can just hurt all day and get further burnt spending all day in the sun again.’
Also, the mother was a nurse, so medical ignorance was absolutely no excuse.
There was another woman who kept not noticing when her 2-year-old wandered out the door was also pretty bad, but it wasn’t active and vindictive in the same way.”
‘They Didn’t Believe Their Daughter Was Pregnant’
“One of my friend’s parents literally locks her in her room all day except for food, school, and band rehearsals because she won’t accept the Mormon faith.
She had Leukemia as a child and her parents refused to pay for treatment. Her grandparents ended up footing the bill.
She was physically abused by her cousin when she was seven and contracted HIV. She was taken to the hospital a few weeks ago, found out she has AIDS and the parents didn’t care.
She ended up secretly dating the bassoonist in the orchestra she’s in. She sneaks out the window every night to be with him. The guy is the son of a lawyer who owns a massive lawyer firm. The guy got her pregnant (keep in mind, she has AIDS) and bought a brand new Ferrari, only to crash it while driving her around (we suspect as a means of terminating the pregnancy). She miscarried. Then her boyfriend went ‘out for coffee ‘ while visiting her in the hospital and never returned. No one but me and my girlfriend and that jerk knew about it. To make matter even worse, her parents never believed she was pregnant.
Completely ignoring your child is probably the worst thing you can do, especially in their teen-aged years. Also, your beliefs contradicting your child’s beliefs should not affect how you treat your child.”
“Control Your Kids People!”
“Fortunately, I haven’t witnessed anything I would consider abuse, but I’m in my twenties with no kids of my own, so I don’t spend much time with parents and their children.
However, the most frustrating examples for me personally are when parents bring their young children out to public places that mainly cater to adults and let them be disruptive without trying to stop it. Even more so if they’re offended by people who ask them to control their kids or to leave.
Why would you bring your toddler to see a PG-13 or R-rated movie at the theater? Why would you bring your kid out to a nice restaurant without finding a way to keep him occupied? Why would you board a flight with your kids and not bring any toys or books for them to play with?
I get that sometimes children have behavioral problems that are difficult to handle. I’m sympathetic to parents who are clearly doing their best, but there’s no excuse for not planning ahead and making zero effort to control or discipline your kid(s).”
‘She Slapped Him And He Bleed’
“Here’s one of the many stories that I’ve picked up while working in retail. I work in a toy store, and as such, we have lots of young kids and babies come into the store with their parents.
One time, a kid walked into the store with his mom. He was probably around 7 years old (that horrible age where they start to experiment with the power play). Anyway, the kid started grabbing various things off the shelves and demanding that he get them. At first, it seemed like no big deal, we get this scenario all the time. Usually, the parent will just agree, or say no and explain why. Instead, the mother kind of stood there and said nothing as he made a small pile of things on the floor. It wasn’t until he picked up a certain toy (can’t remember what) that his mother said, ‘No.’ And this is where things went haywire.
The kid went mental, swearing and starting to throw things. To make it worse, the mother snapped as well and proceeded to beat her son up in the middle of the store. She was slapping him, yelling and pulling his hair. He started to cry and was bleeding from his mouth from where she slapped him. Of course, by this point in time, I had called in my manager to help out because I wasn’t allowed to touch either of them.
The point is, this lady was off enough to use physical violence against her little kid without even trying to verbally solve the issue. Sure, he was being a little brat, but where would he have picked up that language? Kids can be reasoned with if you give them clear standards and talk to them before stepping foot into a store like that…”