Parenting is hard, there's no question about that. Some struggle to be good parents and set a good example, while others...don't. These parents could use some parenting classes or a good kick in the rear for the messed up way they chose to raise their kids.
They Ought To Pray They Don’t Get Polio
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“My cousin has three adorable little daughters ages 3, 5, and 7. She is a born-again Christian who refuses to get her kids vaccinated because she thinks vaccines are evil and raises them on almost nothing but religious material. On Thanksgiving, the eldest kid said she was thankful ‘for the Lord Almighty who keeps us all safe from the Devil.’ They are the sweetest little kids, and I really hope they don’t die from some easily preventable disease.”
She Had Some Seriously Questionable Parenting Techniques
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“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 2-year-old kid play up on the roof while it was being repaired. She said it was safe because someone was up there. She has been giving him his own 44oz fountain sodas since before his first birthday. 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 him was doing any good anyway.”
His Learning Disability Is Holding Him Back, But His Parents Refuse To Do Anything
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“‘No, I don’t want him in special education. I don’t want him to be labeled.’
You don’t want him labeled with a specific learning disability? Fine. He’s already being labeled by the other fifth graders as the kid who still counts on his fingers, the kid who can’t add, the kid who tries to cheat on every paper because he can’t read the work, the kid who never gets picked to read out loud because Mr. Rain isn’t going to let him get embarrassed, the kid who has zero checks for homework completion, the kid who can’t have his papers graded by the helper because Mr. Rain keeps them for himself to go over.
Your son will work as hard as he can, and I’m sorry to be the jerk teacher who is finally telling you that there is a problem, but pretending that it’s his work ethic or my classroom isn’t going to change the fact that his standardized scores have sucked since Kindergarten and no one besides me seems interested in trying to reverse that trend.”
They Accidentally Taught Him How To Throw The World’s Worst Tantrums
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“The worst I’ve seen is a parent who accidentally trained her child to throw the worst temper tantrums I have ever seen.
He had seizures as a toddler, which were made worse by emotional stress. The mom would give the child a piece of candy to calm him down whenever he would get upset. Being firm with him and setting boundaries, like any good parent would, could cause him to have a seizure. They couldn’t just put their foot down and let him cry it out.
The unexpected consequence was that the candy reinforced his tantrums. It was basic operant conditioning. His tantrums were rewarded with candy, coddling, and attention. By age four, his seizures were gone, but he had daily rage fits that got him kicked out of three different pre-schools.”
She Seemed Like A Good Mother At First Glance, Then They Looked In 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 I witnessed perhaps the most appalling example of parenting I’ve ever yet encountered.
The scene took place in a Walgreens, which was located right in the middle of downtown San Mateo. The offender was an overweight 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, upon 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 behind her and shouted, ‘No, thank you!’
‘Ma’am!’ the voice called again. 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 absent-mindedness were not being received well. The two-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.”
The Parents’ Response To Their Son’s Cruel Act Was Unforgivable
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“There is a cat that lives in my grandma’s backyard that is the nicest cat I’ve ever met. My grandma caught this 8-year-old boy throwing the cat by its tail and picking it up and slamming it into the ground. Then he would beat it with one of those plastic/foam swords. My grandma, terrified by this, ran out and yelled at the kid, who just biked 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 actually 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 shocked and asked them if they knew he had been trying to 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.”
She’s The Reason People Should Take Parenting Classes Before They Take The Baby Hoeme
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“I have a distant cousin who had a baby when she was 15. She is an addict. Someone called CPS on her, and the child was taken from her and put into the home of the baby’s father’s parents. The parents let her move in so she could be with the baby. She continued to do the same things and had different men in and out of the child’s life. When her daughter was four years old, she took her and moved in with a much older man, and they were partying 24/7, and the house was basically a house of ill repute.
The young child was touched and abused by a man who was staying there for a while and, again, CPS was called. She was placed in foster care, and the mother was given a chance to complete several requirements to get her daughter back. She failed to do a single one, and she lost her parental rights. The child was adopted and, at first, my cousin still had contact with her, and the little girl was having a lot of trouble in school and with other children. At this point, the family who adopted her moved and left no phone or address for the mother.”
She’ll Tell Him He “Ruined Her Life” Right To His Face
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“My nephew’s mom makes comments about him being a horrible child. He has Autism and ADHD, and when he can’t control himself or does something that she thinks is less than desirable, she tells him that the reason he misbehaves is because he’s a monster, he’s a horrible child, he ruined her life, he’ll never be better. So ripping apart your child’s self-esteem is the worst, I think.
Surprisingly, she has quite a bit of support. Her dad got her a good job, she still lives with her parents to save money, and his uncles and aunts (myself included) take the boy all the time. She is 28 years old but goes out and parties constantly. She tells me that she just can’t deal with him, ‘because she never got a childhood,’ and she ‘didn’t think she’d have a special needs kid.’ She was 20 when she had him, and I think she needs to learn to get over that and move on with her life.”
The Mom Wanted To “Teach Him A Lesson”
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“An 8-year-old kid came to day camp with second-degree sunburns all over the top of his back and shoulders. Huge blisters. The kid was only wearing a thin, white tank top.
When we called the mother to pick him up, because there was no way he could spend the day in our day camp, which was outside in the sun all day, we were told 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, but 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. 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. Medical ignorance was no excuse.”
After The Accident, They Let Him Get Away With Murder
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“My neighbors growing up had two young boys that were around the same age as my brother and me, so we grew up playing together.
The older neighbor boy, as a 2-year-old, grabbed the handle of a pan containing a large amount of hot oil from the stove, spilling it all over himself.
This caused him the most severe burns you can imagine on over 50 percent of his body, though luckily none of it got his face. Lots of skin grafts and healing later, one whole arm, a good portion of his torso and legs were nothing but burn scar tissue. But realistically, he looks pretty normal.
Well, because of this incident, his parents let him pretty much do and have anything he wanted, and always told him he was the best at everything.
This kid had quite a complex because of this. He was a jerk. The type that no matter what it was you were doing, he had to do the same thing and be better than you at it. And if he didn’t accomplish being better than you at it, he would turn into a little monster and take it out on you.
He was unrelentingly selfish, couldn’t handle losing at anything, and had no concept what so ever of how to be fair and even in situations or to share anything.
I think he would have been a better person if his parents had raised him letting him think he was just a normal kid like everyone else, rather than instilling this idea in his head that he was somehow better, just in some attempt to counteract any self-esteem issues due to the burns.”
She’s Treated Like A Total Princess, But Her Brothers Don’t Get The Same Treatment
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“My cousins let their daughter do and have anything she wants.
Their house has kind of a weird layout where it has two master bedrooms. The parents have one and the 7-year-old daughter has the other. Their two teenage sons have to share the smallest room in the house.
She has three TVs. A 7-year-old has three flat screen TVs. She has an iPhone, but they wouldn’t trust their teenage sons with smart phones until this year. She has had four 3DS’s, each of which she broke on purpose because she wanted a different color. She has two children tablets. She has more toys than you can imagine.
She has a $100 a week allowance and does no chores, but her teenage brothers have two jobs each, are in an intense high school where they get tons of homework. The parents expect them to clean every room in the house from top to bottom three times a week or else they will get grounded for four months. If the dog bowl ever has more or less than two inches of water, they get grounded. And when they get grounded, they can only go to school and home. They can’t even go to work.
They let the daughter watch R rated movies, but the boys are only allowed to watch pre-approved PG-13 movies even though they are 17.
The boys are good kids. One has some behavior problems, but nothing too outrageous, and the other is the nicest kid I’ve ever met. The way they treat the boys is terrible, but the daughter is spoiled.
They blamed the daughter’s bad grades on a gluten allergy! But if the boys’ grades go below A’s, they get grounded.
They are raising a spoiled brat, and they are going to make their sons hate them and want nothing to do with them.”
He Could Never Do Wrong In Their Eyes
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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, always believed their son could do no wrong, and always blamed 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 of graduating high school, he was arrested for attempting to sell inappropriate images of children to an undercover cop (he somehow just got probation for this), a DUI, assaulted someone in college, and was caught burglarizing a house in the next town over.
Parents need to teach consequences to their freaking kids.”
It Was The Most Minor Of Mistakes, But She Made Him Beg On His Knees
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“There was a kid in the subway that rushed to sit down 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 the crap out of him. She urged him to ‘plead forgiveness’ to the lady on his knees.
It was nuts, even the lady kept saying, ‘It’s ok, it’s ok.’
After the kid said the most heartbreaking, ‘I’m sorry’ I have ever seen, while still weeping and scared, he received 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 looked 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!’ ‘You’ll be grounded for the rest of the month,’ and stuff I didn’t hear well.
After she left, pretty much everyone around started discussing child abuse and that kind of stuff.”
After Spending Just A Little While At That House, She Decided To Call CPS
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“I worked with a girl who had been bugging me to come over and chill. I finally agreed and came to find out she had two kids, aged between 2-5 years old. We were in her dining room and the kids were sitting right there, as she started smoking. I was feeling uncomfortable at this point, then the youngest one started wanting her attention. She kept ignoring him until he stood up on the chair, fell, hit his head hard, and started crying. She looked at him, laughed, and told him to shut up.
I had to leave.
I talked to another person I worked with, and we decided to call CPS. No more than a few days later, that girl ended up leaving town because she was busted at work for taking a ton of money. I don’t know what happened to her or the kids. I hope they made it out of that environment.”
The “Family Business” Ended Getting Them Both In Trouble
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“A friend of mine from elementary school, who I kept in touch with right up until about the ninth grade, was recently jailed for 10 years for his involvement in an illegal prescription ring. He and others would buy prescriptions from pharmacies with fake doctor’s notes in three separate counties and sell them by the pill and bottle. Anyway, his mother was the person who got him hooked on painkillers in the first place because she gave them to him at a young age (maybe 13 or 14) and he often took them from her purse.
She, too, was involved in this prescription ring. They were both stealing from each other and eventually broke into some surrounding homes and stole about $70,000 worth of jewelry and some weapons. Once they were in custody, she revealed to the police her son’s involvement in a pill ring, but never mentioned her own involvement in the same ring. She also never mentioned that she supplied her son and friends with illegally gained prescriptions.
The son was awaiting a conviction and she was about to go on trial. In the end, the son was mostly honest and straightforward about his responsibility and involvement, along with his mother’s involvement, while she denied everything all the way up until her sentence.”
He Was Just An Angsty Teen, But They Couldn’t Understand It
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“In high school, I had a friend who was a bit goth, liked wearing a lot of black clothes, 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 meds which turned him into a shell of his former self. BUT THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. He did not have bipolar, our friend group was sure of this then and even more certain in retrospect.
He left home at 18, and moved across the country and shacked up with some weirdo 35-year-old man he met on the internet, and I’m sure it was just to escape his parents.
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, for goodness sake) with heavy meds just because they like ‘Cradle of Filth’ is bad medicine.”