I’m not saying that all this stuff happened. This is just a random list of red flags, I swear, just signs that would indicate subpar parenting.
- Telling his father that we should have named Asher Ashhole instead
- Going to Mother’s Day tea and hearing the sentence “My Mommy spends all her time______” finished with the word “working”
- Forgetting to go to our oldest child’s first parent-teacher conference
- Telling someone how irritated I was that her father forgot to bring home Selah’s swim fins from practice, and then noticing that I had forgotten the new baby in his stroller over across the pool
- Totally failing to answer Selah’s question, “What is the point of the boy fish if they can’t have babies?”
- Asking the seven year old to make sure the one year old stays alive
- Hiding around the corner to eat goodies I don’t want to share with the kids
- …and eating their Halloween candy. Like, most of the Halloween candy.
- Totally letting the baby beat on the older kids in the other room, telling self, “They are bigger than him. They can handle it.”
- Stating, “My phone is not a toy,” and then secretly playing Scramble with Friends
- Listening to songs with bad words in them and then feigning ignorance about what the singer is saying
- Using food to keep the kids awake in the car
- Discovering the baby smiling and brushing his teeth with another kid’s toothbrush and just quietly putting it back
- Making myself a plate at a party and then realizing that the kids haven’t eaten yet
- Hauling my naughty three year old outside of church and giving him a “Come to Jesus” moment out there
- Writing snarky Facebook statuses and blog posts about my children
I could go on all day with these theoretical examples of how one might expose one’s parental failings. What terrible things have you totally not done?
For more family confessional hour, read Worst Baptism Ever. Or the rest of this blog.
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