Guilt is one of the things that comes part and parcel with being a parent – no matter how good you are, or how many positive days you have, there’s always something to worry over or to feel guilty about, right?
We all make mistakes, and we thought it might make you feel better to hear that other parents agree – these 17 are confessing the ones they think are the absolute worst.
17. Fostering fear.
my mom never let me go out with my friends because she was afraid of me getting abducted, so when the time came that i didn’t have to ask her anymore i was too scared to go out.
16. You lead by example.
I was far too fearful and now they are fearful.
‘m witnessing my SIL do the same thing to her toddler son now, telling him to be careful because there’s furniture etc behind him while he hops on a wide flat surface 1inch tall.
15. Lock up your meds.
Not locking up pills. My daughter was maybe two on a camping trip. We had one of those M-F pill holders with some anti anxiety medicine in it. She got into it while we were unloading the minivan.
We noticed some of the pills were missing. We’re almost to the ER, and we noticed them laying on the floor bed.
Kids will find anything unless a parent asks them.
14. This one is kind of funny.
3 year old woke up in the middle of the night and came to tell me she had a bad dream. I walked her back to her room and talked to her about her dream. She said she was dreaming there were bugs crawling on the walls and in her bed.
I told her that it was just a dream and the bugs only existed in her head.
She didn’t get back to sleep for a LONG time after being told she had bugs in her head.
13. Oh my god. Ha!
Not me, but when I was younger, like 6 or 7, I ate some watermelon seeds then got super paranoid that they would rip up my insides.
My dad sat me down and told me that my intestines were as strong as this trash bag here, then he proceeded to test the strength of the trash bag and ripped right through it. I cried for, reportedly, 2 hours.
12. This happens to the best of us.
Five months old:
“He’ll be fine. He can’t roll over yet.” *places baby in middle of king sized bed and proceeds to finish getting ready for work*
THUMP
He could, in fact, roll over.
I’m sure there are more, but that’s the one that really, really stands out.
11. Babies are fun.
Teaching her how to blow a raspberry before teaching her how to eat food was not a smart move.
Yeah… having discovered raspberries early, my baby has devised a cunning strategy to avoid any nearby spoons by deploying them.
10. Too many warnings.
After my daughter spent all her own money on a skateboard, I relayed to her that I was afraid that one of the times she fell off her board she’d get hit by a car. In less than two days she didn’t try anymore.
I don’t know if she had a scare or just didn’t want me to worry, but I feel like I took one of the most physical hobbies she could have had away from her by projecting my own fear.
She doesn’t gravitate toward physical activity much now as a young adult.
9. Oopsie.
Oh man, one time my wife and I took our son on a trip to the harbor since he was now old enough to go with us on these trips.
After a fun-filled day we were driving back home and my wife glanced in the backseat and goes “where’s our son?”
I guess we were not used to having a 3rd person with us when we went out so that’s the story of how we almost forgot our child.
8. They can’t always walk it off.
Neither of my parents have Reddit but they have told me this has been their biggest mistake with me of all time. I was a kid about 14 and I was riding my bike in the front yard. Anyway, I end up falling over onto the ground on my bike while standing up and not moving.
Long story short it feels like I’ve just been drop kicked in my balls. So I head inside and lay on the couch in pain for a while. Ask my parents to take me to the hospital and they refused. Told me I was just being a baby and that the pain would go away.
About an hour and a half later and many tears they finally agree to take me in. Turns out I had given myself a testicular torsion and the lack of blood to that area of my body meant I was going into emergency surgery.
I lost a testicle the same day less than ten minutes later. Never forgave them for it
7. This is downright awful.
BUT, when I was 7 my parents told me I killed my grandpa.
Here’s how the story goes: My mom and dad are super superstitious and they have this thing against white. In my culture white is used in funerals, so living people are not allowed to wear white on their heads (hats, bows, hair bands etc). Anyway so one day I was playing with white thread and it got stuck in my hair.
As soon as my mom saw she ripped it out and yelled at me. Within a week of this incident my grandpa (who was on the OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH) died by slipping on something and hitting his head. My parents said that because I was playing with white thread on my head, that’s what caused my grandpa to die.
AS A 7 YEAR OLD I LIVED WITH THE GUILT OF MURDER FOR 10 YEARS
6. Beware the trash can.
Well we’re only at age 1.5 so we haven’t had any major ones yet, but teaching my toddler how to throw out her own trash has proven disastrous for the things in our house that aren’t garbage but make their way into the trash anyway.
Most recently, her favorite stuffed puppy who was missing for a good chunk of time.
5. Accidents happen.
Put my 8 month old onto our changing table and turned around to grab more diapers.
Terrible decision.
Caught him rolling off the table out of the corner of my eye but it was too late…he fell 3 feet, landed directly on his face and did a full scorpion. He’s never cried so hard in his life before or after.
I held him and just started crying because I felt so guilty hurting him like that.
4. Don’t worry. He was fine.
My worst parenting mistake involved a trip to the ER. It was about 8 years ago in December. It was my wife’s birthday, but we weren’t going anywhere because a huge snowstorm had hit our area. No problem, though, I would do all the shoveling. Can’t have her shoveling on her birthday. My son (then about 7 or 8) came out with me to help shovel. We’re doing a good job and clearing off the snow when IT happened.
As I was bringing my shovel up, my son bent down to pick up more snow. I hit his head with the corner of my shovel. The very sharp corner. He shrieked and held his eye. I suddenly worried that I put my son’s eye out. Well, I didn’t, but I did get him right above his eyebrow and he was bleeding a lot. His coat was getting covered in blood.
We went in and couldn’t stop the bleeding well so I put my son in the car, stopped by my in-laws’ house (less than a mile away) to pick up my mother-in-law (my wife stayed home with our younger son who was a toddler then), and drove to the ER in the blizzard.
They were great and “glued” my son’s wound shut. (A special glue that they can use instead of stitches.) He was fine, but I felt like the worst dad in the world. His coat was a loss and I ruined my wife’s birthday. Plus, to this day, you can see an indentation where I hit my son in the head with a shovel.
3. We all have a version of this story.
I love listening to music in the car and some of the music obviously features some naughty or dubious words. When I had my young son in the car I would always skip certain songs but occasionally one slipped through the net.
Cue Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon. He got home one day and parroted parts of the song and I was desperately trying to distract him so he would forget it but he didn’t.
I had the bright idea of trying to get him to change the word to something else. He was still in the early speaking stage so everything sounded slightly garbled. Anyway I had success with the word ‘Shed’
For about a day or so he then just wandered around singing about how his shed was on fire. Then he forgot and moved on to something else and my mortal fear of him saying it at childcare subsided. I have not played that song in my car since and it has been many years.
2. One of life’s important skills.
My son is a freshman in college and I thought I covered all my bases but I realized during Thanksgiving that I never taught him how to shave.
I probably forgot because I have a beard so I don’t really shave all that often, but he definitely is not ready to sport one as well.
When he walked in the door, my wife asked me why our son looked like Ted Cruz.
1. Deep breaths.
I let her hand go in Paris rush hour. >_<
She’s alive. She’s alive.
Gah, y’all. We’re all doing our best.
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a parent? Confessions in the comments!