We all have moments when we look at the people around us and wonder who allowed them to go outside.
But what is that person's your own child?
That was the basis for today's burning question from Redditor burn_furries, who asked the online community: Parents on Reddit, what was your " I raised an idiot" moment?
"I used to tell my kids..."
I used to tell my kids not to take off their shoes and socks in the car, especially on short trips. Just leave them on so that we don't have to spend 5 minutes finding and putting them back on before we run into the store. Imagine a single dad with two young kids running around the car trying to re-shoe my children in the grocery store parking lot in the middle of an Arizona summer, yuck. One day we went to the store and my daughter was missing her shoe. It was nowhere to be found. "Daddy, I didn't want you to be mad that my shoe was off so I threw it out the window." Made sense to a 5-year old I guess.
"When my son..."
When my son was 11 years old, he confidently informed me he was pretty sure he knew everything there was to know, because he tried to think of something that he didn't know, and couldn't think of anything.
"When one of my daughters..."
GiphyWhen one of my daughters tries to insult the other by telling her how ugly she is.
They're identical twins.
"When my youngest son..."
When my youngest son, who was 10 at the time, was getting his ears checked at the pediatrician and they found a "foreign object" in his left ear.
Said object was a dead housefly. Because he thought sticking a fly in his ear would give him flying powers.
He had caught it and shoved it in there alive about a week prior.
"I just stared at her..."
GiphyWhen the Peter Pan Peanut Butter recall happened 10-12 years ago or so (due to salmonella) my then-15 year old daughter came in from school and as she was walking past the living room (tv was on) she stopped and watched the news report about the salmonella outbreak. She got this "ah-ha" lightbulb moment and said, "oh, now I get it! It's about peanut butter! All day at school I kept hearing Peter Pan was killing people around the country and I thought he had turned bad or something and was now a villain." I just stared at her waiting for her to say she was joking and didn't really think Peter Pan was real, but no, she just went upstairs to her room like we just had a normal conversation about normal, every-day events.
"When my son..."
When my son was disappointed by sex ed class. He thought they were going to learn some moves.
"When we had to take down our shed..."
When we had to take down our shed and my son took a chainsaw to the support posts....from the inside. Fortunately, his brothers are not idiots and they stopped him.
"My 13 year old son..."
My 13 year old son was sniffing really hard and moving his head all around the area he was standing in. Slightly concerned he had lost his mind, I asked him what he was doing. He told me, "I farted. I'm trying to smell it all up, so you don't have to smell it." He's a thoughtful idiot.
"I heard a noise in my kitchen..."
I heard a noise in my kitchen and I went in there and there was flour all over the floor and all over my kid. And he was like "not me".
But I think it probably was him.
"When they mistook..."
When they mistook a leaky radiator hose for smoke. No problem it kind of looks the same. They continued to drive the car home thinking it was on fire then... pulled it into the garage that is attached to the house!
"My 4-year-old..."
My 4-year-old refused to hold my hand in a parking lot because she was "4 years old and hadn't been hit by a car once."
"...before I could say stop..."
My son pressed the cigarette lighter in our car, popped it out, stared at the orange hot glowing metal for a moment, then before I could say stop, jammed his thumb into it badly burning himself. He was 8.
"...and we made a quick visit to the ER."
Parent: Don't ever store a garden rake against the wall with the tines facing you like that.
Idiot progeny: Why?
Parent: Step on it and find out.
Idiot progeny steps on it and we make a quick visit to the ER.
"When he was about 10..."
When he was about 10 he saw a wasp go into a tube and he decided that it was a good idea to put his eye on the opening to see what the wasp was doing. Tube was sealed on the other side. On the plus side, the wasp wasn't angry enough to sting him right in the eye. Just to the side.
"It serves..."
My daughter, aged 5 at the time, was playing with a new beading kit she'd been given for her birthday. She suddenly says "I can't get it out". I ask what she can't get out and she says "the bead. I can't get the bead out of my nose." One trip to hospital and some laughing gas later and the doctor asks me if I want to keep it for a souvenir. I declined, but I went home and took another identical bead from the kit and hung it from a string in my car. It serves as both a talking point with the uninitiated, as well as a source of entertainment when we want to stir her up.
"We've started..."
We've started to keep a book of quotes from my teenage stepdaughter. Things like "I need to dilute my water" and such.
A recent favorite was how surprised and excited she was to discover that "They have nachos at Mexican restaurants!" I think she was 16 when she gave us that little gem.
I told my then 13 year old stepdaughter to do the dishes while her mother and I went grocery shopping. We came back 40 minutes later to find her spraying the glasses with Windex and wiping them off with paper towels. We asked her, "what the hell are you doing?" As she puts a freshly Windexed glass into the cabinet, "the dishes like you said." She is now 23, and has gotten slightly smarter.
"Boss calls the house phone..."
Boss calls the house phone to mention something about coming him earlier the next day. The phone call went something like this:
Five year old: hello? Boss: (knowing it's my son) hi there! Who's this I'm speaking to? Five year old: I don't know, you called me! proceeds to hang up the phone
"Before the school year started..."
Before the school year started my 12 year old daughter wanted this specific backpack she had seen, "NEEDED it." It was fairly expensive as far as backpacks go for a middle school kids, or at least I thought so. Anyway, I bought it for her. The deal was I would buy it and she was to take care of it, use it for SCHOOL and not some other bullshit. She readily agreed to the terms.
After about the third day of school she comes home, tosses the backpack on the sofa. I noticed something on it. I picked it up and realized that someone had written all over it in permanent black marker, Sharpie I would imagine. So I asked my little genius what it was.
She replied, "Oh! I wrote my schedule for the semester on it so that I can always just look at my backpack and know where to be! How awesome is that?!"
So I said, "And what happens in 8 weeks when your classes change?"
She looked dumbfounded and said, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
"So many bubbles."
GiphyMy daughter was 4 and put dawn dish soap into her aquarium because the fish should take a bath too.
So many bubbles.
DQ: What was your parenting fail?
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