bad parenting
“You don’t understand because you don’t have kids”. This is hands down the most often used excuse for bad parenting I have ever heard. I don’t need to have kids to realize that if your kid is throwing a monumental tantrum spread eagle on the ground that someone has screwed up somewhere. There is no question that every kid in existence has bad moments but it’s the parents whose children have 3 or 4 a day may want to reevaluate. I can safely say that as a kid if I ever threw such a tantrum it happened only once.
“My kid is different”. Oh sure, you’re right. You have the only kid in the world that certain rules don’t apply to. You have been singled out with the Demon Seed and every other parent on the planet has it easy. It can’t be laziness or selfishness on your part. It has to be the child. These are the people that make it twice as hard for those parents who actually do have a sick kid to be taken seriously and empathized with.
“My Kid is hyperactive”. Oh, sorry that is so 1970’s. “My kid has ADHD”. Better? That way it’s an actual disorder and in no way can be your fault. Isn’t it odd that every bad parent’s kid has a special need of one sort or another? Or maybe, just maybe it’s simply another way of not taking parental responsibility. I just read an article about a woman that complained to her daughter’s school that bully was picking on her child. She was told that the bully had ADHD….. Oh, okay then. No problem. The mother just needs to shut-up, stock up on band-aids and set aside money for therapy down the road.
I firmly believe that not all but a lot of people that have children fall into a couple of categories. First is the accident. These are the people that are too stupid (or in a great many cases too drunk) to go into any bar bathroom on the planet and get a rubber for 75 cents. By the way only one of my four siblings was planned so don’t think I’m one of those stone throwers living in a glass house. Then there are the trophy kids. These parents want to be the all American nuclear family. It goes back to the old adage; just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should”. Finally comes the Formal Dining Room Table Parents. These are the same people who spend three or four thousand dollars on formal dining room table because “that’s just want you do” and never ask if they need it, will take care of it and really even want it.
The statement “you have to take a test to get a driver’s license but any fool can have a kid” has been used to the point of becoming a cliché but the truth and irony of it is still relevant. If people would just realize that once they choose to have children (and it’s ALWAYS a choice) that they can’t have their cake and eat it too we’d have a lot fewer little brats running around.