10 Sure Signs You’re Failing As A MOM!
I can honestly tell you that my children are happy, healthy children. I can also tell you that I am certain and therefore grateful that their happy demeanors and healthy bodies have nothing to do with my parenting. That doesn’t mean that I have not had my fair share of mom fails!
Each one of my children is daily shrouded in laughter, song, and love. To know them is to be privileged indeed.
However, as I have admitted already, have admitted before, and must constantly remind myself, my children are not my own and their successes are not a credit to me. If you dare to doubt me and want my parenting advice, you will want to keep reading.
Here are just a few of the ways that I know that I am doing a really great job failing as a mother and am somehow coming out looking like a stellar parent! Check out these mom fails!
1. Your kid gets a concussion at dinner.
Yep. You read that right. At dinner. Not playing football, not horseplaying, not even in an act of bravery. During dinner one night my son, for whom dinner is usually a traumatic event anyway, fell straight back onto the floor from his stool.
After a couple of hours of laying around, he started trailing off his sentences, forgetting his alphabet, and even squirting toothpaste onto the floor.
We decided it was time to take him in for another one of our favorite family pastimes –the late-night emergency room visit.
After meeting with the doctor and being monitored, he was diagnosed with a minor concussion. We now force him to eat in a bubble. Mom fail.
2. Your kid falls down the stairs while company is visiting.
Never mind the fact that my children walk up and down the stairs any number of times in a given day. Never mind that staff from our church was visiting, so I asked my kids to be on their best behavior. And, never mind that only moments prior, I had a baby gate positioned on the stairs before we were all going down the stairs.
Instead, my child chose that exact brief visit to forget how to walk down the stairs. He fell head over feet down the entire flight of exposed wood steps with a distinct thud against the cement floor, landing in the basement.
We barred the basement door. Forever.
3. Your child gets a bad grade in “reverence.”
My child attends a Catholic school. I am very impressed by the quality of her preschool education. She has learned so much from her teacher who has gone above and beyond to create new and unique learning opportunities.
I was thrilled to receive her academic report card. All of her academic marks were above where she was expected to be.
However, when I turned to the section on her attitude and participation in mass, prayers, and liturgy, I was ashamed. Specifically, her grade in reverence… a 2.
Parent of the year right here. Mom fail.
4. You’re told by your pediatrician: “If I didn’t know you, I would call CPS.”
For some reason, I grow small babies. My kids ate the supplements; I took the courses; we tried cluster feeding, special diets, and the whole bit. When my youngest was born I proclaimed that I wouldn’t let doctors scare me about my child’s weight again. I mean, if there are children off the charts big, certainly there are children who are perfectly healthy and off-the-charts small?
But, yet again, I fell into the fear and struggle of trying to get my baby to gain more weight. We visited specialists, ran tests, and held him down for what felt like hours of blood draws.
One day, while at yet another weight check, I caught the gut check. Despite the litany of tests, measurements, and blood draws, the doctors found no rhyme or reason as to why he wasn’t gaining weight. It was then that my pediatrician confessed that if she didn’t know me, she would call protective services to check on my malnourished baby.
Great…so even parents who are doing every single thing within their power to care for their children including subjecting them to mild medical torture are at risk of state intervention?
It was a proud moment…
5. Your kid eats dirt, and you let it happen.
Maybe I dropped the food on the floor while preparing it. Maybe my kid licked the cement. Perhaps they even licked the shovel of sand. I have grown accustomed to watching my kids eat strange and disgusting things (want proof, read this).
Now, I look past the mere dirt and watch instead for true toxins. Run of the mill bacteria, germs, and soil don’t scare me nearly as much as your open jar of marbles, your exposed wax melts, or the web of wires out the back of your television.
I have to pick my battles. That’s probably a mom fail.
6. You tell your kids that a certain food or drink is poison, so you can have it all to yourself.
Oreos? Poison. Coke? Poison. Special, favorite Costco trail mix? Poison.
My kids have taken everything from me. My dignity, my privacy, my body, my money. Just let me have a few simple pleasures.
I want to take a drink without wondering whether the chunks that came up through my straw came from my kid’s lunch.
I have 3 kids. If I give them each a bite of my Oreo, then I won’t have any left.
One time I made the mistake of letting one of my children hold my milkshake after a long walk. I was rewarded with an empty cup and a wild child. Next time…”Poison.”
7. You tell your kid mean things in a language they don’t understand.
I don’t care who you are, sometimes you just have to be able to get some things off your chest.
When it comes to your children who repeat everything, you have to be very careful how you say it. So, I sometimes use phrases in other languages to say to them in a very nice way what I am really thinking.
My language of choice is usually Spanish, but maybe you learned some bad words in your high school German class. Maybe you are one of those really cool kids who can tell someone to “shut up” in Elvish.
At any rate, you have definitely reached the “stellar parent” category, when you have to just express some thoughts to your child that you wouldn’t want him to repeat to someone else…in another language.
8. Your kid spills across the pavement because you forgot to buckle her into the stroller.
Not one but TWO black eyes due to skidding across the pavement from the stroller. To be fair, this one wasn’t me! (I won’t name the culprit.) The child cried for mere seconds, sprang back to her feet, claimed her consolation ice cream, and sported the 2 black eyes like a badge of honor.
Everyone gets buckled by He-who-won’t-be-shamed now!
9. Your infant rolls off the bed…twice.
For months that little snuggly lump just lays anywhere you put him. Then he starts to get the wiggles, and you have to be more selective. Thankfully, you registered for all the baby gear: the docking stations, the bassinets, the play yard, and all the gear that goes with them.
But, when you need to finish drying your hair, change your shoes, or just plain old go to the bathroom, you’re in a hurry. You might just lay that sweet, beautiful lump on the bed, and that little lump might decide at that exact moment to figure out how to push himself to the edge of the bed as you dive across the room to catch him. (Hypothetically speaking.)
Then, you might make sure that little lump is safely surrounded by mounds of pillows and blankets so that rolling and kicking doesn’t leave him falling toward the floor again. And, you might be surprised that mere seconds later, you are diving across the room again to catch him. Again…hypothetically speaking.
Just saying…it could happen; and if it does, you might be a stellar parent. Mom fail.
10. Your kid hangs out the car door… while you are driving.
(I have to share this one, but thankfully it wasn’t me. I won’t shame the mom to whom this happened because I know it was a traumatic event that she can only now laugh about!)
What good are child locks if the kids can figure out how to use and disable them? How does motherhood prepare you for looking out your side view mirror to see one of your children dangling from his seatbelt over the asphalt.
And, what do you do when you are careening down the road with one of your children hanging out the door?
Well…just in case this happens to you…first, stop the car, replace the child, reset the child locks, and perhaps cage the doors. You might also threaten that the car locks are poison, that they will be in a car seat forever, or give them a stern lecture in a different language. Just some suggestions.
GREAT MOMS ARE FAILURES TOO!
So, moms fail. We have all been there. And, if you haven’t been there yet, you soon will be. It’s only a matter of time before your child seizes the one half second that you weren’t 100% present to do something that either completely embarrasses you or mildly injures him or her.
To be perfectly clear, no child was seriously injured from any of these incidents. My children (and the children who were the subjects of some of these stories) are all safe, healthy, and happy despite the minor bumps and bruises that they have accumulated along the way.
Mine still have barely made it onto the growth charts, but they have excelled in every other way that matters…except reverence…we are still working on that one.
If we can’t learn to share and laugh a little, we will go crazy. Would you share your best/worst mom fail?
