Being a mom or a dad is really hard, but come on, this is pushing it. From insane helicopter parents to nightmare parent-teacher night experiences, these stories of unbelievable parenting fails range from the embarrassing to the disturbing.
1. Stronger Than Any Lullaby
My mom always struggled to be there for me, but my dad waited until I was grown up to tell me about her worst act. When I was a little kid, my mom had routinely given me a ton of sleeping pills so that she could leave me at home alone to maintain an affair with her lover while my dad was off working in another country. That cleared up many, many things up for me…
2. No Means Yes
I'm a teacher, and after a student's parent's divorced, the mom taught her toddler son to say "No daddy's house" even though he loves his dad. He understood "yes" and "no" perfectly before this. After she did this we had to re-teach it by taking things away when he said no, he didn't want it. He was so confused and cried so much. His mom is literally the devil.
3. And Then There Was One
We had a parent who invited all the boys in the entire third-grade class to a professional baseball game and backstage tour of the stadium for their son's birthday. There was just one problem. He left out one kid. Just one! To top it off, it was a school day too. So the one boy who wasn't invited had to go to school and be the only boy in the class. No emotional scarring there at all, right? What horrible parents!
4. Noticeably Bad Parents
The parents that bothered me the most were the parents of a boy with special needs. Every day, they sent him the same lunch: macaroni with nothing on it. I asked them at the first conference why they did this. What his mom said broke my heart. She told me, "It's not like he'll notice." It was sad because he really did notice.
When we had special lunch days, he would get so excited about hot dogs or pizza. It's indicative of how they treated him overall. They didn't try to engage or stimulate him at all.
5. Binocular Mother
I wasn't allowed to hang out with girls when I was younger. One day I was at the school park with some of my friends and there were a couple girls there. My mom called me to ask who I was hanging out with. I only mentioned my guy friends. Big mistake. Apparently, my mom was spying on me with binoculars. She drove to the park, made a big scene, and made me go home.
6. Knock, Knock
In high school, my friend was dating a guy, and he invited us to his house. But his mom was really mean and acted like us being there was awful. I rang the doorbell, and the mom invited me inside. I was there for an hour and had to go outside to get something out of my car. I came back inside and heard, “UM! EXCUSE ME!”
“I’m sorry, yes?” She said, “You didn’t ring the doorbell before BARGING into my HOME.” Surprised, I said, “Oh I’m sorry, uh...should I go back outside?” She nodded and told me, “We wait to be invited inside at the house.” I went back outside, and she closed the door. I rang the doorbell and heard her say “Who is it?”
“Hi, it’s me here to see your son,” I said through the door. I heard, “Just a moment!” She opened the door and said kindly, “Please, come inside.” Apparently, every time you leave the house even for a second, she expected the pageantry of a first invite.
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7. Sit Tight
Until I was 16, I was essentially grounded non-stop with the exception of holidays. I'd come home, do my chores, do my homework, then sit on my bed until bedtime. I'd just sit on the bed in my room until dinner time. And thanks to my stepdad, no, I could not lay down, I had to sit upright. That meant no sleeping either. Just sitting on my bed.
8. Something to Be Thankful For
For some inexplicable reason, my mom decided that it would be a good idea to casually tell everybody at Thanksgiving dinner at her boyfriend's house about my tween bouts with anorexia. I didn't want to be there in the first place, and she just kept going on and on about how I used to just eat carrots for dinner for a year. It got so bad that I eventually had to shout at her to get her to stop.
9. Chewing Gum Woes
My parents had this ridiculous rule where they wouldn't let me spend any money unless I told them about what I'll buy first. I once bought a pack of gum without asking them and let me tell you: it wasn't pretty. Because of a single pack of gum, my mom and dad shouted at me for a solid hour, then took away my phone for a week.
10. Setting A Bad Example
I was a humanities teacher very briefly. I once had a meeting with the mother of a boy due to his ongoing behavior problems in class. Bright kid, very creative, just couldn't stop distracting some of his classmates. No biggie really. His mom brought our meeting to a premature end by announcing that "reading is for losers" before storming out of the room and yanking her kid along behind her.
11. Helicopter Parents Never Fly Coach
I nannied for a crazy rich couple. Their son was such a sweetheart—but I can't believe the pain they inflicted on him. Both of his parents lived this fabulous lifestyle, and they constantly went on last-minute vacations, leaving their son at home with me. He barely even saw his parents because they were too busy partying it up all across the world.
These were also the same people who told me it was "sweet" that I was happy knowing I'd never be rich, and who complained about their "rude" friends who were "forcing" them to fly first-class to their beach house, rather than booking them a private jet. I shudder to think about what that sweet boy will grow up to become.
12. Table Talk
This last Christmas, I found out that not only had my mom already been previously married and divorced before I was born, but that my dad had also had another kid before he had gotten married to my mom. So, that means I have a secret half-brother or sister out there somewhere, who I have never met.
The real kicker was the way I found out about it all. I found out from my brand new sister-in-law, who had just joined the family. Apparently, she had been doing some digging and research into our family history and she discovered all of these details. She had no idea that they had been a secret, though, and she assumed us kids already knew about them.
So, she just casually brought it up out of the blue on Christmas Eve while we were baking cookies.
13. Bad Suggestions
My twin brother died in a car wreck and my family suggested that I should date his girlfriend because...grief, I guess? REAL FREAKIN' AWKWARD, MOM.
14. Meal Ticket
I taught elementary school, I had a third grader who was well behind all the other children in reading skills. He seemed capable of reading, but just never put in any effort. So I would tutor him, it was paying off, he was progressing nicely. Then his mother showed up one afternoon mad because the boy was learning to read. It took me a while to figure out what she was screaming about, but when I figured it out, it made me want to attack her.
She was receiving disability payments because her boy was "retarded" (her words) and incapable of reading. If the caseworker found out the boy could read the payments would stop. She was purposely holding her son back and literally not letting him learn to read so that she could get some extra money. No wonder the poor little boy was scared whenever I tried to teach him after that.
15. Family of Lies
I had a student who repeatedly lied about assignments, saying he’d turned them in and his teachers had lost them. As a team, with admin present, we had a conference with mom and dad, who deflected and provided excuses that he just “Doesn’t like school” and “If my son says he did something, he did it. We value integrity in our family.”
Three months later, some friends of mine invited me to a bar a few towns away to see a band perform. Near the end of the night, I ran into the mom, who was out on a date with a man who wasn’t her husband. From that point on, she wouldn’t return any of my emails or calls about the son’s behavior. She is now an administrator in another county.
16. How About You Quarterback-Off, Dad
My friend is positive that his kid will be an NFL quarterback—and he goes to chilling lengths to make it happen. This poor kid—who’s 10, by the way—is a decent player, but his father has him spend hours each day practicing. He takes vitamins and has a special diet. He can't have sleepovers or do any normal kid things.
I know for a fact that the kid has told his father that he doesn't want to play anymore, but the dad doesn't care. In his messed up head, he thinks he's doing what's best for his son.
17. Panopticon Problems
My parents were horrible. They would regularly read my diary and go through my computer, until apparently that wasn't enough. They once left video cameras up while I was hanging out with a friend and talking. They loved to repeat things I had said or written to me, just to let me know that I had no privacy. It created a huge surveillance culture and terrified me!
18. A Vast Conspiracy
There was a student who I’ll refer to as D. I was one of four teachers in a conference with D's mother and a school counselor. I was the last of the teachers to talk, but I said much the same as the other teachers: D skips class all the time, yells out constantly, never does his work, and regularly calls you over to ask questions before intentionally passing gas in your face.
D was awful. Who behaves like that in 10th grade? Anyway, after all four of the teachers said essentially the same exact thing, D's mom looked at the counselor and shouted, "I don't understand why all these teachers are lying about my son!" D's older two brothers were both behind bars. Sadly, I assume that D has since followed in their footsteps.
19. Ain't That A Kick In The Head
During a conversation with a student’s mother about a violent outburst in class one day, the mother angrily shouted at me, "My child would never kick a teacher!" With all due respect, ma'am, I believe that the bruise on my shin would beg to argue otherwise. It’s amazing how some people are just totally unwilling to deal with reality...
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20. The Big Sleep
I‘m the child in this story. My dad chose to wait until I was fully grown up to tell me that my mom had secretly given me an excessive amount of sleeping pills on a pretty frequent basis when I was a little child. As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, there was also the chilling reason why she did it. It was so she could leave me alone at home for hours at a time and maintain her secret, adulterous relationship with her lover while my dad was off working in another country.
Hearing about this secret cleared up many questions that I had long wondered about with regards to my childhood. I’m doing well today, and my mom’s actions haven’t affected me in any real long-term way; except for the fact that I don’t remember much about my childhood. On the bright side, at least I didn’t suffer physically or feel any direct pain as a result of what she did.
Being that irresponsible and careless towards her child, she could easily have done something much worse to me if she’d had a reason to. I should mention, though, that I have been dealing with depression and anxiety since I was only a few years old. But I’m not sure whether or not this is directly related to what my mom did.
To be honest, I have gotten pretty good at dealing with depression since I have been living with it all my life. So, in a sense, I have actually gotten some small amount of good out of the whole ordeal. Other than this one problem, my life is really good on the whole. So I really can’t complain. I also want to clear up that, despite all that happened, I’m on okay terms with my mom today.
I believe that she was simply young and dumb when this went down and that she has since learned from her mistakes. I forgave her for what she did to me. At the same time, I do not forgive her for what she did to my dad. She did a terrible thing to him. My dad is the greatest person that I’ve ever known and he deserves to be happy.
21. Are People Really This Crazy?
My stepfather was having parent-teacher conferences and he was talking to this one kid's parents. The parents had a question about when my stepfather was going to go over the Civil War. My stepfather said it would happen in about a week or so. The parents then said, “Great, because we will be pulling our kid from class during that unit.”
My stepfather asked why, and their answer was completely jaw-dropping. They said: “We believe the Civil War never happened, and we are still living under the Confederate government." My stepfather was flabbergasted and didn't know how to respond—and then, somehow, it got worse. Then the parents got up and said to him, "We will also be pulling our kid out for the WWII unit because the Holocaust was made up and never happened."
22. Picture Perfect
My mom is a kindergarten teacher. She had this one terrible student who not only kicked her in the face while she was helping him with his work, but he also actually swiped her digital camera from her desk drawer. She keeps it at work to take pictures of kids' projects and events and stuff, to share with their parents.
His parents suggested that my mom shouldn't have bent down to help the students lest she be within kicking range, and that she should leave her valuables at home.
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23. Car Trouble
When I was about 12 years old, my dad lost his life to leukemia. He was never around much when I was growing up, so I didn't see him often. But that was not the secret. I actually distinctly remember the day he took off and left us. I woke up one morning and there was a pile of new toys on the living room floor with a note for mom.
Anyway, he started coming around again later, when he received his prognosis. We developed something resembling a positive relationship before his passing. When he finally did pass, it absolutely destroyed me. I still remember the funeral. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the car because I didn't want to see it.
In his will, he left me his car. It was a Camaro that I was supposed to get when I turned 16. I was very moved when I found out about that. But then things took a bizarre turn. For some apparently inexplicable reason, my dad’s parents fought tooth and nail to keep the car away from me. They were really crummy people, as his entire side of the family was.
We eventually just told them to bugger off and we kept the darn car. Fast forward about 15 years ahead. I suddenly found out that the guy who had passed was not actually my dad. He was my brothers' dad, but not mine. My real, biological dad has been living in the next town over, 20 minutes away from my house, for my entire life without me knowing he even existed.
It turned out that my entire family knew about this, except for me. That was why my "grandparents" fought to keep the car. They knew I was not his son. I still don't definitively know if he himself knew or not, but I assume he must have. My maternal grandmother has met my biological father several times over the years. My mom said she never thought these details were anything worth bringing up to me.
Said she intended for me to never find out. I've still never spoken to my biological father. I know his full name and an approximation of where he lived as of about 10 years ago. Beyond that, I know absolutely nothing about the guy. Grandma said that if I ever want to meet him, she will help me get in touch. I have no idea if I ever will.
24. Communal Readings
My mother loved to read the texts I sent to my boyfriend out loud to my family at dinner. It was extremely embarrassing, even though my boyfriend and I were only middle schoolers, so the texts themselves were innocent. Talk about privacy violations!
25. Come Clean
One day, my dad walked into my room. I was watching a movie and eating pizza rolls. He was visibly upset, and then started yelling at me that I should “give him the contraband” and “come clean” because he could smell that I was smoking. I was not smoking. I had never smoked. The neighbor’s house, on the other hand, was on fire.
26. Without A Trace
Even though I am currently a 48-year-old woman, this still haunts me. All throughout my childhood, my father had led me to falsely believe that my mother was deceased. And every other member of the family supported the lie. This includes all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and even my stepmother. Every single one of them.
I had no reason to ever doubt this claim. What’s even worse is the reason behind the lie. It turns out he made this up not because my mother was on substances or harmful as a parent, or even a bad person in any way. Nothing like that at all. It was just because the two of them had gotten into a huge argument one night and she went to stay in a hotel with a friend, without me.
When she left the house that night, he was enraged and decided right then and there that she would never be allowed back into my life again. Ever. Under any circumstances. He wrote her off completely and made up a fake story to explain her absence away. Then, on my 18th birthday, she called our house and asked to speak with me. So, I found out the truth.
27. My Lost Boy
My best friend's mom. They live 10 minutes away from me, and my friend is REALLY bad with directions. He drove to my house and got lost, so it took him like 45 minutes. After like 30 minutes, his mom calls me and is sobbing because he hadn't checked in with her. He's 26.
28. Writings of a Madman
Teacher here. I got this insane letter from a parent: “Do not ever write down my son’s name as Chris M. just because another student has his same first name. He is receiving unequal treatment because you are addressing him by his first name and the first letter of his last name. This is deeply unfair and I will be talking to your principal.”
29. The Ruiner
Background: I'm 12 years younger than my older sisters and I was unplanned. At age seven, I overheard my mom crying and saying I was the reason she didn't love my dad anymore/we were poor/why she isn't happy and that she didn't want to be a mom anymore. She said she “didn't know how to love someone who ruined her entire life.”
It was Christmas Eve and she was drunk talking to her best friend on the phone. It broke my heart/spirit and that was only the beginning of my awful childhood. Side note: I'm 29 now and moved out when I was 15 to protect myself. I have no contact with my parents and I'm fully aware it wasn't my fault I was born....but shoot, this memory still screws me up...
30. Bar Mom
My friend and I were going to college three hours away. We ended up at a random bar, had some drinks, had a good time. Next thing we know, his mom showed up, grabbed him by the ear and dragged him out to her car. She proceeded to drive him back to our hometown. The next day, it was his responsibility to figure out a way to get back to college—in time for class, of course.
31. Just Follow the Yellow Brick Road
My mother once threatened to leave me in a parking lot because I refused to stop playing in the snow piles. So, she pulled out of the spot with the plan to just circle the lot and scare me to teach me a lesson about not listening. Well, I started walking home up the highway. She circled around, couldn’t find me, and freaked out.
She finally found me walking up the road about a mile away. I think I was about 11/12.
32. Why Waste a Good Follicle?
I'm a teacher. We had a kid with hygiene issues and when I met his mother, I understood why. We were sitting in a parent-teacher conference with several teachers and at least one administrator present when the mom plucks a hair from her head and starts flossing her teeth with it. It was so gross and inappropriate that I nearly puked.
Cookie Run
33. Not Like That
I was about 15 and visiting a friend's house for the first time. I was left alone in the living room for a while. I didn't know what to do and started looking at the books, which were everywhere. I picked one up. My friend came, saw me holding the book, and panicked. She put the book down to the millimeter where it was.
She said, "Father doesn't like it when we touch his things." Later, I learned no one could have different foods touching on a plate in her father's very intimidating presence and more insane rules. I was freaked out and hardly dared to breathe. I never went back. Her father suffered from a host of psychiatric ailments.
34. A Special Kind Of Stubbornness...
My mother is a teacher. This is only the worst parent story, but there are so many other bad ones too. She was teaching a class in elementary school that had a severely mentally handicapped girl in it. I'm talking constant drooling, unable to form words, just grunts and moans and yells. She clearly belonged in special ed, but her parents refused to put her there.
They INSISTED that she be put in a “normal” class because she does not need special ed. The classes were completely useless for her, and her noise and mess seriously disrupted the education of the other 30 students. The school even had to pay for an aide to be with her all day, because she could not take care of herself.
When the school finally decided to go ahead and put her in special ed, the parents sued the freaking district! Because their 12-year-old with the mentality of a three- or four-year-old DID NOT belong in special ed in their minds. Teachers had to spend their days in court instead of in their classrooms, and my mom had to deal with lawyers and parents telling her she had no idea what was best for their kid.
35. A Change Of Heart
I’m currently 22 years old. When I was a teenager, I found out that my dad did not believe I was his kid when my mom had first given birth to me. He even demanded a paternity test so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support on me. He really thought my mom had cheated on him during a business trip she went on. It was a pretty messed-up situation.
I don’t know why, but a paternity test was never done. Unless it was done in secret and I’ve never been told about it. Either way, learning about this explained why I always felt so distant from my dad for the first ten years of my life. He always favored my older sister more when I was younger and called her “daddy’s little girl.” I felt like he always hated me and this explained why.
Today, he’s the best dad ever. I don’t know if something shifted or what, but me and him are extremely close now and he loves me endlessly. He’s been such a great dad, especially when I was going through a rough time in high school and had really bad depression and anxiety. My mom is a little bit bipolar, so we’ve always lived in a toxic household.
He was the only one to come and pick me up and just be there for me when I needed it most.
36. Prom Date Quiz
When I was a freshman, I made a lot of friends that were upperclassmen. At the end of the year, I got invited to go to prom. My parents made my date (who was just a friend) come over two weeks before prom. They asked him every question imaginable. They got his phone number, home number, email, the works. He was super chill about it, but it was brutally embarrassing.
37. Lost Little Boy
I went on a retreat during my freshman year where no one brought phones. I told my parents that I was going away for three days and not to call me. On the day we came back, the guy driving us got a call. It turned out that when my parent couldn't reach me for three days, they came to my college, and went around campus asking everyone if they'd seen their lost little boy. I was 18 at the time.
38. She Lost the Game of Thrones
In my first college course, there was a 16-year-old in my class and their parent sat through the entire lecture next to them. The professor expressed his concern about her taking up a seat for a student, and the mom immediately snapped at him about how she was paying his salary by enrolling her kid there and she deserved "respect.” Poor kid made no friends that year.
39. Full Circle
My parents are divorced, and they have a big secret that they don’t realize I know. They are both cheating on their current spouses. With each other.
40. A Hole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
My mother was a school psychologist in a town made up mainly of trailer parks and an outlet mall. One year, during a parent-teacher conference meeting about a particular child's behavioral issues, the kid’s stepmother unabashedly proclaimed, "Well, she didn't come outta my hole!" Lady, was that really necessary? Like at all?
41. Mother Issues
I overhead my mother telling the rest of my family that my baby passed because of my negligence. In reality, SIDS took my baby. I did not have a relationship for with my mother for a year after I overheard those words...because she later said it to my face after multiple doctors, funeral directors, and therapists explained how SIDS can’t be intentionally caused.
42. Trading Places
When my oldest sister passed, my older sister was crying to my mother about how she felt alone. My mother was trying to reassure her and said, "You still have vampedvixen, though." But my sister said, "Who cares about her? I want [oldest sister] back." I kinda get it...but this was around the same time my mother told me to my face that it should have been me who passed instead.
Her reasoning was that I don't have a husband or kids like my oldest sister did. It seemed like absolutely no one wanted me in my family and they all wished I could have switched places with the one we lost, which is just about the worst feeling in the world. People wonder why I'm depressed now...jeez, yeah, I really wonder why.
43. Dress Code
My dad is a principal and once suspended a girl for wearing a "shirt" that showed her whole stomach and then refusing to put on another shirt to cover herself up. This was not her first nor her worst offense, and he was fed up. The parents come in to discuss the situation. The dad didn't want to believe his daughter should be suspended, so he attempted to lunge at my dad and fight him.
He called him a bunch of nasty names and made threats about wanting to physically harm him. I can't remember exactly how it all ended, but I think an officer may have been called in and the dad ended up getting thrown behind bars. Why do teachers have to constantly deal with parents who are completely in denial about their children's abilities and have insane expectations?
44. Be Prepared
My son doesn’t know that the reason we don’t see his dad anymore is because he touched him inappropriately when he was an infant. We are waiting until we can find a good psychiatrist for support before I break the news to him.
45. The Truth Finally Comes Out
I’m the child of a parent that hid something horrible from me until I was 27 years old. One day, when my parents had been having some kind of a domestic dispute, my dad decided to call me up just to “get back at my mom.” What he said was so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. He said, “Do you want to know something about your disgusting mother? She slept with over 30 guys during our first two years of marriage!”
I just sat down and started stuttering. He said. “Yeah, you know how people have always said that you looked different than the rest of the kids?” I said, “Yeah...” He said, “That’s because I’m not your dad. Your mom slept with my best friend and that’s how you were conceived. And another thing! Your brother who’s a year younger than you? He belongs to my brother!”
My mom just bawled in tears in the background without denying it. I just laughed it off. And then I immediately went into therapy…
46. Better Things To Do
I work in mental health and crisis management. A few years ago, I worked with a young person who had significant ongoing suicidal ideation and was dealing with a lot of emotional pain. I spent a lot of time with them, looking at de-escalation strategies and working out what their mental health management plan should be as they move forward. It was a high-pressure situation, but not too out of the ordinary for my line of work. Well, until I met this poor young person's parents.
One of their parents came in so we could discuss what had been going on with their child. I had the child's consent to discuss aspects of our sessions with the parent, of course. Midway through me trying to explain some of the child's psychological issues and go through ways the parent could help, they said something that made my jaw drop.
They actually asked me, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but is this going to take much longer? I have a show to go and watch?” All I can say is, I never judge my patients. I’ve never walked their path or viewed the world through their eyes. But the people around them who perpetuate their suffering through ignorance, malice, and selfishness, I judge them.
47. Diary Dabbles
I kept a diary during high school, and one day my mom found it, and read it. From reading my diary, she learned that I had recently lost my virginity to my boyfriend. She freaked out so much that she called my school principal and accused my boyfriend of assaulting me. She did a lot of crazy things, but that one was the scariest by far.
48. Mystery Machine Luxury
The first time I went to prom, I wasn't allowed to ride in the limo with everyone else. Instead, my mom drove me in her ugly Astro van. She had my siblings packed in there. When we got to the venue, she got out with me and asked an administrator if she could stay. Thank god he said no. Oh, and I had a curfew: 8:30 pm. It was 7 when I got there.
49. Don’t Skirt Around the Real Issue Here...
My mum once pulled up my skirt, causing me to involuntarily flash a room full of people, at a family Christmas dinner. I was absolutely mortified. She wanted to check for any potential self-harm scars on my thighs, apparently. I've never physically harmed myself before in my entire life. I was 17 years old at the time.
50. Don't Let Sleeping Babes Lie
I worked daycare and was told to never accept babies sleeping in car seats or sleeping children at all. So if Mom or Dad brought a kid asleep, I immediately woke them up and pulled them out of their car seat. This made so many parents displeased with me but it's policy. I used to think it was to help the kid be on a schedule, but then I found out the disturbing truth behind the rule.
One day, a grandma brought a baby asleep and he was not waking up at all. Just would raise his head, whimper, and go back to sleep. Immediately my boss called 911 and grandma was trying to downplay "he had a rough night, he's just tired, etc." I knew this baby, he wouldn't sleep if he thought he was going to miss out, we had music playing and kids loudly singing and dancing.
In the chaos, grandma slipped out and at some point, someone called the parents. Turns out Granny had a history of giving kids stuff to knock them out when she babysat, but this time she did it to a six-month-old and that's why he wouldn't wake up. I think they pumped the kid's stomach and he had a stay at the hospital. Legal actions were taken and the family moved away.
To clarify, the policy was put in place because my boss knew abusers have been known to do this. They'd break the kid's arm, dose them, dump them with the sitter who lets the baby asleep all morning then because the kid was with the sitter all day, it's easy to blame them for the baby's injury. Or worse, the baby died and they do this to blame the sitter.
So yea, to this day if I'm babysitting, I don't accept sleeping children. I flat out refuse to watch kids at their home while they're sleeping for the same reason. I've pretty much stopped doing any child care because as much as I love kids, watching parents make bad decisions on purpose when they know better, was killing my soul.
51. Not-So Secret Santa
My sister had been dating this guy for a year or two on and off. Now, normally his ethnic background would not be important, but for this particular story it is. He’s Black and my family is English, so we’re all pretty much paper white. At Christmas, my mom gave the boyfriend a box of glow in the dark protection and said, “Do you like the present? It’s so that she can find you in the dark!” It was MORTIFYING.
52. When Things Get Heated
I’m a Senior Government Teacher. I asked a little punk to sit at his desk and not on the heater. No big deal, I don't really care, but those are the rules. He pulls his desk back to the heater and perches himself on the seat back with his butt hovering over the heater. Classic "I'm not touching you" stuff. I give him detention.
He informs me that he isn't going to serve it, on “principle.” He says so with a level of disdain as if he had just discovered that I was responsible for the rise of the Third Reich. I shrug. As if I care about his “principles.” Don't serve, and let it roll into a suspension eventually for all I care! Cut to his mother barging into my class at the end of school.
She is threatening a lawsuit against me for “picking on her boy,” and demanding that I remove the detention or else she is going to my boss. Two things went through my head when I heard this. One, I kind of wanted to watch her give this ridiculous helicopter mom act to my boss, as this kid is a constant discipline issue.
But number two was that she said the word “lawyer.” Our school policy states that if someone brings up the "L" word, we are not to speak about the subject. Period. I go completely silent and she goes apocalyptic. She starts screaming at me for disrespecting her. All I would say is, "You will have to take this up with the administration."
She was ready for and wanted a fight. But she didn't quite know how to handle it. Good stuff. A meeting is called where she rails about respect and how we are all mistreating her boy. She claims that our school’s actions were giving this “good Christian boy” a bad name. The administration listened solemnly, nodded along, and ultimately maintained that he had to either serve the detention or get suspended.
The mother stated that she would not allow her poor son to serve such an unjust 45-minute sentence and that they would be taking the suspension option instead. The family, after failing to get their letter to the editor printed, took out a ½-page ad against the school in the local newspaper. I still have a copy of the ad saved to this day.
It came out later that, while this was all going on, that same kid had managed to knock up a girl from another school. He cheated on his good Christian girlfriend in order to do it, too. They had a nice little wedding and everything. Apparently, the marriage didn't work out in the long run. Now there’s a shocker...
53. Out Of State, Out Of Mind
I worked at a mental health agency and dealt with parents who were involved with child protective services. I had this one couple who needed to complete therapy and do psychological evaluations to prove they could care for their children and give them a safe home. After outlining the plan, the couple refused to do any of it.
Instead, they decided to abandon their children in foster care, move to another state where there wouldn't be files about them, have some more kids, and start over. And that’s exactly what they did.
54. No One Should Have To Use Bing
My father was always worried about the internet. When I was 16, he started letting me take my laptop to my room, but tried lots of methods to stop me from being Dangerous Online. When he found out about the chat sites I used as a workaround for FB, he blocked those. I resorted to using Bing bar’s FB chat function, and I just remember thinking: no one should have to use Bing.
55. Bring Your Dad to Jury Duty
I was 21 the first time I was called up for Jury Duty. My dad tried to follow me into the court because he didn’t believe I could do it myself. Thankfully, he was stopped by security guards outside the area, but then he threw a huge fuss about not being able to accompany me. Most of the courtroom was confused and weirded out. Luckily, they didn't need me throughout the trial, so I was dismissed.
56. Postcards From Heaven
My girlfriend’s aunt died years ago in a car accident, but she isn’t supposed to know that. Her parents still haven't told a soul, and they definitely did not want their young (at the time) daughter to find out about it. Despite the fact that it has been so long since it happened, my girlfriend’s mom still makes fake holiday cards every year claiming to be from her dead sister.
She always mails them to my girlfriend, fully not realizing that my girlfriend has known about what happened from the aunt’s children for years. It’s a super crazy situation. Any time my girlfriend mentions the aunt’s name, her mom just tries to change the subject immediately. I don't know who they think they are helping here.
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57. Double-O-Never
When I was 15 years old, the parents of a kid in my school year made a seven-hour trip to save their pride and joy from watching Casino Royale on the coach's onboard DVD player while driving back from a school trip. The best part about it is that he must have asked our teacher what the film was in advance and then told his mum.
58. A Family Has No Room for Three People
The mom of a former coworker of mine. He was 27 or 28, and his mom didn't approve the woman he was dating, so he kept dating her in secret. He looked really in love with her (GF not so much, but seemed happy). Eventually, his mom started calling me and a couple of other coworkers to check if her son was still dating that woman, so we lied to cover him.
After a year or so of this secret relationship, the girlfriend got pregnant. My coworker proposed, and they started planning a small wedding. When the mom found out she went ballistic. She forced him out of the engagement. He literally broke up with the future mother of his child because his mom said so. All of this happened 10 years ago, I still talk with the GF because I was friends with her. She is living with another guy; her daughter is nine years old and never knew her biological dad.
I have no idea (or interest of knowing) what happened with my former coworker, if he is still living with his mom or what happened.
59. But Mama Said
I had a deranged student who pointed at a girl in class and screamed: “YOU ARE THE DEVIL”. Obviously, at this age, there needs to be an intervention, because you can’t talk to others in that fashion or with that language. We call the mom and explain the situation. The mom’s first and only response was, “Well, if he called her the devil, she probably is the devil.” Can pretty clearly tell where that behavior comes from.
60. Some Unsavoury Characters In The Family
This secret is so messed up that it needs to be shared. My family didn't tell me for years that my brother has attacked multiple children—and that’s not all. On at least one occasion my grandpa has taken advantage of my mother and threatened to kill us grandkids. I found out after my brother tried to attack me and I told my older sister about it.
She immediately told me about the rest, and about the fact that our parents secretly knew all about it. We were raised having a relationship with both of them as if they were just normal human beings and no different than the rest of the family. It’s absolutely disgusting.
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61. Redeeming Qualities
When I was in high school, I asked if I could go to the movies with my friends. It was a G.I. Joe movie that I wasn't super into, but hey, everyone was going and it looked fun enough. Or so I thought. My dad said he wouldn't let me go unless I wrote a paper on the movie after I watched it about its redeeming qualities and Christian principles.
62. Bad Censorship
When I was in middle school, I wanted to go see Titanic. All my friends were seeing it, and it was all anyone talked about. I desperately wanted to see it, but my parents forbid me from buying a ticket. Their reason? I wasn’t allowed to go because “there were breasts in the movie and that's inappropriate.” I was 13 years old, and a girl. I saw breasts every day.
63. Desk Job
I once had a seriously unstable boy in my class. One minute, he would be perfectly pleasant and happy. The next, not so much. One day, we're playing Jeopardy! to study for a test and the teacher gives candy to the winning group. The boy wasn't in a winning group, but wants some candy anyway. He goes up to the assistant teacher, and asks for some.
She says no. He continues to demand some. She still says no. This kid absolutely flips his lid. He grabs the nearest desk and throws it. My assistant teacher starts yelling at us to get down and cover our heads. He's throwing everything he can reach, and has just broken the window. Another male teacher overhears the commotion and comes in to restrain the kid.
He's taken down to the principal's office to meet his parents. We go back to class for 15 minutes when, all of a sudden, the kid’s dad comes bursting into the room. He starts screaming at my assistant teacher, saying that she upset him and that he is going to get her fired for being incompetent. Then he runs out of the room.
We go back to class and pretend this never happened.
64. A Lie Of Historical Proportions
Some of these stories are just really sad. For me, the most laughable experience I've ever had with a kid’s parent was with a plagiarism case. The kid had ripped his entire essay off the internet. I'd googled a few sentences from his assignment and very quickly found the page he got the stuff from. I then printed it out so the kid could see that the two copies were word for word.
He vehemently denied ever having seen that article, so his mum got called in for an interview. We showed her the submitted assignment and the web page printout, and her answer was that her dopey 15-year-old son had actually written the Wikipedia entry on the Treaty of Versailles, so it wasn't plagiarism at all. Nothing like supportive parents…
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65. Pajama Party
When I was in high school, I got caught skipping classes. For the next week, my Dad, who had retired the year before, went to school with me. He drove me to school and then attended every class with me. He also ate lunch with my friends and me. Oh, of course, I've forgotten to mention the worst part! He wore his pajamas the entire time! He didn't shave all week, either.
By the time Friday rolled around, he looked like a crazy homeless person. I never skipped class again.
66. Dark in Every Way
My mom has kept this fact a secret from me, but I found out anyway. My grandma was so mad at my mom for dating young and getting pregnant that she got her brothers to beat her until she miscarried and lost her pregnancies. This happened twice before I was finally conceived. It hurts my heart and I can't look at my family the same.
67. Bad Parenting
I’m a funeral director. We had a service for a young man who died from a reaction to a medication. Parents come in, and they aren't typical grief-stricken adults who lost a child. Rather, they think that this is a perfect time to argue. And fight with each other. Loudly. The director handling arrangements is quickly overwhelmed. Instructs them to calm down. They refuse. They start screaming. She threatens to stab him. He says he'll shoot her. Director runs away and calls the authorities.
They show up. Remind these two that they aren't allowed within several hundred feet of each other - court ordered separation. They argue with the officer. He cuffs them and off they go. And they don't come back.
We're stuck now. We have remains and nothing we can do about it. We call a lawyer and a private investigator to track down the next closest thing this kid has to a relative. Finally get a grandparent and once the body has passed into legally being abandoned, we contact them. They apologize to us for the situation, authorize a simple burial, and we do all the funeral disposition portions at no charge just to get away from our predicament. The grandparents own cemetery property, so they allow him on the family plot...but the crazy stuff is just getting started.
Months go by. Almost a year. Apparently, the parents of this child get out. We don't see them but the grandparents warn us. It is important to note that our funeral home also runs a couple cemeteries. At night, the phone lines for the cemeteries get forwarded to the director on call. It's 2:30 am. I get a call from a sheriff’s deputy.
The parents were fighting in the cemetery. The sheriff is pretty sure the mom grabbed a shepherd’s hook (iron post meant to hold a flower basket) and stabbed the dad. "He's covered in blood but it's not serious and he won't talk to us." The deputy says. "I'm going to cite them for trespass and dump them downtown, but I need you to sign."
I go to the cemetery where their kid is buried. Nobody is there. I call him back thinking maybe he'd already left. But the sheriff says, "He's at XYZ Gardens." I insist that "Their son is buried at ABC Gardens." The line goes silent. The cop slowly says, "You're telling me these two stupid people don't even know where their kid is buried?"
They'd apparently gone to a cemetery, found a grave with a headstone with a relatively similar name to their son’s, and proceeded to trash the site and fight. Never noticing the grave there was for a 90-plus year old. Not their junior high school aged kid.
68. The Slip-Up
Apparently, our dad had another kid about eight years older than me. My mom blurted something out about it after their divorce when she was ticked about something. It was along the lines of, "if he thinks he can forget you exist like that other kid of his..." She then turned very white and I was never able to get more out of her than that.
My dad pretends he doesn't know what I'm talking about but has apparently told my brother a bit of the story and then backtracked and never talked about it again. So yeah, apparently I'm not the oldest.
69. Runs in the Family
Elementary school teacher here. We had a student who wouldn't stop stealing things out of other kids' backpacks. We would catch him on camera and call his parents and they would just say, “No, that's his [insert stolen item], we just bought it for him.” Then, we get him on a positive behavior plan and create intentional lessons about empathy to others, setting goals to get what you want, the difference between wants/needs, etc.
Eventually, he gets enough positive days in a row that he gets released from the behavior plan and receives a free bike as his incentive for good behavior—they were donated to the school by a local bike shop. The next day, he tells me his uncle stole it and pawned it. He went right back to his old behaviors and it was heartbreaking.
70. Premium Parking
I had a student last year who was new to the school. Really nice, friendly, shy, and hilariously absent-minded. He would come to school at least two days a week with either his shirt on backward, inside out, or both. So, I wanted to talk to his parents about how his absent-mindedness was affecting his learning. Mom shows up at five. Dad shows up one hour late.
We have a good chat and they get up to go. As I'm walking them out I said I would show them the shortest way to the parking lot. The dad replies with “I didn't park in the parking lot,” so I said, “You can go the same way to the street.” He said, “I couldn't find the parking entrance so I just drove around and parked on an asphalt play area.”
Sure enough, I walk by and his car is next to the playground. It all came together after that.
71. A History of Violence
Used to work with teenagers who had behavior problems in a special school. One day, a student of mine had a tantrum. He started punching staff and students alike while screaming. It took five male teachers to hold him down. The headmaster called his mom, so she could pick him up. She had ten minutes; if longer, we would call the cops.
The mother arrived eight minutes later. A woman in her late forties with bleach blond hair wearing a mini skirt and a crop top. She came in yelling and swearing at her son. She picked him up and smacked him at the back of the head while telling him he was a good for nothing idiot. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
What I meant by "the apple does not fall far from the tree" is that I understood from then on why this kid was violent and angry all the time. Often, the parent's behavior is reproduced by the child.
72. Traumatic Flip of Switch
My first teaching job, I had a fifth grader who was THE WOOOOORST (Jean-Ralphio voice). He would literally just stand up in the middle of class, laugh like a madman, and run out of my classroom. He also did a few things in the bathroom that no sane child would ever do, mostly involving feces. I was new, so I asked around to see if this kid had a history of bad behavior.
All of his previous teachers said he was actually one of the better-behaved kids, and he was pretty smart. No previous history of this kind of attitude or behavior whatsoever. They were baffled. We (and by "we" I mean "all the fifth-grade teachers and the principal") met with his parents four times in two months, trying to determine the cause of all of this.
In the first three meetings, his parents were cooperative, but seemed a little slow. They couldn't think of any reason why little J (we'll call him J) would act in such a way. In the fourth meeting, I said "listen, kids don't just flip a switch like this. J has ZERO history of disciplinary problems until this year. Can you think of ANYTHING that happened between 4th and 5th grade that might affect his psychological makeup?" Their answer made my blood run cold.
They said "Oh! His uncle was found shot dead in our home this summer. J was the one who discovered his body." Something that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!!!
73. Love, Money, or Mother?
I worked at Best Buy. I stopped in with my mom one day because she wanted to buy me the Star Wars DVD box set for my birthday. I had a huge, HUGE crush on the girl who was working the customer service counter. Well, the DVD set rang up $10 more than it was priced, and my mom deliberately didn't say anything until after the transaction.
Why? Well, so she could claim the freaking $5 Michigan Scan Law bounty. My crush didn't know how to process it and the manager was busy, so my mom tore into her about how it was her job and how she should understand how to do things. At my job. To a girl I liked. My life was misery for a while afterward.
74. AIM Kidnapping
In middle school, I had an AIM, which I loved and used often. We had moved out of state and I'd made no new friends yet and AIM was a lifeline to me. Of course, my insane stepmom read every single conversation I had on there. Then, I don’t know why, she decided to print out pages and pages of my chats. She added handwritten notes about myself on the pages.
On the drive home, she told me that an officer pulled a guy over and found that info packet on me in his backseat. She didn't even change her handwriting, so I knew it was her, but wow!
75. That’s a Bit of a Stretch
One of my student's parents was a complete whack-job, but one day she really lost it. After he didn't get a perfect score on an English assignment, she burst into my classroom and screamed that I "made up punctuation" to "disadvantage her precious son."
76. Walk Away
I honestly did not believe this story at first, as it was told to me by another teacher. Then I met the children involved. A mother of two children had both of her kids in all-day special education classes, as they could not walk and could not talk in anything resembling a recognizable language. The reason that they could not walk was that their mother refused to let them learn to walk.
She would insist on strapping them into a double stroller at all times whenever they were not sleeping. The reason that they could not talk is that she would not talk to them in anything but some crazy made-up language involving a lot of grunting, a language that she apparently invented herself. She was collecting large amounts of social security and disability payments for both of her "disabled" children.
They lived in a private gated community, and she drove a nicer car than any of the staff at the school did. The kids responded well to the special education program, as they were actually very smart, but they will probably always have issues for the rest of their lives as a result of their development being stunted on purpose.
77. Settle Down, Beavis
My mom caught me watching Beavis and Butthead when I was eight. I was forced to watch every single episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman with her as punishment. It was cruel...but effective.
78. Satanic Panic
The rule was that my mom had to pick out my friends because she didn't want me hanging out with anyone who was into Satanic content. The problem? To my mom EVERYTHING was Satanic. Everyone I brought home was influenced by the devil because their parents let them listen to modern pop music and watch Pokemon and DBZ (mid-late '90s.)
Visiting my friends’ homes was strictly forbidden on account of the fact that the only opinions she wanted me to have were hers and hers only. It also didn't help when I wanted to play at the park with my friends and my mom would literally follow us and watch us the entire time. Eventually, no one wanted to be my friend anymore.
Needless to say, I'm not a Catholic anymore and my mom and I are not in good terms. There were a ton of crazy rules living with my parents (mainly from my mom; my dad only followed to avoid arguments), but this rule was the one that affected me the most.
79. Helicoptering Everywhere
Our next-door neighbors were the epitome of helicopter parents. One day they even came over to tell my parents that my brother and I needed to go to bed at 7 pm just like their kids, because otherwise their kids could see our bedroom lights turned on and it made them jealous. My parents politely declined, thank god, but wow! Wild!
80. Short-Sighted
I was teaching a sweet 13-year-old girl who obviously couldn't see the board very well and needed glasses, as she was falling behind in class. I called her mother—this is in south London so imagine a Jade Goody voice—and her mum told me to screw off and that “I didn't need freaking glasses, my mother didn't need freaking glasses so she doesn't need any freaking glasses” and hung up.
In that situation, you just feel for the girl.
81. If at First, You Don’t Succeed...
I know that my mom tried to have Child Protective Services take my daughter away from me when she was born, claiming that I had used drugs while I was pregnant. I was actually nine years clean at the time. She tried again when I was diagnosed with cancer. You would be amazed to see what doctors actually put in your medical records…
82. Going Above and Beyond
Parent and child had a complaint about grading on a minor assignment. Parent emailed me, the principal, Board of Education, and Barack Obama. No reply from anyone, except the principal.
83. Irony Was Lost on Him
My partner used to be a high school teacher, and he always tells me the story of how one time one of the kids' dad's showed up at the school with a sledgehammer because they gave his son detention. If I recall, the detention was for fighting too.
84. Final Insult
After my best friend in the world died, his parents absolutely refused to let me go to the funeral. I’m not allowed to be there to say goodbye to one of my closest friends ever because his parents think that because I was there the day he was killed in a terrible accident, I’m somehow to blame for their son’s demise. They treat me like I’m the bad guy, but what could I have done? It makes me feel so much worse and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.
85. She Saved His Life
My parents kept this secret away from me for a long time. When I was only about three or four years old, my dad had been volunteering at a baseball park to shuttle people back and forth on a golf cart. Well, one night, he didn't come home until really late. When I heard him come home, I went to say hi to him. But I stopped in my tracks when I saw him. He looked scared and distraught.
He is normally a rough and tough kind of guy and he has a very big heart. So I asked him what was wrong. He simply said nothing and that he was fine. I believed him and went back to bed. I woke up the next morning to see that our cousin, who often doubles as our babysitter, was at our house, but neither of my parents was.
I asked my cousin where they had gone. She said that they had decided to go to the morning service of church instead of their usual afternoon one. Again, I believed her and never questioned any of it. Flash forward 10 years. That was when my mom finally told me what really happened. And it turned out to be something utterly horrific.
It turns out my dad had been shuttling some guy back to the parking lot when the guy suddenly pulled out a knife and held it up to my dad's neck. He then proceeded to take my dad behind a dumpster and assaulted him in a brutal and awful way. So, when he got home that night, he waited for everyone to go to sleep and then tried to take his own life by overdosing on painkillers.
My mom woke up in the middle of the night, realizing that he wasn't in bed. She found him in the bathroom, lying on the floor completely motionless. She immediately called for an ambulance and followed it along to the hospital where he was to be treated. He made a full recovery and is thankfully still going strong today.
I don't know where I would have been without him if my mom hadn’t saved his life that night.
86. Literally Living in His Dad’s Shadow
I taught first grade at a small private school. My first year, I had the ultimate helicopter parent. He looked at everything and got on his child's case about everything from his test scores to the quality of his homework. He always had questions about the curriculum, my teaching methods, etc. The child was a bit of a precocious boy, very smart but already rebelling from being under his dad's thumb all the time.
The dad would want to come in and observe the student's behavior. Dad would volunteer in the classroom but would spend most of his time critiquing his son. He'd then want to have long conferences about his son's behavior. I told him I thought his son acted out more when he was there and that I didn't think he should be in the classroom anymore and the dad's solution was to install a camera in the classroom so he could observe him without actually being there.
Obviously, that didn't happen. I learned a lot about setting boundaries that year.
87. Double Life
My dad had a secret girlfriend for several decades. We suspect some of her children might be his as well. He had 7 children with my mom, and I guess to escape he'd leave and live with the girlfriend for a couple of weeks at a time. The woman lived a couple houses down from them, so me and my siblings never suspected anything, because he was still around the house a lot during those times.
My mom didn't like it, but she was a very prim and proper woman, and this was during a time when people didn't air their dirty laundry and they certainly didn't divorce. I was told that when the woman died in the early 2000s, my mom sent flowers to the funeral; not sure if it was out of spite or just because that's the kind of woman she was.
No one talked about it for years and years until my mom started showing signs of Alzheimer's and dementia in her 70s. She would revert back to that time a lot. It was hard watching her relive it every day.
88. Look Out, Here I Come!!!
My 350-pound mother streaked in front of my boyfriend and all of my friends for 100 bucks. I was only 16 years old at the time, but that unshakable image still haunts me to this day.
89. Killing Them Sweetly
My aunt never let my cousins have any kind of sugar or candy. She told them that it was poison and tasted nasty. One time while our grandma was babysitting them (they were six), she let them have one Capri Sun each. They loved it, saying, "Grammy, sugar actually tastes GOOD!" and threw up shortly after because their stomachs could not handle it.
My cousins are alcoholics now.
90. Phoning It In
Parent-teacher conference. Father pulls out his phone and looks at it for the entire 25 minutes that I’m trying to speak to him. I could visibly see the kid’s demeanor deflate as his father found his phone more important than his son. I felt awful and developed a whole new understanding of the boy's bad behavior in class.
91. Taking Things Way Too Far
A divorced dad at my local high school thought that the school's track coach was hitting on his former wife. After a team party at a local restaurant, the coach was walking around and standing outside with all the parents. I still can’t believe what happened next—it’s so horrifying. It's at this moment that the dad, who wasn't invited to the team party, came up behind the coach with a baseball bat.
He cracked the bat across the coach’s head. The coach crumpled to the ground, hitting his head on a parking block. He instantly passed on. It was a huge tragedy. We've held memorials for him yearly ever since.
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92. Bad Dads
My dad, influenced at least in part by the movie Bad Boys II, decided to mess with my boyfriend on my first date by acting like a tough guy. He filled a whiskey bottle with tea and, when he answered the door, he started chugging down the whole thing while scanning my boyfriend up and down. He then tried to break the bottle over his own head and instead of looking cool, just gave himself a concussion. It took me a long time to get another date after that.
93. A Family of Mediums
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone without my mom or grandmother listening in from another phone in the house. If I wanted to send a personal letter, they had to read it before it went in the mail, and of course they opened anything that came addressed to me. I also had to write in a diary daily which they were allowed to read.
Schoolwork, I had to let one of them read before I turned it in and then when it was graded, show them the comments the teacher had made. My mom would even go through my trash and if she found something—a note from a friend, a phone number jotted down on a notecard, etc. she would iron out the paper and make me explain it.
For a while, I wasn't allowed any toys that weren't educational. When I was five, my grandpa bought me a Transformer and before I was allowed to play with it, he had to make a two-hour defense to my grandma that the Transformer was not only a pretty accurate model of a real jet, but also a puzzle and having it would foster patriotism and an interest in technology and otherwise improve my mind. In the end, I got to keep it. She didn't know it was from a TV show or it would've gone right in the trash.
Going to see movies wasn't a matter of "Hey mom can I have money for a movie?" I had to cut an ad for it and a review out of the paper, highlight the parts of the ad and review that made me interested in the film, and present these to an adult at dinner. The adults in the house would then debate the pros and cons of me seeing the movie, and sometimes I would be allowed to go—supervised, of course.
94. The IT Dad
My stepdad is an IT guy and constantly monitored our Internet browsing habits and blocked certain channels on TV (normal ones!). Anytime I tried to wear something new or do something different, he criticized it so heavily that most of the time, I just went and cried. The first time I got a buzz cut, it was like I committed a crime.
95. Mom’s Principal
I finally got an iPod touch. Everyone else would bring theirs to school and use them in their free time. But no, I couldn't take mine to school. If I tried, my mom would freak out. Well, one day I took it anyway. While I was sitting in one of my classes, I got called to the principal’s office. My mom called the school and told them to take my iPod from me.
96. Facebook Sneak
My mom would go through my phone when I wasn't around. How do I know this? Glad you asked. I'd find out because she would bring up embarrassing information in front of all my friends and family. Once my mom even found my crush on Facebook and messaged him an extremely long message. To this day, I don't even know what it said.
97. Lost Expenses
I’m a clinical psychologist and the case that has stayed with me over the years goes back to one simple question. I was in a therapy session with a five-year-old girl who said she didn't want to see one of her parents because they "hadn't paid child support." Excuse me? What five-year-old knows, understands, or needs to be worried about child support? Clearly, one of the parents had manipulated their child to detest the other parent.
98. Adopting A New Attitude
My parents recently confided in me and told me that my sister is adopted. They have never told her about this, and they apparently plan on keeping it a secret from her forever. They are worried about how she would react to being told, and how the knowledge would affect her relationship with them. She's currently 34 years old. I have no idea what to do with this information.
99. Minors Must Be Accompanied
I was halfway through a counseling session with a couple with a four-month-old baby. I asked about the baby, and the mom said, “She’s in bed at home.” I said, “Ah, grandparents babysitting?” The dad went, “No, she is at home alone. Nothing can happen to her. We bought a special mattress. One where she can’t suffocate.”
At this point, my jaw was on the floor, and I was just staring at them for a couple of seconds. Then I asked how long it took them to get here. They told me about 15 minutes, so I said, “Alright, the session’s over. I want you guys to go home immediately and call me when you arrive. Please hurry. And never ever leave your baby alone!”
100. Baby’s First Attempted Chemical Lobotomy
So, I'm a therapist and I work with kids. The worst misdiagnosis was a family with a two-week-old who was convinced the baby had 1) anxiety—because he cries, 2) autism—little eye contact, and 3) bipolar disorder—because the baby would seem content then suddenly angry. I spent HOURS explaining child development, what these diagnoses mean, how they would present in kids.
I provided them with books, handouts, etc. They insisted on going to see my co-worker and a psychiatrist as I was surely lying to them. Even after meeting with the other two professionals, they still weren't convinced. They requested psych meds from the doc.
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