Weekly thread: Your Recent Parenting "Fails"
Let's normalize the hell out of them.
My children’s school makes it very clear that, should our kids require a change to their default dismissal plans, we must call or email the school before 2pm. Yesterday, my daughter was going to be picked up by our afternoon babysitter instead of going home on the bus as she usually does — something she does every Wednesday. Usually, I remember to email the school in the morning. Yesterday, not so much. At 2:56pm — four minutes before the bus leaves the school — I realized my mistake and totally panicked. I called the school, entered the wrong extension, called back, got the principal’s assistant’s voicemail, called back again, and finally got a hold of her. My daughter was already in line for the bus outside, about to board, but in some kind of walkie-talkie miracle involving multiple staff members, they managed to pull her out of line just in time.
I felt like a total doofus. But then I shared the experience on Instagram and received tons of replies to the effect of, “I just did this, too!” and “Teacher here — this happens all the time and it’s okay!” That made me feel so much better.
I’d like you to experience that same sense of relief. What are your recent parenting "fails”? Share them here so we can reassure you that they are actually totally normal, that we’ve all been there, and that you’re still doing an awesome job.
Oh my goodness my attempt at teaching critical thinking completely backfired. So my daughter (5) was asking about whether unicorns were real, and I took the opportunity to try to establish a mental framework: things can either be fact (they're true and we can prove it), fiction (intentionally made up/they're not true and we can prove it), or belief (we can't prove whether they're real or not, so it's a matter of belief/opinion. I started with some easy facts and easy fictions, and then we circled back to unicorns. And she said that there weren't unicorns on our planet, but we couldn't prove that they didn't exist somewhere else, so they must be a belief—which I thought was a really smart answer. Then, she asked about the Easter Bunny. And I should caveat that Easter is probably her favorite holiday. So we talked it through, and decided that the Easter Bunny was a belief. So far so good.
Then... she asked if *I* believe in the Easter Bunny. I thought about it for a moment, but then decided I shouldn't lie to her, so I said no. And it BROKE HER. She started crying and wailing and ran to her room, and when I could get words out of her, she said she was sad and hurt that I didn't believe. It took nearly 30 minutes to calm her down again. Total FAIL!
If it makes you feel better, I once walked home from kindergarten by myself, without anyone’s permission, completely eluding the teacher, bus monitors, and my babysitter, simply because I wanted to see if I could do it, and I missed my mom, who worked from home. I plotted my route while riding the bus to school for a week before I did it, and some maternal fifth graders helped me cross the one busy street involved. I was so tired when I got there (it was probably a mile walk) that I collapsed into the front hallway crying, to my mom’s astonishment. I remember zero consequences for anyone involved. But I can imagine it was an “oh BLEEP” moment for every adult link in that chain.