Our family is in the middle of a move. We are moving ten minutes down the road from where we currently live, out of the cookie-cutter suburbs and into the custom-made estate lot suburbs where our children will be able to kick a soccer ball without disturbing the neighbours’ lawns, pools or tranquility. But more importantly, where we won’t have to look at our neighbours sunbathing 24/7. Yes folks, even with the crappy summer we’ve had so far, my neighbours have found a way to work on their tan. Maybe I’m just jealous of their idleness. Still, I won’t miss them: bikinis and Speedos after 40 are a privilege ladies and gentlemen, not a right.
Packing boxes with a three-year-old underfoot should be an Olympic discipline, just ask Andrea who came to help on Saturday. So I guess we should have known things were going a little too well when an unknown neighbour rang our doorbell to bring back our son. He had wandered two streets away “on a walk” as he explained later. “Is he one of yours?” he asked, “I thought you might want to have him back.” In a spectacular display of lying through his teeth, my husband said “Yes, thank you,” resisting the urge to say something like “No, we were doing just great” or, even more accurately “Uh, we didn’t even know he was missing…” Our son, in the meantime, was shooting looks at his benefactor thinking “One perfectly good walk, ruined!”
With six kids under my belt, I have learned to laugh at my parenting failures. Still, each one of them has hunted me with “what if’s?” and this latest escapade from my son is no exception. It can be difficult to keep everyone safe in a large family and my luck sometimes leaves me uncomfortable. What if…
So this is the first ProWomanProLife Parent of the Year forum. What is the worst parenting failure you can now laugh at? You can stay anonymous. Come on, make me feel normal please!
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Andrea adds: Saturday was fun. Kept me on my toes. Between the “match the tupperware with the right lid” game I devised for your three-year-old to keep him from blowing that whistle while you were putting the baby down, and the tap shoes used interchangeably between the three-year-old and your older daughters, I felt right at home. (Who doesn’t want tap shoes? I always have. Plus a show on Broadway, but I digress.) Through it all, your neighbours, serenely lying out in the muggy overcast cloud, drinking adult beverages. You are correct: bikinis past 40 are not a right. In fact, for some, they are downright criminal.
by 
My first son was and is a “vroom, vroom, baby” He loves cars and everything about them…..well one day I stopped at a friends to pick something up. Didn’t even think twice when I left the car running and locked the doors as it was just going to be a quick couple feet from the driveway to the front door. I no more then grabbed what I had come for and turned around to hear my friend saying “your car is moving!” It seemed his need for all things motorized gave him the motivation to somehow work the complicated clasps on his car seat, climb out, and put the van into drive. I don’t know how that even works as I thought you had to push on the break to put a car in gear….apparently not. I also learned that if the car is in gear you can’t use the electric door opener to unlock it. You have to use the key which unless you are more coordinated then I, requires waiting for the car to stop. I thank GOD that he steered the van at idle speed into the ditch between the two driveways where it stopped, stuck in the mud. I often live with the assumption that my boys have a couple of extra guardian angels….this time I was sure of it!! 🙂
My worst personal one (probably, there are a lot to choose from) was putting my oldest son (then 4-ish) on top of a stack of 8 or so chairs. I checked to be sure it was stable, then turned my back for all of 2 seconds. In that time the stack fell forwards, with my son’s face scraping on the cement floor. The gushing blood prompted a rush to the hospital – fortunately, half way there the bleeding had fully stopped and we decided to bypass the hospital, entirely because we brought our kids there too often for things like this and didn’t want another strike against us in whatever ‘file’ they keep on bad parents.