Strollerderby Playdate: Screwed Up Bad? You're Not Alone

Amy Kuras — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:17:00 GMT

The list of things that make me nuts is long and comprehensive, but near the top is smug hubris-filled jackholes who think their way is the only way and that we actually want or need to listen to their advice.

And ooohhhhh does the parenting corner of the Internet attract those people. Posting anything, anything at all on the Internet about your own parenting is a really good way to get told you're a horrible person who should have never had kids. And those are the nice commenters — anyone who's kept a blog or been on a message board has probably been the focus of a poorly spelled screed using insults like "stuped ideot". Because getting called a name by someone who can’t spell really hits a writer where they live.

Which is why I extra double super special love people who gleefully swap "You think YOU suck? Listen to what I did!" stories, who understand that if you can see the humor in this whole parenting sitch and realize we all make mistakes, we make life much much easier on ourselves and everyone else.

So my Playdate love this week goes to Finslippy, written by the lovely Alice Bradley. She asked readers to share their Bad Parent moments, and my oh my did people respond. She posted the best in this post, and still they just kept on coming. I may or may not have posted one myself. The stories are mostly hilarious, some are a little bit sad, and of course there was the requisite commenter who called everyone miserable human beings and didn't we realize we were ruining! our children's! precious and fleeting childhoods! and another commenter who just saw fit to post a link to attachmentparenting.org. Um, thanks?

Check it out. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you may even pee a little.

One Child Left Behind. In a Daycare. After Closing Time.

Karen Murphy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:26:00 GMT

No childcare situation is perfect. Let's just get that straight. Even if you believe that the best place for a kid is at home, there are holes in that, too. So instead of hating on those who take their kids to daycare, for whatever reason, let's just move on and explore something awful that happened, something that was almost catastrophic.

A 16-month old girl was left alone in a Dallas-area daycare after the owners locked up and left for the night. For two hours. Strapped into a high chair. Asleep.

No, I'm not a daycare-hater. But I like to point out problems. And while there's absolutely no way to tell if something like this would ever happen in the facility you patronize (or is there?), it's good to figure out not only what you would do if it happened to you and your child but also ways to minimize the risk.

The baby was fine, by the way. But imagine arriving to pick up your child and seeing her, head lolling, asleep but through a locked door. Mom called 9-1-1 and firefighters broke in. Baby was checked out at a hospital, totally fine, as a precaution.

Though police and Child Protective Services are checking into the matter, the mom says that she's going to continue taking her baby to that daycare. Not that she likely wants to at this point. But because she has no other choice.

Strollerderby : horror stories

Strollerderby Playdate: Screwed Up Bad? You're Not Alone

One Child Left Behind. In a Daycare. After Closing Time.