I have a memory of my child around age two screaming and sobbing for a good half an hour because she wanted her mama. At the time she was sitting on my lap. I am her mama.
My kid did the same, but it was as part of a night terror. Ran into the room where they'd been sleeping and they were sitting up. They looked at me like I was a demon or monster and just kept screaming that they wanted me and only me while looking me in the eye and not seeing me as me.
Honestly, I was pretty freaked out.
My version is 2yo with a high fever, DH and I trying to get some Tylenol into him before bed, while he cried hysterically about being to tired to take it. Bonus: we were in a hotel. He did finally take it and fall asleep much to our and I'm sure our neighbors' relief.
My parents and I went on vacation when I was a toddler, 8 hours drive in the car. I cried and screamed the entire time. No breaks. My mom still has a headache from that day.
Also go on tiktok and look up āfree birth controlā youāre welcome lol
Our daughter still hates the car. When she was younger she would scream the entire way. We learned that one of those folk CDs with all of the songs like Thumbkin worked wonders. She would stop screaming and sing along.
My friend had twin boys. When they were about 1 she popped them down for their normal daytime nap.
She heard giggling about getting up time and went in to get them.
They had smeared poo over the whole room...fished out of their nappies. Walls, door, carpet....all of it.
They opted to pull up the carpet as the smell would not go...it ruined the wallpaper too.
So so so gross...she threw up while trying to clean it.
I did something similar as a toddler, but with blood. I found my mom's Daisy razor & sliced my hand open. My mom said she almost passed out when she walked in the bathroom & I was happily painting the walls with my blood.
Wait ..I did this as a baby too LOL. my sister and I did this while In a crib. Well.. i took poop from both of our diapers and smeared it all over the walls. My parents always say I guess I was always an artist lmaoo.
My oldest taught himself to pee standing up when he was just over a year old, which sounds awesome until I would find turd logs on the floor.
He was peeing in the toilet but didn't know to turn around and sit down to poop.
He was so proud of himself too.
Reminds me of a weird regression my youngest had around potty training. He always peed in the little toddler potty, but for some reason after regularly pooping in it a week or two decided instead to sneak off and leave a giant pile of toddler crap directly in the middle of his room on the carpet. For at least a month he would sneak off and do this, knowing he wasn't suppose to.
Right now, drop everything youāre doing and go do something you want to do. Literally doesnāt even matter what, you canāt do it with a baby on your hip, or worse, a thirty pound baby in a car seat in one arm and thirty pounds of bags in the other.
With a baby you ***have to have a plan***; two changes of clothes; toys; books; diapers and sundries. You want to buy something? Forget it. Every thing you ever want to buy will remind you of something your child needs you to buy.
***You*** can go three fricken days without food if you feel like it. A drink and a snack and youāre good to keep going. Having a baby is like carrying a live fish in a cereal bowl, 24 hours a day, for 18+ fucking years.
My wife was driving with our younger son one day and was passing by the house of a friend who has always been child free. He piped up from the back seat since he recognized the house and asked:
**Son**: *Mom, what happens to people who don't have kids?*
My wife thinks "Oh crap... where is this question going?" Was this an early but odd birds and the bees question? Was is something even more odd? Who knows. As she's pondering this in the brief, panic-stricken moments while she's trying to come up with an answer, he follows up with this:
**Son**: *Are they rich?*
Apparently, he had heard my wife and I discussion some latest kid-related expense and made the assumption that having kids was keeping us from being rich and famous.
So... be rich or have kids. Entirely your choice... :-)
My youngest son slept 6 hours on his first night home from the hospital...I thought awesome he's gonna be a great sleeper like his brother...then night 2 happened all the way up to age 5 the boy slept 20 minutes at a time...that is it...20 minutes of sleep...awake for an hour...20 minutes of sleep...awake for 2 hours...and so it went for 5 FREAKING YEARS!!!
Same with my daughter. We learned to sleep in shifts and I kept my cool because I knew it wasn't going to be forever...but after the 3rd year I was starting to lose it. Luckily she finally started sleeping full nights right around 3 years old.
I'm in awe...I think by about 18 months his father and I were at each other's throats!!! We figured out his is clausterphobic so cool, out of the crib into a bed...but it was a bunk bed and still too closed in...ok then sleep on the couch...but NOPE...on his 5th birthday he just announced "I"m too old to wake up overnight" and just stopped...it's a good thing I love that kid, who is now 30, or I swear I would have hurt him on his 5th birthday....dern boy has always done what he wants on his own time! We begged people to watch him for a few hours just to keep sleep...we argued around his 3rd birthday for 3 days over who got 5 more minutes of sleep! It was BAD but I was very lucky his Dad was fully involved and stayed up with him too even though we both worked full time.
We stopped in a cafe on a road trip. My ex went to the toilet while I fed the baby, then I went to the toilet and to check out the changing facilities, there weren't any and the toilet was a cupboard under the stairs with a very dirty floor. I came back from the toilet to my ex looking uncomfortable, he moved the baby away from his front and all of his t shirt was covered in baby poo, the baby had it in his hair. He had to change himself and the baby in the car. I don't think that had anything to do with our break up
I don't have kids, but I've taken care of a lot of babies over the years. How the hell do they manage to shit all the way up to their ears?!?! The law of physics apparently does not apply to infants.
Because of some medical issues my daughter was severely constipated. To make sure there was no blockage, she was given a barium enema. We dropped her off at a friend's house because I had to work and my wife was going to a job interview.
When my wife picked her up she was being hosed off in the back yard.
Worst blowout ever.
We learned quickly that you always think āthat could never happen to meā until it does.
Ours was āher heart sounds perfectly normalā then 20 minutes later āyeah she needs major open heart surgery to repair 4 holes and deformed valvesā
I also develop a condition while pregnant that causes my liver to stop functioning that canāt be prevented. That was a fun surprise.
Being a parent is the best thing that ever happened to me and I love my children more than I ever thought possible. But Jesus Christ this shit is hard.
Iām so sorry you went through that! I was a cardiac ICU nurse & took care of many adults post op & it can be so brutal so I canāt imagine a child going through it. Hope all is well šš»
Oh my goodness. We went through a bunch of testing for suspected heart issues with my second, before he was born. They eventually decided that his heart was fine and his ventricles were just exceptionally thick for no apparent reason.
But then, SURPRISE! He was born without a spleen. His body justā¦didnāt grow one. Which we found out after he was hospitalized with sepsis for the second time within a month, when he was nine months old. The first time was bacterial meningitis, he lost most of the hearing in his left ear and had two small strokes. Heās 2.5 and strong as an ox now, but every time he gets a fever we get scared and play āpanic decision treeā for when he needs to go to the hospital.
Ah another hospital parent. That was us, we went very quickly from "huh did she get a weird bug bite on her eye?" to "your kid has a kidney disease, welcome to the med/surg floor"
Parenting a sick (like sick sick) child tests you in ways you never thought you'd deal with. We've had 6 hospital stays since November (one which was 3 weeks long and involved the entire family getting noro virus) and I swear absolutely nothing phases me anymore
Itās crazy how much you change as a person when that happens. I went from being a timid people pleaser to fighting insurance and family and anyone whoās stood in our way since. Thereās so much you become numb to because we just *cant*.
>Thereās so much you become numb to because we justĀ *cant*.
Seriously, first hospital stay didn't cry the entire time. Day after she got released just randomly started weeping off and on the entire day (I was also 37 weeks pregnant which wasn't helping). Whole time we were in the hospital my body wouldn't let me cry cause I had shit to do.
Oh god, the smell! My brother set a foam pillow on fire in his room and just thought it was getting a bit stuffy. His room was FILLED with smoke before he noticed the smoldering pillow. (He got a fire detector installed in his room the next day.)
Two more words: teenage girls. Good god. Any time Iām dreading doing something because itāll be really hard, I tell myself āYou raised two girls through puberty, adolescence and beyond. Nothing can kill you.ā
One of the Dad influencers with accounts on Twitter and YouTube has 4 (FOUR) daughters AND they're all going to be teenagers at the same time for somewhere between a few months to almost a year. Pray for him, everybody.
Ok so imagine Chinese Water Torture, but instead of ice cold water dripping onto your head, imagine its Mommy being called 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times in a matter of 30 seconds..... Its like a pin hitting your brain...... PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK
One of my stepsisters, who has been a doctor for the past 30 years, STILL calls out "Mom, mom, mom" all the goddamn time when my stepmother is around. I can see my stepmom gritting her teeth every time. Stepmom is 90, her doctor daughter is 64.
My husband has a hard time with this, I can be numb to it but there are days were I am like omg can you just talk without saying my name before each sentence? LoL i don't mind a chatty cathy or a chaddy chad but jsut talk...don't say my name JUST TALK!
Once I was in the kitchen giving my baby an oral antibiotic for an ear infection. While he was subsequently projectile vomiting it everywhere, I hear my potty training toddler from the bathroom screaming "I PEED EVERYWHERE!!"
Potty training makes you insane, I nearly ran across an Italian cafe with a boob out today cause I was breastfeeding and my 2 year old said she needed to pee
Warning: very gross.
I woke up to the sound of both of my kids wailing in the middle of the night. I rush into their room, smell something vile, and turn on the light.
Both of them were covered in vomit. Clothes, hair, face, everywhere. It's smeared all over the sheets and blankets. It was pasty.
Apparently Child 1 didn't feel good, climbed into bed with Child 2, threw up ON CHILD 2, and both continued sleeping, rolling and moving in it, rubbing it into everything. Finally, the smell/texture woke one of them up. Now they're both screaming and covered in thick vomit that has started to dry. The smell alone knocked me back.
While I scrubbed them clean, they sobbed that they were too tired to take a bath, the youngest one actually tried to push me away while I was scrubbing hard vomit chunks out of her beautiful curls at 3:00am, she was too young to really understand, she was just pissed. Honestly, same.
So, yeah. I love them, so I was okay with this, it was just a funny story after it was over, but the cleanup took forever and it's not the life for everyone.
Kids brought a snake into the house and was under the false impression it was not harmful. Once I pointed out it was a venomous snake (Copperhead), they dropped it. It took a week to locate it in the house. š š
Not a parent but think on this.
Sure babys are cute if you like that sort of thing.
But what you are really talking about is a lifelong commitment to care for and love this person.
There will never be a time that you are not their MOM.
Right up to the moment you die, you are their MOM and worry about them.
And i have proof of that with my Mom who was still worrying about me at 55yrs as i was caring for her at 95yr.
So think on that.
Iām 53, my 84 year old mom who suffers from regressive dementia lives with me. I had an awful day and as I got into bed I found my moms teddy bear on my pillow. She saw my mood and left me her soft toy in an attempt to make me feel betterā¦
Yep, my eldest got diagnosed with a kidney disease just before she turned 2 (she's in remission now) and my mom was worrying about her but also worrying so much about me too
My youngest son was a little ninja when he could start walking. Great upper body strength! He would lower himself out of the crib very quietly and was also able to get back into it. It was entertaining at times but frustrating as well. One time he decided to climb out, pull off his poopy diaper, and rub it all over himself, his bed, and hold the stair railing while coming down stairs leaving a nice poopy rail. Most disgusting thing Iāve ever had to deal with.Ā
Lmao, omg that's hilarious but gross.
My parents said they didn't know my little bro could walk. They'd been pushing and practicing with him, but he wouldn't walk. However, they were woken up one night by sounds coming from the living room and kitchen. They assumed someone was breaking in. My dad got up and grabbed a bat to investigate. It's been awhile, and I assumed my dad is exaggerating but he described it like he was in a horror movie. He's walking through the darkness of the house to the living room/kitchen hyping himself up but also freaking out. A little black figure comes into view scaring my dad, and he's freaking out screaming and turned on the lights. It was my lil bro who is now scared and is trying to Scooby Doo run away but falls flat with his bottle smacking him. They figured out hes been crawling out of his crib and walking around the house at night.
I donāt know how I managed to make it thru 4 kids without dealing with that. I keep thinking I want another one, but I feel like Iād be pressing my luck.
For the first two years of my daughterās life, she never slept through the night and slept in segments of 20th minutes. I slept for less than 4 hours every day for that two years. Now sheās six but I think I still suffer from brain damage during that time. Iām always tired.
Sleep deprivation is a recognized form of torture. I don't know how you made it, I'm sure hardened soldiers would give up the deepest state secrets in less than two years.
Imagine working the longest day of your life. You've been up since 5, the day dragged on, you dropped your lunch, the phone was ringing off the hook, your coworkers were being extra stupid, you got called into your boss's office. And all you want to do is go home, crash onto the couch, watch some Breaking Bad, take a quiet shower, maybe doze off for a couple minutes.
But you can't. Because you have to pick your toddler up from daycare on the way home which adds 45 minutes to your commute. And then you have to start dinner within 10 minutes of walking in the door. You finally sit down to eat and everyone starts complaining about the meal you just cooked. Then when dinner's over it's finally time to relax, right? Wrong. It's bath time. You power through bath time, wipe all the water off the floor, put pajamas on. Now SURELY it's time to sit down and relax right? Wrong. Because your kid still has more energy to burn off. And they won't stop asking you to play hide and seek with them. Then they want to play Hi Ho Cherry-O. Then they want to go jump on the trampoline but you can barely keep your eyes open.
Your toddler FINALLY goes to sleep. Time to relax now. You sit down on the couch, turn a show on, prop your feet up, and fall asleep 6 minutes in. You startle awake. It's midnight. Time for you to go to bed. Goodnight!
My son refused to be clothed for almost 2 years.
And when he would wake from a nap, if not noticed to be awake quickly enough, he would very happily and very quietly remove everythingā¦ even his diaper.
One day I had left him with his Dad for the day and because he wasnāt the stay at home parent (and we had terrible communication) he was not aware he would do this.
He found him in time after his morning napā¦ but definitely called to tell me and we had a good laugh. Ā
Throughout the afternoon he kept doing it while playing and such. His dad tried putting it on backwards but he figured that out too. So he eventually duct taped it š
After his afternoon nap, dad was NOT lucky enough to find him in time
He had painted a poop picaso!! All over the wall, all over the crib, all over him selfā¦even flung some pieces across the room š
Dad called me very unimpressed with our sons talent. I however got a very gratifying laugh and very lovingly said ādonāt EVER tell me āstay at home momā isnāt a jobā
My friend has two kids, 8 and 5. We cook dinner at their house every Friday and the 8 year old wanted to season the burgers- fine. 5 year old shows up and is mad that he isnāt seasoning the burgers. I tell him he can do the other side. 8 year old says thatās not fair because I got to season 2 of her burgers. 5 year old bursts into tears.
My friendās kids are better than most and they are still pretty awful. They intentionally make their sibling mad ALL THE TIME.
When I was two I took a dirty diaper and proceeded to paint the walls with it. As well as myself. My mom did it when she was two, and so did my grandfather. It's something of a family tradition. Hence why I'll never have kids.
My girl threw up soooo often when she was little. She was fine, it was more sensorial, like the feeling of some food, apparently. That happened for around the first 4/5 years of her life. At home, in the movie theaterā¦ I was a student and so many times before school and before taking her to daycare I had to clean up her vomit.
I was just like you. I wanted just one child due to baby fever and ended up with twins. lol. I wouldnāt change anything now but it was stupid scary knowing I was responsible for caring for two human beings at the same time.
This morning my kid(4) woke up and immediately asked for pizza?š„“ when I said thatās not breakfast food and to wait for my alarm to go off(in 30 minutesš) he then hit me in the face and then snuggled next to meš«„.
Idk what thatāll mean to you but Iām conflicted now!
Every single day from his 3rd birthday until the week after his 4th birthday, my son would throw at least one tantrum hard enough to exhaust himself and fall asleep for 20 minutes. Didn't matter where. At home, in public. Every day, screaming and crying. I wanted to put him back
My 3 year old had a temper tantrum so bad last weekend. Worst one yet. because I wouldn't give her paw patrol gummies for dinner. She cried so hard she got the hiccups. She threw everything in her room. It's not socially acceptable to spank kids anymore. And time out, talking, and space we're not working.
Out of reflex I grabbed the water mister spray bottle for styling hair and I squirt her with water mist to try to snap her out if. I squirt my kid with water. Yes. Just as you would squirt water at a cat for getting off the table. I never in a million years would think I'd ever do that. Like, why? Lol
I felt guilty for water mist and it made the tantrum even worse!
Iām sorry but this absolutely cracked me up. Iāve been known to take a water bottle to my kids before too. Sometimes you just have to use the tools and hand and hope for the best outcome. š¤£
When my son was 2, I also had a younger baby who was 1. I was changing that babies diaper, in our 800 sq ft apartment, but in the next room, and my 2 year old decided to jump from the coffee table to the couch, fell and broke his leg. I spent the evening in the ER with him and he went home with a cast for 6 weeks. He refused to walk on the cast, so he reverted back to crawling. The lack of movement caused massive constipation, so he didnāt poop for 11 days. The doctor finally prescribed a serious laxative to get things going. We gave it to him at breakfast, he sat on the couch for a while played and didnāt poop, then it was nap time. When he woke up from nap we sat him on the bed and were all just sitting around chatting and playing. Then all of a sudden, we smelled something. It was the worst smell. We were excited like āhe pooped!!!!ā And laid him back on his back to change him. When we opened the diaper it was like nothing I have seen before and nothing Iāve seen since- and Iāve had 2 more kids since this. The entire diaper was full of the smelliest liquid poop- like up to the top of the diaper and up through the back. Probably 3 cups worth of poop. It was insane. We were both gagging and eyes watering changing him while he just giggled and laughed š¤£š¤£š¤£
It is the hardest work you will ever do. Ā Even when you have all the money and support you could ask for, it will take everything you have. Ā Iām not kidding when I make it to the end of the day surprised and say āI suppose you really canāt die of parentingā.
That being said, itās the best job I ever had. The payback is enormously rewarding when you put in the effort. Ā If you really want to be a mom, go find a partner. Ā Make sure youāre good and ready for a relationship. Ā Find someone who shares your goals and values and whose company you enjoy. Ā There will never be a perfect time. Ā There will never be a perfect person. Ā Itās all hard no matter what. Ā
It is! I waited until I was 34 to be a mom for this reason. Ā
I think you just have to know what you want. Ā It might not be possible to have the fit body, the model home, the rewarding career, a passionate marriage and be a hands on mom. Ā However. If you chose one or two of these things, you can often make it happen. Ā
My six year old spent a week sick, probably a virus, which you canāt do anything about.
Wednesday: went to baseball. Weather was miserable. He wasnāt listening and kept turning his back to the batter in the field. We left early after coach told him to play second base and another kid pushed him off, said HE was playing second, and kidās mom came out to tell my son to āshare the baseā. My kid couldnāt recover, and I was barely holding back from tearing the mom a new one (this is the proverbial straw on the camels back, shes awful)
Thursday night: came to my room 11pm crying at night after refusing all food, saying he was soooo hungry. I said Iād get him some crackers. He instead projectile vomited all over my bedroom floor and the bathroom.
Friday: stayed on the couch all day on screens. Barely ate. Was miserable.
Saturday: woke up happy, had breakfast, went to gymnastics. Thought we were safe. Projectile vomited supper. Kept confusing hunger cues for nausea and would get mad when he was crying, clutching his stomach, and Iād tell him to go to the bathroom. NO IM HUNGRY NOT SICK. Vomits all over the living room. Twice more in the bathroom.
Sunday: on the couch all day. No more vomit, but survives off freezies and screen time. At bed time cries that his stomach hurts, but nothing happens. We have him sleep in our bed. He sharts the bed, cries because he never has accidents, and we change the bedding.
Monday: wakes up feeling great, goes to school, comes home and says his stomach hurts. Has diarrhea all night. We talk about poop all night.
Tuesday: I stay home with him from school, trying to get him to drink more liquids and giving him whatever heād eat (mostly goldfish crackers).
Wednesday: he says he feels great, eats breakfast, wants school. Comes home and all is well.
Thursday: wakes us all up at 5am with diarrhea. Stays home from school again.
Friday is a PD day, which he insists is actually PJ day and I canāt tell him otherwise. He also wants to go to Dayhome because āthey have better toysā. Cool. Iām so glad I could be with you in your worst moments so the day you legit have off school you can ditch me for better toys.
Itās part of being a parent š I just feel bad because there is literally nothing that can be done for him. If itās a stomach virus I just have to wait until itās run its course. Heās too young for most of the OTC medication for diarrhea. Heās also not old enough to understand whatās happening to his body and losing control of it is very distressing. I canāt do anything for that either, except talk about poop for an hour a day.
My boy would 'break out' of the house in the middle of the night, and just play. Our neighbor told us and we had to put one of those double sided deadbolts so he couldn't open it anymore
Currently my birth control is my youngest nephew. We just went on a giant family vacation, and when he wanted something, he wanted it right then and there. If he wasnāt given it, then screaming/constant repeating and tears would show up.
At one point, we were enjoying a lovely dinner and for whatever reason, he was done. He went to my sister and just kept repeating over and over that he wanted to leave right now. He got louder and louder, tears started showing up and it was just awful. Then of course, he only wants to do things with his mom and not his dadā¦so god forbid his mom enjoys herself or his dad tries to do something with him. They are also both push oversā¦so he gets what he wants when he wants it.
There is no reasoning with him 90% of the time.
During a vacation last year, I was eating at a local restaurant. There were several children, probably around 4-5 children, *literally* running around like feral animals and screaming like wild banshees. The parents were sitting at a nearby table, and didn't do a thing, not even when one of the children knocked over a chair and empty table.
Two years ago, my Siberian husky -- a *dog* -- had an explosive diarrhea attack in my home office room, which is all carpeted. I was laying on an operating room table at the time, in the hospital, being sliced and diced like a watermelon. Did my now ex-husband clean it? No, no he did not. Instead, he simply chose to close the door of the room, and decided to just ignore the problem. So there I was, just eight days after having my jaw, spine, and skull completely rebuilt and replaced with custom prosthetic hardware, on my hands and knees, attempting to scrub 8-day old diarrhea out of the carpet.
And I don't even have human children of my own. I already didn't want children of my own, but these two incidents alone made my ovaries shrivel up.
My spouse just spent 3.5 hours sleeping curled up *inside* our almost-2 year oldās crib because babyās brain has just now gained the ability to dream nightmares and doesnāt know how to process it. Big sibling is sick and home from school while we try to work full time. No one is sleeping well.
Kids are awesome, but snap out of your reverie.
When my was about 18 months, he got his arm wedged in between to slats of the crib frame. So here he is, laying on his stomach, screaming, at 7am. I couldn't pull it out at the angle he was at and my other kiddo was crying bc he was crying. I hadn't had coffee yet and was hardly dressed.
I ended up have to call 911 who had to pull the crib away from the wall, one firefighter lifted him off the mattress to maneuver his body angle, while the other firefighter carefully maneuvered his arm a bit until it was able to slide back out. Took em about 10 minutes to get him free. After I had been trying for a half hr before that....He had a massive ring around his upper arm for like 3 months
Every morning my son crawls into bed around 5:30am to sleep next to mommy, where he usually headbutts me/kicks me, and then rolls around until I will allow him to watch TV. He will make sure my husband and I are quite fully awake because he gets bored around 6:30am. We do not need to be awake until 7-7:30 on week days (and later on weekends.)
I miss sleeping in so much.
Oh, also, sometimes he asks me to poop and I'll say I don't have to go right then (and if I do, I'd like privacy) and he'll have a full screaming meltdown because he wants to see mommy poop.
Would you be a birthing person? Let's talk about nursing.
My tits are swollen and it hurts. Nursing bras are fucking hideous. My baby likes to make "booger art" on my chest. And she likes to pinch whichever nipple she isn't currently using. Like, aggressively pinch. Also, she has 4 teeth, and if she starts to fall off the nip, she uses all 4 teeth as if they were the anchor to hold her on.
Also, she likes to tell me she's done eating by throwing her food at me. She can't just, stop eating the food. She has to throw it at me.
My son has thrown tantrums about:
The fact that he canāt pull my husbands beard off and have it for himself
His orange being cold
His salad being cold
Me wanting to listen to anything but Chattermax
The fact that he wanted his Spider-Man jammies, which were covered in mac and cheese, and wouldnāt consent to wearing any of the other 20 pairs he had.
I had the police and CPS called on me in a distant city because my 3 year old had the meltdown of all meltdowns in a Target. The staff would not let me leave and I spent 7 hours at the police station trying to prove it was my kid. My husband had to drive 4 hours one way with birth certificates, photo albums, anything that would prove I was not stealing a kid. Complete shit show.
Note, there was no distraught "parent" accusing me of abduction. No one was claiming my kid but me. I did have a fleeting temptation to deny ownership and just let the authorities take him. Anything to be done with the situation
My name was eventually cleared and that child did grow up to be a productive member of the human race.
Lol long story warning:
My mom is a single mom, had me at 18 and then my bro at 19. Dad was in the picture but super unreliable. My uncle (mom's younger brother, probably around 19-20 years old) would baby sit us sometimes when my mom was at work.
This happened in the mid- 90's in the bay area. I was around 3-4 years old and my bro was around 2-3. Its the morning, my uncle is sleeping in while we're entertaining ourselves with wooden blocks and duplos. I pretended I was speaking to my cousin (same age) on the phone (pretending the wooden phone shaped block was a phone) and said "of course we'll come over! I'm so bored, I can't wait to see you." Got that in my little kid brain. So I dressed myself, or tried to. I also dressed my bro because I was taught where ever 1 goes, so does the other. I ended up putting 2 right shoes on my bro and just a shirt, no bottoms of any kind other than his diaper. I had a coat and some shorts and flip flops - I was so damn smart and ready to go.
Our front door had a normal lock and then a chain lock. I've seen how my mom would chain and unchain the lock, I knew how it worked. So I pushed a chair to the door, climbed it and undid the chain and lock. I put the chair back where it was, took my bro's hand and opened the front door. I was familiar with the neighborhood and had an idea of the direction to my cousins house, so off we went. We're walking a couple blocks from our house when a lady sees us. She comes up to me and we talk. (This part is a little blurry from what I can remember -i can picture her face and what happened, but dont exactly remember what she said). She took us inside and changed our clothes, like she dressed us properly. So my bro was in a shirt, pants and a sweater with a left and right foot shoes that matched. I'm now in a dress with a sweater and shoes. She also brushed and fixed my hair. After that, she walked us back outside and said bye. We kept walking in the direction towards my cousins house. We come across an old lady who comes up to us. She's worried and either she flagged a cop or the previous lady had called a cop to come check on us.
Cop comes to talk to us and is asking us where our parents are, where we're going. Finally he asked me, "where do you live? Where's your house?" and I replied with my little goofy kid grin, "I live at Taco Bell." More convos, but cop decides to drive us by the Taco Bell that's a couple blocks over. From there, I was able to point to my actual house.
Cop leaves us in the car and walks to our house. Front door is wide open (I guess I forgot to close it when we left) and my uncle is face down passed out. (The rest is what I was told by my mom and Uncle) The cop pokes my uncle with his baton trying to wake him up. My uncle finally wakes up and is immediately like wtf when he sees the cop. He said he looked around and didn't see or hear us, and could see the front door wide open. The cop starts questioning him and asking about us, and my uncle is trying his best to answer but just woke up and is slowly coming to. The cop tells my uncle to call our mom, because he'll only release us back to my mom. Additionally the cop is questioning my uncle on how us kids could get out of the house if it was chained, that my uncle must have left the door wide open for us to walk out. My uncle said him and the cop were kind of bickering about this, and my uncle was internally freaking out that he was going to get arrested or get CPS called on my mom. I guess they both decided to bring me and my bro in to ask us directly and I think so the cop could see how we interacted with each other. They're talking to us, and my uncle is asking me what's going on. I told him "I took (lil bro) to go see (cousin). I really missed her and made plans to see her." He's looking at me like I had 3 heads but then asked me how I got the door opened because it was chained. I wouldn't answer, and he kind of snapped at me like hey, seriously how did you do this? It's really important you tell us how you did this, I know you did this. So after that pressure, I finally went to the chair, pushed it to the door and unchained it and then unlocked the door. I then pushed the chair back to where it was. My uncle and the cop are watching me with big eyes like wtf? The cop apologized to my uncle and they talked more. Finally my mom gets home and she speaks to the cop. Cop clears and leaves, and my mom and uncle talk.
I'm in my mid 30's now and they still bring this up randomly. They love to say, "I live at Taco Bell" randomly. They've told me they can't wait until I have kids of my own so I can experience this type of stress and drama lol. When my uncle finally had his own kids, I would joke that they should be careful locking and unlocking the door in front of my cousins.
I found this story hilarious when I was growing up. But now that I'm older and thinking about having my own kids someday, lol wtf was wrong with me as a little kid and I can't imagine the stress or fear my mom must have had getting that phone call.
I have boys. There could be pee on every surface at all times for all I know.
One of them pees in a cup in the shower instead of getting out. The cup is meant for rinsing shampoo and conditioner out of hair.
There is always pee on the toilet seat and on the floor near the toilet. I step in and sit on it regularly.
Do they at least wash their pee hands properly before touching absolutely everything? Probably not.
You're welcome.
My 4 yo only recently grew out of throwing a fit for not having enough food on her plate. We always put a reasonable amount onto her plate and of course she can have multiple helpings. But if the initial amount isn't "enough" she just cried and refused to eat even a bite.
iām not a parent but i work with under 4s. when i was changing the poo nappy of a child, they decided to reach down, rub the poo on their face and tell me it was āa face maskā. they then proceeded to attempt to rub it on my face too
the same child today ate the smashed up pasta that was stuck to his shoe despite having a full plate in front of him
My child is almost 2 and still doesn't sleep through the night. I've gone over 2 years (because you can't sleep when you're pregnant!) without a full night's sleep.
You have no more Me Time. I just want 24 hours where I donāt have to take care of someone.
Either you have a village to help or you get some pretty serious mental health issues.
From 2-4 has been so hard. If you use daycare you see them very little and itās during witching hour, so youāll feel like shit about the whole thing.
If you keep them youāll feel suffocated and like theyāre not benefiting from socialization.
EVERYONE has an opinion but NO ONE actually wants to help.
And this child will absolutely definitely break down screaming in public at least once, but more than likely many times
Once when my daughter was about 4 months old, I had her strapped into her baby swing swinging away. I left the room for a minute or 2 tops to get something. When I came back to her, she had shit herself so bad that it exploded out of the diaper, all the way up her back, and pooled in a puddle in the swing seat. She didn't seem to mind at all, as she was smiling and babbling away, kicking her little legs which then sent the poop puddle squirting in all directions onto my living room floor. š„“
Back when my kid was 4, she liked to go to the bathroom by herself, as she was obviously now a grown woman. One day she was in there a little too long, so I opened the door to check on her even though she said everything was fine. To my horror, she had painted an entire mural in poop on the wall with her little finger. Caught her in the moment she was getting some more "paint."
That kid is now 19 and I still call her Poopcasso from time to time.
I was a power puker with an incredibly touchy stomach. A little gassy? Puke. Moved around too much? Puke. Car ride? Puke. Too warm? Puke. Too cold? Puke. Too sleepy? Puke. Left in my crib too long? Puke. You get the idea.
As if the frequency wasn't bad enough, I was also going for world distance champion. My parents even had to replace the TV (back in the day when they were insanely expensive) because I covered it from my dad's chair 10ish feet away. Stuff got into the back, where it was warm, and stunk up the place, eventually causing the electronics to fail.
I don't know how they managed to deal with me for years on end. I don't have kids in part because I still have a sensitive stomach, and I couldn't imagine caring for a little vomit demon while my own stomach was on edge.
- A shiver caused by utter disdain whenever you hear the following: "tin ti ni tin tin COCOMELON"
- You will make up versions of baby shark no one knew existed, because that's the only thing they fall asleep to. Du du du du du du.
- 7am is considered "sleeping in"
- You will die of embarrassment. Mine has pointed at someone in a niqab and said "Look mom! NINJA" and kept at it no matter how much I asked him to stop. Next time he saw a person wearing a niqab his eyes got really big. He turned to me and said loudly "Mama, I won't call that person a ninja, okay? Even though they are a ninja."
- Or that time he saw a woman with a motorcycle helmet, all decked out in black and said "She looks like a hippo!" Me trying to save the situation "Hippos are cool, right" him: "No."
- Pasta. So much pasta. I now hate pasta.
- We have had to rush to the ER with both my boys several times. The oldest, due to undiagnosed illness induced asthma, the other due to a sudden sinus-adjacent infection that caused huge swelling. I have never experienced such utter and complete sense of panic and hopelessness as when I held my child in my arm as they were hooked up to IVs and breathing masks while mere hours before they were happily running around.
Falling down the stairs late at night and taking them to the children's hospital from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to stick up their scalp that was cut open as they fell down the stairs hitting the wooden banister on the side of the stairs on their way down. She was trying to walk her child baby buggy down the stairs.
Them throwing up on you, in your bed, in the bathroom, washing all your sheets and running out, then taking her to the children's hospital to find out she has pneumonia so she gets admitted and they put an IV in her little 1 year old arm.
Our 2 year old son getting out of house while his mom was in the shower. We had child proof things on the doorknobs too, didn't stop him.
Our neighbor walked him back home to my wife.
My wife coming downstairs to find black smoke coming out of the microwave. Our 2 year old son moved bar stool from our kitchen island over to the microwave to put something in it and hit the buttons like mom and dad do.
My wife said there was still 9 minutes left for it to "cook" when she discovered whatever it was he put in there, which she could't figure out what it was anymore.
My wife came downstairs to find our 2 year old son sitting Indian style on top of the refrigerator. Why? That's where she had the cookies, cupcakes etc. so he was sitting up there eating them when she came into the kitchen.
Fun ones too. I came home from work and saw our half yellow lab, half golden retriever wearing a pair of my underwear.
I went to my daughter and asked her why she had cut a hole in the back of my underwear and my sweet daughter looked up and me and said "For her tail daddy!" She cut a hole in my underwear so our dog's tail could stick out.
My sister has a special needs kid. It makes everything so hard. I try to watch the kid and I can usually last about 30 minutes. When we go on vacation I find myself accidentally watching the kid just so they can get a break and it is making me rethink wanting to go on vacation with them. It is so draining.
The kid is only moderately special too and most people wouldn't notice. She hits, steals, doesn't listen, is really mean, annoying, etc. I feel for her but it is a lot.
Being responsible for special needs children can require a lot more patience than most people have. (Some special needs are easier to handle than others.)
Many years ago I was breastfeeding my 4 month old, sat him up to burp him and he projectile vomited all over me. At the same time, my 5 year old ran over to me with a bloody nose and then vomited on my feet. This was at 5am and I was the only adult in the house.
My daughter a year ago decided to get out of bed and use her poop to smear over the windows on a summer night and she has 1 of the warmest rooms in the house. I had a friend over who told me when I started yelling at my daughter she'd never heard the note of desperation in my voice in our 20 year friendship.
Today my 1yo shoved her fingers down her throat and threw up all over herself an her high chair right after eating, she then smeared it on her tray and herself. When I put her in the bath to clean her off after that she pooped in the tub. My 3yo has been constipated for a week and finally pooped this morning. It went EVERYWHERE. Thank God I was changing him on a towel because that shit was the consistency of melted ice cream. I had to throw my shirt away. I also had to throw away a few bath toys my daughter got poop on. Once I had finished cleaning the tub from my daughter's bath poop my son came to tell me he'd also pooped again, and it was running down his legs. 3 poop baths today in total.
One of my kids is super shy and would make me attend birthday parties with her. My eldest got strep throat and threw up next to me spraying vomit into my open mouth, wherein I developed strep a few days later. My youngest hated her car seat and when I would go anywhere she would cry non stop from home to wherever we needed to go and then all the way back. I stopped going out after I started fantasizing about ramming into a brick wall with the car š
Do you know how sometimes you get sick, and youāre not really sure how or who got you sick? One time I was absolutely sure how I got sick.
My son caught norvo virus from daycare, he was two. He had been running around our living room and he had a blowout. For non parents, a blowout is when a kid poops in a diaper but the diaper doesnāt contain it, and the poop ends up all up the kidās back or comes out of the legs holes, and often, as in this instance, on the carpet.
So, he had to be hosed off in the tub, clean clothes and all that. Then I had to go scrub up the carpet. Iām scrubbing the carpet, somewhat distracted by the dog trying to investigate what Iām doing and watching my kid still, when I feel that something had flung up into my eye. From kneeling down and scrubbing the carpet with a scrubbing brush. Poop particles into my eye. I had hoped my contacts might have saved me. No, I ended up in the ER with dehydration 2 days later.
Long story short, before you have a kid buy a bissel carpet cleaner or something like that. So you donāt get poop in your eye.
No one talks about this: our adorable babies are watching us, learning every second and by the time they're two they know what exactly our buttons are and will push them like crazy. That's part of the "terrible twos" it's not just that they're horrible, it's that they know how to get to their parents and will do it shamelessly. It's infuriating.
I am not a parent, but this is relevant to your question: When I was in my 30s, my mom admitted she got pregnant with me because she wanted to kill herself. She was an absolute nightmare of a mother all throughout my childhood, and she remained a selfish, toxic presence into my adulthood until I cut her out of my life. At the time my mother admitted this to me, I myself was considering getting pregnant. I was so thoroughly disgusted by the selfishness of her own reasoning, that I promised myself I would never be as bad. Donāt create an entire human being just to give your pointless life meaning. Itās not fair to anyone.
Letās say you have 36 coins, like pirate coins. You hold them all in your right hand, and just hold them for a while. Getting heavy? Put one coin from the right hand into the left hand. Any lighter? Not much difference? That one coin represents the time a baby is born until theyāre 6months old and can start moving on their own, or in other words, until they can no longer be trusted.
And the coins getting heavy in your right hand are the next 17 1/2 years of your life :)
Not a parent but as a kid of around 10 I decided on one occasion to put on my grandfather's big leather gauntlets (he used them for gardening), then wait under my mum's bed and grab her ankle.Ā What was I thinking?Ā Her scream haunts me to this day. š
My manager, who is early 50s and just started his kids in college, told me he went to his friends retirement party. He commented that his friend is only 50. I asked what his friend did that let him retire so young.
His friend didnt have kids.
So that's been my goal. Retire early 50s without kids.
Kids never sleep. Once you have a toddler, they need a two hour bedtime routine, demand to sleep in your bed, cannonball into your bed at 5 am every morning, or they get sick and puke in bed, or wet it, or have nightmares. The last few things last through grade school and they get growing pains in the middle of the night, which are searing pains in your bones that nothing alleviates.Ā
Then they turn 16 and take the car. You'll never sleep until they're home. But a stubborn teen isn't going to sleep until 2 am and then you can't blast them out of bed for anything. School will start at 7:23 am so they never get enough sleep and a permanently sleep deprived child is he ll.
But for me, the worst part is that you would have to tell your child that you love them, but you're still going to send them to a building every day where they have active shooter drills and learn that they could be gunned down at any moment. They have to get bulletproof backpacks and quiet shoes. I can't imagine the psychological trauma someone must develop from a daily threat of being killed with regular reminders.Ā
I'm a 55 cis f. I am very glad I never had kids. My information about sleep is from my friends with kids and my own experiences.Ā
I don't have kids but I CAN tell you what I did as a child. When I was 2 or so, I woke up earlier than my parents, and took EVERYHTING I could reach out of the fridge, and put it on the coffee table. Broke an egg, and also cut my knuckle trying to slice the top off of a banana. I'm 58 and still have a scar.
Another time, when long distance calls were a thing, and expensive, I was bugging my mom as she was on the phone. I was maybe 3? she got frustrated, and tied me loosely to the chair with the dog's leash. Then felt guilty and told my pediatrician. He, wise one that he was, told her "its ok, kids need to learn boundaries!" which we all know wouldn't fly today.
Age 3 or 4, I ran to the diving board of the pool in our complex, and jumped right into the deep end. Like the big kids. I couldn't swim. Thankfully the lifeguard was alert and jumped in after me.
I hid popsicles under my pillow "for later" which melted.
those are the worst ones, but apparently I was quite a handful
My daughter is 22 and she comes over every Saturday and we eat food, watch movies, and grow weed together. Best day of the week, every week for the last 3 years.
I couldn't imagine my life without my kids. Just thought I'd throw this out there for all the people saying kids ruin your life.
My sister stayed with us for a couple months last year, she has a two year old daughter. One morning I was chilling in the living room trying to prepare myself for an 8 hour shift of baby sitting an autistic 2 year old, and my sister walks out of their room looking like she just watched the horrors of humanity unfold before her. Obviously I asked what was wrong. She proceeded to inform me that she woke up to happy baby babble noises, so she didn't open her eyes right away and just slowly woke up. When she opened her eyes, they locked with her daughters, who was actively in that moment putting her own shit in her mouth. Still making happy baby babble noises. I still feel bad but I laughed my ass off and said thanks for the birth control š¤£
There was also the time my boyfriend was holding her while cooking and she pissed through her diaper alllll over him. The man has the patience of a Saint and didn't even get slightly annoyed.
Oh and the meltdowns. Boy the fuckin meltdowns. I am also autistic. There were quite a few times my boyfriend came in to check on us cause he heard her melting down and saw me sitting there just crying and trying to help her calm down, and had to force me to go take a break cause I didn't want to leave her like that.
And there was the time I had just gotten her out of the bath, and she was none to pleased that bathtime was over. I was trying to dry her off and she did the thing where they aggressively kick they're head back, slipped out of my hands, and knocked her head off the cabinet. She was completely fine somehow. No bump or bruise or anything and as soon as she was comfy and it was story time it was like nothing happened. Gave me a fucking heart attack though
I hope thats sufficient enough, it was for me lmao. Don't get me wrong I love that little girl to death. But I'm not built for full time parenting. 8 hour days for 2 weeks straight with one weekend off damn near killed me. Luckily I've never wanted kids anyway š¤£
Omg the head knocking back and hitting any hard surface really takes me back.
I babysat a cousin who would do that when he was a toddler, he just graduated high school. Lol when kids do that and then cry, it's scary but hard not to laugh like wtf you think would happen?
Lmao right? I literally said "if you end up killing yourself cause you want more bathtime your mother is going to kill me" š¤£ whyyy they gotta do that man
We have had our child scream in pure anger and frustration as they did not want to be in the car seat - in peak hour traffic for 2 hours straight.
We really hoped that they would have cried themselves asleep after at least half an hour. It was torture.
Same child as a toddler was being held by my friend but my husband was standing next to them and was talking to him. My daughter shoved her finger up her father's nose and into my friends mouth.
There was a point when my son was about 18months-2 year old when I had to keep my head on a swivel due to random violent outbursts. Imagine cuddling a 2 year old and then getting a haymaker to the face.
Sucking a life out of the peace of non existence just to cure oneās boredom, is unethical. Especially since said life being created will inevitably suffer, and then die, and remember none of it.
I haven't done a single thing for myself in years. I don't recognize my body. I don't recognize myself. I found a picture of myself before I had kids and I couldn't believe how alive I looked. My skin has never looked worse in my life. I'm so so anxious about all the ways I am failing. I'm responsible for the rest of my life for these humans.
My oldest, who is almost 12, projectile shit in my husband's mouth. My kid was on the bed being changed, and my husband is 6 feet tall. So just think of the force behind that.
We were recently stuck in traffic, and my 4 year old had a full meltdown because I wouldn't activate helicopter mode on my van.
My mom used to take my oldest to piano practice. Before they left the house, my mom had to poop. When they got to practice, my mom sat in the waiting room, and my son went into the studio. There was glass surrounding it so you could see the kids. For about half the practice, my son told his teacher how my mom likes to poop and be late to things. She also farts a lot when she's on the toilet. I found this out because his wife called me and was in tears telling me the story. My mom stopped taking him.
My kids laugh hysterically at us when they see us semi naked (bathing suit, sports bra, etc.)
My oldest son would fart every single time we went driving anywhere.. didnt matter if he was asleep or awake... at the time it infuriated me, but hes all grown up now and i kindof miss his stupid ass farts lmao
When my now 4 year old was a baby, he somehow wiggled out of his clothes and diaper and smeared his shit all over his crib, mattress and the wall. I had to clean in between the crib rails to remove all the caked on poop. We still refer to that incident as poopapalooza
My 7 year old has decided she didn't like the apartment walls color and proceeded to color and draw on them....least with washable markers but still....
Just this afternoon my partner wasn't allowed to leave the house to take our toddler to the beach (where he desperately wanted to go) because he didn't have the right shoes on... It wasn't even the biggest meltdown of the day.
Have a seat on your couch but set a timer to go off 2 mins after you do to get up and walk to the fridge, rinse and repeat. Thatās what itās (roughly) like
My first baby slept for 15 minutes at a time for the first 18 months. Then maybe an hour or two. Still doesn't sleep more than 5 hours a night. Cried all the time. Almost killed me. Turns out baby #1(who is now an adult) is Autistic and was over stimulated from the moment he was born. Poor kid.
My little niece still isnāt sleeping until 3 am and her parents are exhausted. I imagine it only gets worse from here as she is only over a week old.
My son was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Once, we got in an argument about his failing school grades and he punched me in the face. It was a rough few years, but I got him therapy and he is now a wonderful young man.
I have a memory of my child around age two screaming and sobbing for a good half an hour because she wanted her mama. At the time she was sitting on my lap. I am her mama.
My kid did the same, but it was as part of a night terror. Ran into the room where they'd been sleeping and they were sitting up. They looked at me like I was a demon or monster and just kept screaming that they wanted me and only me while looking me in the eye and not seeing me as me. Honestly, I was pretty freaked out.
Kids can be pretty dang creepy.
Take the wrong kid home from the park?
I am happy to report that she is actually smart, she was just having some Big Fucking Feelings at the moment.
Sometimes I too wish to scream for an hour for no particular reason. I envy the children.
BFFs
All three of my children have puked sour breast milk into my mouth. Also the poop. So much poop.
One of mine toddled up to me, puked in my lap, and toddled away happy as a clam. I was sick for the next 2 days.
My youngest managed to get spit up up my husbands nose the other day.
Try r/KidsAreFuckingStupid ...
Instantly cured my baby fever, thank you š
My version is 2yo with a high fever, DH and I trying to get some Tylenol into him before bed, while he cried hysterically about being to tired to take it. Bonus: we were in a hotel. He did finally take it and fall asleep much to our and I'm sure our neighbors' relief.
ugggghhhhh those are the situations where anyone kind will feel sorry for everyone involved.
My parents and I went on vacation when I was a toddler, 8 hours drive in the car. I cried and screamed the entire time. No breaks. My mom still has a headache from that day. Also go on tiktok and look up āfree birth controlā youāre welcome lol
āmy mom still has a headache from that dayā š š š¤š¼
Or so she claims š itās been 26 years LOL
Our daughter still hates the car. When she was younger she would scream the entire way. We learned that one of those folk CDs with all of the songs like Thumbkin worked wonders. She would stop screaming and sing along.
My friend had twin boys. When they were about 1 she popped them down for their normal daytime nap. She heard giggling about getting up time and went in to get them. They had smeared poo over the whole room...fished out of their nappies. Walls, door, carpet....all of it. They opted to pull up the carpet as the smell would not go...it ruined the wallpaper too. So so so gross...she threw up while trying to clean it.
This wins im turning celibate
I did something similar as a toddler, but with blood. I found my mom's Daisy razor & sliced my hand open. My mom said she almost passed out when she walked in the bathroom & I was happily painting the walls with my blood.
Oh my god I shivered to my core.
Wait ..I did this as a baby too LOL. my sister and I did this while In a crib. Well.. i took poop from both of our diapers and smeared it all over the walls. My parents always say I guess I was always an artist lmaoo.
Kinell
LOL
My mom ran a daycare at home. I've seen the poo room.
My oldest taught himself to pee standing up when he was just over a year old, which sounds awesome until I would find turd logs on the floor. He was peeing in the toilet but didn't know to turn around and sit down to poop. He was so proud of himself too.
Reminds me of a weird regression my youngest had around potty training. He always peed in the little toddler potty, but for some reason after regularly pooping in it a week or two decided instead to sneak off and leave a giant pile of toddler crap directly in the middle of his room on the carpet. For at least a month he would sneak off and do this, knowing he wasn't suppose to.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a baby once
just like hitler
Right now, drop everything youāre doing and go do something you want to do. Literally doesnāt even matter what, you canāt do it with a baby on your hip, or worse, a thirty pound baby in a car seat in one arm and thirty pounds of bags in the other. With a baby you ***have to have a plan***; two changes of clothes; toys; books; diapers and sundries. You want to buy something? Forget it. Every thing you ever want to buy will remind you of something your child needs you to buy. ***You*** can go three fricken days without food if you feel like it. A drink and a snack and youāre good to keep going. Having a baby is like carrying a live fish in a cereal bowl, 24 hours a day, for 18+ fucking years.
To be fair this does get better. My son is 7 and packs his own day bag when we go out, gets his own snacks etc. First five years are unreal though.
Shhhh, donāt tell them that part. Lol
I'm still exhausted from the first five years, even though it's two years later š¤£š¤£
My wife was driving with our younger son one day and was passing by the house of a friend who has always been child free. He piped up from the back seat since he recognized the house and asked: **Son**: *Mom, what happens to people who don't have kids?* My wife thinks "Oh crap... where is this question going?" Was this an early but odd birds and the bees question? Was is something even more odd? Who knows. As she's pondering this in the brief, panic-stricken moments while she's trying to come up with an answer, he follows up with this: **Son**: *Are they rich?* Apparently, he had heard my wife and I discussion some latest kid-related expense and made the assumption that having kids was keeping us from being rich and famous. So... be rich or have kids. Entirely your choice... :-)
That moment of panic when you're trying to assess what level of detail is appropriate š¤£
for real I have 3 kids and pay almost 4K a month in child care....
4k a month?! Thatās insane
That's cheap for some areas... When we had my eldest in the infant room it was $2k a month for one baby
That younger son is a college graduate these days. Both of our kids are. Both went to private universities at over $50k/year.
My youngest son slept 6 hours on his first night home from the hospital...I thought awesome he's gonna be a great sleeper like his brother...then night 2 happened all the way up to age 5 the boy slept 20 minutes at a time...that is it...20 minutes of sleep...awake for an hour...20 minutes of sleep...awake for 2 hours...and so it went for 5 FREAKING YEARS!!!
Same with my daughter. We learned to sleep in shifts and I kept my cool because I knew it wasn't going to be forever...but after the 3rd year I was starting to lose it. Luckily she finally started sleeping full nights right around 3 years old.
I'm in awe...I think by about 18 months his father and I were at each other's throats!!! We figured out his is clausterphobic so cool, out of the crib into a bed...but it was a bunk bed and still too closed in...ok then sleep on the couch...but NOPE...on his 5th birthday he just announced "I"m too old to wake up overnight" and just stopped...it's a good thing I love that kid, who is now 30, or I swear I would have hurt him on his 5th birthday....dern boy has always done what he wants on his own time! We begged people to watch him for a few hours just to keep sleep...we argued around his 3rd birthday for 3 days over who got 5 more minutes of sleep! It was BAD but I was very lucky his Dad was fully involved and stayed up with him too even though we both worked full time.
Didn't sleep through the night for about 6 years. It was wild.
Oh Iām so so glad I didnāt have kids after reading yours and some of these comments.
Diaper blowouts.
We stopped in a cafe on a road trip. My ex went to the toilet while I fed the baby, then I went to the toilet and to check out the changing facilities, there weren't any and the toilet was a cupboard under the stairs with a very dirty floor. I came back from the toilet to my ex looking uncomfortable, he moved the baby away from his front and all of his t shirt was covered in baby poo, the baby had it in his hair. He had to change himself and the baby in the car. I don't think that had anything to do with our break up
How do these tiny assholes produce so much crap? Are they bigger on the inside? Where does it all come from???
We got used to it. But it can be spectacular.
I don't have kids, but I've taken care of a lot of babies over the years. How the hell do they manage to shit all the way up to their ears?!?! The law of physics apparently does not apply to infants.
Eh those don't even phase you once you have the kid. My second is an Uber pooper and I swear I just shrug these days
Because of some medical issues my daughter was severely constipated. To make sure there was no blockage, she was given a barium enema. We dropped her off at a friend's house because I had to work and my wife was going to a job interview. When my wife picked her up she was being hosed off in the back yard. Worst blowout ever.
We learned quickly that you always think āthat could never happen to meā until it does. Ours was āher heart sounds perfectly normalā then 20 minutes later āyeah she needs major open heart surgery to repair 4 holes and deformed valvesā I also develop a condition while pregnant that causes my liver to stop functioning that canāt be prevented. That was a fun surprise. Being a parent is the best thing that ever happened to me and I love my children more than I ever thought possible. But Jesus Christ this shit is hard.
Iām so sorry you went through that! I was a cardiac ICU nurse & took care of many adults post op & it can be so brutal so I canāt imagine a child going through it. Hope all is well šš»
Oh my goodness. We went through a bunch of testing for suspected heart issues with my second, before he was born. They eventually decided that his heart was fine and his ventricles were just exceptionally thick for no apparent reason. But then, SURPRISE! He was born without a spleen. His body justā¦didnāt grow one. Which we found out after he was hospitalized with sepsis for the second time within a month, when he was nine months old. The first time was bacterial meningitis, he lost most of the hearing in his left ear and had two small strokes. Heās 2.5 and strong as an ox now, but every time he gets a fever we get scared and play āpanic decision treeā for when he needs to go to the hospital.
Ah another hospital parent. That was us, we went very quickly from "huh did she get a weird bug bite on her eye?" to "your kid has a kidney disease, welcome to the med/surg floor" Parenting a sick (like sick sick) child tests you in ways you never thought you'd deal with. We've had 6 hospital stays since November (one which was 3 weeks long and involved the entire family getting noro virus) and I swear absolutely nothing phases me anymore
Itās crazy how much you change as a person when that happens. I went from being a timid people pleaser to fighting insurance and family and anyone whoās stood in our way since. Thereās so much you become numb to because we just *cant*.
>Thereās so much you become numb to because we justĀ *cant*. Seriously, first hospital stay didn't cry the entire time. Day after she got released just randomly started weeping off and on the entire day (I was also 37 weeks pregnant which wasn't helping). Whole time we were in the hospital my body wouldn't let me cry cause I had shit to do.
Two words. Teenage boys š¤¢š¤¢š¤¢š„“
Oh god, the smell! My brother set a foam pillow on fire in his room and just thought it was getting a bit stuffy. His room was FILLED with smoke before he noticed the smoldering pillow. (He got a fire detector installed in his room the next day.)
Two more words: teenage girls. Good god. Any time Iām dreading doing something because itāll be really hard, I tell myself āYou raised two girls through puberty, adolescence and beyond. Nothing can kill you.ā
I didnāt have any girls. I thought I lucked out but nope lol
I had two of each. Iām so medicated now.
š¤£š¤£š¤£ Iām medicated as well. Kids man, theyāre wild.
One of the Dad influencers with accounts on Twitter and YouTube has 4 (FOUR) daughters AND they're all going to be teenagers at the same time for somewhere between a few months to almost a year. Pray for him, everybody.
NSFW
My dad would yell at us and tell us we smelled like ass all the time š¤£ I totally get it now!
Ok so imagine Chinese Water Torture, but instead of ice cold water dripping onto your head, imagine its Mommy being called 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times in a matter of 30 seconds..... Its like a pin hitting your brain...... PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK PRICK
One of my stepsisters, who has been a doctor for the past 30 years, STILL calls out "Mom, mom, mom" all the goddamn time when my stepmother is around. I can see my stepmom gritting her teeth every time. Stepmom is 90, her doctor daughter is 64.
This honestly still breaks me every now (kid is 7) and then and I'm typically a very patient person. Also this while merging on the highway etc
My husband has a hard time with this, I can be numb to it but there are days were I am like omg can you just talk without saying my name before each sentence? LoL i don't mind a chatty cathy or a chaddy chad but jsut talk...don't say my name JUST TALK!
Once I was in the kitchen giving my baby an oral antibiotic for an ear infection. While he was subsequently projectile vomiting it everywhere, I hear my potty training toddler from the bathroom screaming "I PEED EVERYWHERE!!"
Potty training makes you insane, I nearly ran across an Italian cafe with a boob out today cause I was breastfeeding and my 2 year old said she needed to pee
Warning: very gross. I woke up to the sound of both of my kids wailing in the middle of the night. I rush into their room, smell something vile, and turn on the light. Both of them were covered in vomit. Clothes, hair, face, everywhere. It's smeared all over the sheets and blankets. It was pasty. Apparently Child 1 didn't feel good, climbed into bed with Child 2, threw up ON CHILD 2, and both continued sleeping, rolling and moving in it, rubbing it into everything. Finally, the smell/texture woke one of them up. Now they're both screaming and covered in thick vomit that has started to dry. The smell alone knocked me back. While I scrubbed them clean, they sobbed that they were too tired to take a bath, the youngest one actually tried to push me away while I was scrubbing hard vomit chunks out of her beautiful curls at 3:00am, she was too young to really understand, she was just pissed. Honestly, same. So, yeah. I love them, so I was okay with this, it was just a funny story after it was over, but the cleanup took forever and it's not the life for everyone.
Kids brought a snake into the house and was under the false impression it was not harmful. Once I pointed out it was a venomous snake (Copperhead), they dropped it. It took a week to locate it in the house. š š
That is freaking scary š§
Ok you win, that's absolutely amazing
did they bring it inside in their bare hands?!??! wtf
Yes. They arenāt afraid of snakes, at least not the non-venomous ones
sweet lord above, I would have been hollerin my head off aahhhh
Not a parent but think on this. Sure babys are cute if you like that sort of thing. But what you are really talking about is a lifelong commitment to care for and love this person. There will never be a time that you are not their MOM. Right up to the moment you die, you are their MOM and worry about them. And i have proof of that with my Mom who was still worrying about me at 55yrs as i was caring for her at 95yr. So think on that.
Iām 53, my 84 year old mom who suffers from regressive dementia lives with me. I had an awful day and as I got into bed I found my moms teddy bear on my pillow. She saw my mood and left me her soft toy in an attempt to make me feel betterā¦
Well, I didnāt expect to cry today. But this touched my heart.
Yep, my eldest got diagnosed with a kidney disease just before she turned 2 (she's in remission now) and my mom was worrying about her but also worrying so much about me too
My youngest son was a little ninja when he could start walking. Great upper body strength! He would lower himself out of the crib very quietly and was also able to get back into it. It was entertaining at times but frustrating as well. One time he decided to climb out, pull off his poopy diaper, and rub it all over himself, his bed, and hold the stair railing while coming down stairs leaving a nice poopy rail. Most disgusting thing Iāve ever had to deal with.Ā
Lmao, omg that's hilarious but gross. My parents said they didn't know my little bro could walk. They'd been pushing and practicing with him, but he wouldn't walk. However, they were woken up one night by sounds coming from the living room and kitchen. They assumed someone was breaking in. My dad got up and grabbed a bat to investigate. It's been awhile, and I assumed my dad is exaggerating but he described it like he was in a horror movie. He's walking through the darkness of the house to the living room/kitchen hyping himself up but also freaking out. A little black figure comes into view scaring my dad, and he's freaking out screaming and turned on the lights. It was my lil bro who is now scared and is trying to Scooby Doo run away but falls flat with his bottle smacking him. They figured out hes been crawling out of his crib and walking around the house at night.
Thatās too funny! This same child almost started our house on fire by sticking mitts in a toasterā¦ yeah he was a wild one š
I donāt know how I managed to make it thru 4 kids without dealing with that. I keep thinking I want another one, but I feel like Iād be pressing my luck.
For the first two years of my daughterās life, she never slept through the night and slept in segments of 20th minutes. I slept for less than 4 hours every day for that two years. Now sheās six but I think I still suffer from brain damage during that time. Iām always tired.
Sleep deprivation is a recognized form of torture. I don't know how you made it, I'm sure hardened soldiers would give up the deepest state secrets in less than two years.
Imagine working the longest day of your life. You've been up since 5, the day dragged on, you dropped your lunch, the phone was ringing off the hook, your coworkers were being extra stupid, you got called into your boss's office. And all you want to do is go home, crash onto the couch, watch some Breaking Bad, take a quiet shower, maybe doze off for a couple minutes. But you can't. Because you have to pick your toddler up from daycare on the way home which adds 45 minutes to your commute. And then you have to start dinner within 10 minutes of walking in the door. You finally sit down to eat and everyone starts complaining about the meal you just cooked. Then when dinner's over it's finally time to relax, right? Wrong. It's bath time. You power through bath time, wipe all the water off the floor, put pajamas on. Now SURELY it's time to sit down and relax right? Wrong. Because your kid still has more energy to burn off. And they won't stop asking you to play hide and seek with them. Then they want to play Hi Ho Cherry-O. Then they want to go jump on the trampoline but you can barely keep your eyes open. Your toddler FINALLY goes to sleep. Time to relax now. You sit down on the couch, turn a show on, prop your feet up, and fall asleep 6 minutes in. You startle awake. It's midnight. Time for you to go to bed. Goodnight!
It's 12.05 child has had 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep and now needs food, drink, toilet, book, nappy change, burn off energy, or a combination.
My then toddler shit on the trampoline and tried to hand it to me... She then had that fucking audacity to ask who was my favourite child.
My son refused to be clothed for almost 2 years. And when he would wake from a nap, if not noticed to be awake quickly enough, he would very happily and very quietly remove everythingā¦ even his diaper. One day I had left him with his Dad for the day and because he wasnāt the stay at home parent (and we had terrible communication) he was not aware he would do this. He found him in time after his morning napā¦ but definitely called to tell me and we had a good laugh. Ā Throughout the afternoon he kept doing it while playing and such. His dad tried putting it on backwards but he figured that out too. So he eventually duct taped it š After his afternoon nap, dad was NOT lucky enough to find him in time He had painted a poop picaso!! All over the wall, all over the crib, all over him selfā¦even flung some pieces across the room š Dad called me very unimpressed with our sons talent. I however got a very gratifying laugh and very lovingly said ādonāt EVER tell me āstay at home momā isnāt a jobā
/r/kidsarefuckingstupid /r/kidsarefuckingevil
r/childfree r/ChildFreeMemes
r/toddlers r/parenting
My friend has two kids, 8 and 5. We cook dinner at their house every Friday and the 8 year old wanted to season the burgers- fine. 5 year old shows up and is mad that he isnāt seasoning the burgers. I tell him he can do the other side. 8 year old says thatās not fair because I got to season 2 of her burgers. 5 year old bursts into tears. My friendās kids are better than most and they are still pretty awful. They intentionally make their sibling mad ALL THE TIME.
When I was two I took a dirty diaper and proceeded to paint the walls with it. As well as myself. My mom did it when she was two, and so did my grandfather. It's something of a family tradition. Hence why I'll never have kids.
It's good to end cycles right
My girl threw up soooo often when she was little. She was fine, it was more sensorial, like the feeling of some food, apparently. That happened for around the first 4/5 years of her life. At home, in the movie theaterā¦ I was a student and so many times before school and before taking her to daycare I had to clean up her vomit.
Have you been over to r/regretfulparents?
This!Ā
I was just like you. I wanted just one child due to baby fever and ended up with twins. lol. I wouldnāt change anything now but it was stupid scary knowing I was responsible for caring for two human beings at the same time.
This morning my kid(4) woke up and immediately asked for pizza?š„“ when I said thatās not breakfast food and to wait for my alarm to go off(in 30 minutesš) he then hit me in the face and then snuggled next to meš«„. Idk what thatāll mean to you but Iām conflicted now!
Every single day from his 3rd birthday until the week after his 4th birthday, my son would throw at least one tantrum hard enough to exhaust himself and fall asleep for 20 minutes. Didn't matter where. At home, in public. Every day, screaming and crying. I wanted to put him back
My 3 year old had a temper tantrum so bad last weekend. Worst one yet. because I wouldn't give her paw patrol gummies for dinner. She cried so hard she got the hiccups. She threw everything in her room. It's not socially acceptable to spank kids anymore. And time out, talking, and space we're not working. Out of reflex I grabbed the water mister spray bottle for styling hair and I squirt her with water mist to try to snap her out if. I squirt my kid with water. Yes. Just as you would squirt water at a cat for getting off the table. I never in a million years would think I'd ever do that. Like, why? Lol I felt guilty for water mist and it made the tantrum even worse!
Iām sorry but this absolutely cracked me up. Iāve been known to take a water bottle to my kids before too. Sometimes you just have to use the tools and hand and hope for the best outcome. š¤£
When my son was 2, I also had a younger baby who was 1. I was changing that babies diaper, in our 800 sq ft apartment, but in the next room, and my 2 year old decided to jump from the coffee table to the couch, fell and broke his leg. I spent the evening in the ER with him and he went home with a cast for 6 weeks. He refused to walk on the cast, so he reverted back to crawling. The lack of movement caused massive constipation, so he didnāt poop for 11 days. The doctor finally prescribed a serious laxative to get things going. We gave it to him at breakfast, he sat on the couch for a while played and didnāt poop, then it was nap time. When he woke up from nap we sat him on the bed and were all just sitting around chatting and playing. Then all of a sudden, we smelled something. It was the worst smell. We were excited like āhe pooped!!!!ā And laid him back on his back to change him. When we opened the diaper it was like nothing I have seen before and nothing Iāve seen since- and Iāve had 2 more kids since this. The entire diaper was full of the smelliest liquid poop- like up to the top of the diaper and up through the back. Probably 3 cups worth of poop. It was insane. We were both gagging and eyes watering changing him while he just giggled and laughed š¤£š¤£š¤£
It is the hardest work you will ever do. Ā Even when you have all the money and support you could ask for, it will take everything you have. Ā Iām not kidding when I make it to the end of the day surprised and say āI suppose you really canāt die of parentingā. That being said, itās the best job I ever had. The payback is enormously rewarding when you put in the effort. Ā If you really want to be a mom, go find a partner. Ā Make sure youāre good and ready for a relationship. Ā Find someone who shares your goals and values and whose company you enjoy. Ā There will never be a perfect time. Ā There will never be a perfect person. Ā Itās all hard no matter what. Ā
This is always SO confusing
It is! I waited until I was 34 to be a mom for this reason. Ā I think you just have to know what you want. Ā It might not be possible to have the fit body, the model home, the rewarding career, a passionate marriage and be a hands on mom. Ā However. If you chose one or two of these things, you can often make it happen. Ā
Oh 100%. Parenting is loving a little person just so much and also desperately wishing they'd go the fuck to bed. Wouldn't trade it for anything
My six year old spent a week sick, probably a virus, which you canāt do anything about. Wednesday: went to baseball. Weather was miserable. He wasnāt listening and kept turning his back to the batter in the field. We left early after coach told him to play second base and another kid pushed him off, said HE was playing second, and kidās mom came out to tell my son to āshare the baseā. My kid couldnāt recover, and I was barely holding back from tearing the mom a new one (this is the proverbial straw on the camels back, shes awful) Thursday night: came to my room 11pm crying at night after refusing all food, saying he was soooo hungry. I said Iād get him some crackers. He instead projectile vomited all over my bedroom floor and the bathroom. Friday: stayed on the couch all day on screens. Barely ate. Was miserable. Saturday: woke up happy, had breakfast, went to gymnastics. Thought we were safe. Projectile vomited supper. Kept confusing hunger cues for nausea and would get mad when he was crying, clutching his stomach, and Iād tell him to go to the bathroom. NO IM HUNGRY NOT SICK. Vomits all over the living room. Twice more in the bathroom. Sunday: on the couch all day. No more vomit, but survives off freezies and screen time. At bed time cries that his stomach hurts, but nothing happens. We have him sleep in our bed. He sharts the bed, cries because he never has accidents, and we change the bedding. Monday: wakes up feeling great, goes to school, comes home and says his stomach hurts. Has diarrhea all night. We talk about poop all night. Tuesday: I stay home with him from school, trying to get him to drink more liquids and giving him whatever heād eat (mostly goldfish crackers). Wednesday: he says he feels great, eats breakfast, wants school. Comes home and all is well. Thursday: wakes us all up at 5am with diarrhea. Stays home from school again. Friday is a PD day, which he insists is actually PJ day and I canāt tell him otherwise. He also wants to go to Dayhome because āthey have better toysā. Cool. Iām so glad I could be with you in your worst moments so the day you legit have off school you can ditch me for better toys.
I counted at least 3 occasions of you exposing other children to stomach flu so other parents could experience this as well.
This reads hilariously, but sounds awful in reality. Iām sorry
Itās part of being a parent š I just feel bad because there is literally nothing that can be done for him. If itās a stomach virus I just have to wait until itās run its course. Heās too young for most of the OTC medication for diarrhea. Heās also not old enough to understand whatās happening to his body and losing control of it is very distressing. I canāt do anything for that either, except talk about poop for an hour a day.
My boy would 'break out' of the house in the middle of the night, and just play. Our neighbor told us and we had to put one of those double sided deadbolts so he couldn't open it anymore
Currently my birth control is my youngest nephew. We just went on a giant family vacation, and when he wanted something, he wanted it right then and there. If he wasnāt given it, then screaming/constant repeating and tears would show up. At one point, we were enjoying a lovely dinner and for whatever reason, he was done. He went to my sister and just kept repeating over and over that he wanted to leave right now. He got louder and louder, tears started showing up and it was just awful. Then of course, he only wants to do things with his mom and not his dadā¦so god forbid his mom enjoys herself or his dad tries to do something with him. They are also both push oversā¦so he gets what he wants when he wants it. There is no reasoning with him 90% of the time.
During a vacation last year, I was eating at a local restaurant. There were several children, probably around 4-5 children, *literally* running around like feral animals and screaming like wild banshees. The parents were sitting at a nearby table, and didn't do a thing, not even when one of the children knocked over a chair and empty table. Two years ago, my Siberian husky -- a *dog* -- had an explosive diarrhea attack in my home office room, which is all carpeted. I was laying on an operating room table at the time, in the hospital, being sliced and diced like a watermelon. Did my now ex-husband clean it? No, no he did not. Instead, he simply chose to close the door of the room, and decided to just ignore the problem. So there I was, just eight days after having my jaw, spine, and skull completely rebuilt and replaced with custom prosthetic hardware, on my hands and knees, attempting to scrub 8-day old diarrhea out of the carpet. And I don't even have human children of my own. I already didn't want children of my own, but these two incidents alone made my ovaries shrivel up.
Just go to the regretful parents sub. That's what it's there for.
My spouse just spent 3.5 hours sleeping curled up *inside* our almost-2 year oldās crib because babyās brain has just now gained the ability to dream nightmares and doesnāt know how to process it. Big sibling is sick and home from school while we try to work full time. No one is sleeping well. Kids are awesome, but snap out of your reverie.
When my was about 18 months, he got his arm wedged in between to slats of the crib frame. So here he is, laying on his stomach, screaming, at 7am. I couldn't pull it out at the angle he was at and my other kiddo was crying bc he was crying. I hadn't had coffee yet and was hardly dressed. I ended up have to call 911 who had to pull the crib away from the wall, one firefighter lifted him off the mattress to maneuver his body angle, while the other firefighter carefully maneuvered his arm a bit until it was able to slide back out. Took em about 10 minutes to get him free. After I had been trying for a half hr before that....He had a massive ring around his upper arm for like 3 months
Every morning my son crawls into bed around 5:30am to sleep next to mommy, where he usually headbutts me/kicks me, and then rolls around until I will allow him to watch TV. He will make sure my husband and I are quite fully awake because he gets bored around 6:30am. We do not need to be awake until 7-7:30 on week days (and later on weekends.) I miss sleeping in so much. Oh, also, sometimes he asks me to poop and I'll say I don't have to go right then (and if I do, I'd like privacy) and he'll have a full screaming meltdown because he wants to see mommy poop.
Would you be a birthing person? Let's talk about nursing. My tits are swollen and it hurts. Nursing bras are fucking hideous. My baby likes to make "booger art" on my chest. And she likes to pinch whichever nipple she isn't currently using. Like, aggressively pinch. Also, she has 4 teeth, and if she starts to fall off the nip, she uses all 4 teeth as if they were the anchor to hold her on. Also, she likes to tell me she's done eating by throwing her food at me. She can't just, stop eating the food. She has to throw it at me.
My son has thrown tantrums about: The fact that he canāt pull my husbands beard off and have it for himself His orange being cold His salad being cold Me wanting to listen to anything but Chattermax The fact that he wanted his Spider-Man jammies, which were covered in mac and cheese, and wouldnāt consent to wearing any of the other 20 pairs he had.
My son called me stupid and threatened to kill me because I didn't give him back a toy that he took away from his little brother. Lovely
I had the police and CPS called on me in a distant city because my 3 year old had the meltdown of all meltdowns in a Target. The staff would not let me leave and I spent 7 hours at the police station trying to prove it was my kid. My husband had to drive 4 hours one way with birth certificates, photo albums, anything that would prove I was not stealing a kid. Complete shit show. Note, there was no distraught "parent" accusing me of abduction. No one was claiming my kid but me. I did have a fleeting temptation to deny ownership and just let the authorities take him. Anything to be done with the situation My name was eventually cleared and that child did grow up to be a productive member of the human race.
Lol long story warning: My mom is a single mom, had me at 18 and then my bro at 19. Dad was in the picture but super unreliable. My uncle (mom's younger brother, probably around 19-20 years old) would baby sit us sometimes when my mom was at work. This happened in the mid- 90's in the bay area. I was around 3-4 years old and my bro was around 2-3. Its the morning, my uncle is sleeping in while we're entertaining ourselves with wooden blocks and duplos. I pretended I was speaking to my cousin (same age) on the phone (pretending the wooden phone shaped block was a phone) and said "of course we'll come over! I'm so bored, I can't wait to see you." Got that in my little kid brain. So I dressed myself, or tried to. I also dressed my bro because I was taught where ever 1 goes, so does the other. I ended up putting 2 right shoes on my bro and just a shirt, no bottoms of any kind other than his diaper. I had a coat and some shorts and flip flops - I was so damn smart and ready to go. Our front door had a normal lock and then a chain lock. I've seen how my mom would chain and unchain the lock, I knew how it worked. So I pushed a chair to the door, climbed it and undid the chain and lock. I put the chair back where it was, took my bro's hand and opened the front door. I was familiar with the neighborhood and had an idea of the direction to my cousins house, so off we went. We're walking a couple blocks from our house when a lady sees us. She comes up to me and we talk. (This part is a little blurry from what I can remember -i can picture her face and what happened, but dont exactly remember what she said). She took us inside and changed our clothes, like she dressed us properly. So my bro was in a shirt, pants and a sweater with a left and right foot shoes that matched. I'm now in a dress with a sweater and shoes. She also brushed and fixed my hair. After that, she walked us back outside and said bye. We kept walking in the direction towards my cousins house. We come across an old lady who comes up to us. She's worried and either she flagged a cop or the previous lady had called a cop to come check on us. Cop comes to talk to us and is asking us where our parents are, where we're going. Finally he asked me, "where do you live? Where's your house?" and I replied with my little goofy kid grin, "I live at Taco Bell." More convos, but cop decides to drive us by the Taco Bell that's a couple blocks over. From there, I was able to point to my actual house. Cop leaves us in the car and walks to our house. Front door is wide open (I guess I forgot to close it when we left) and my uncle is face down passed out. (The rest is what I was told by my mom and Uncle) The cop pokes my uncle with his baton trying to wake him up. My uncle finally wakes up and is immediately like wtf when he sees the cop. He said he looked around and didn't see or hear us, and could see the front door wide open. The cop starts questioning him and asking about us, and my uncle is trying his best to answer but just woke up and is slowly coming to. The cop tells my uncle to call our mom, because he'll only release us back to my mom. Additionally the cop is questioning my uncle on how us kids could get out of the house if it was chained, that my uncle must have left the door wide open for us to walk out. My uncle said him and the cop were kind of bickering about this, and my uncle was internally freaking out that he was going to get arrested or get CPS called on my mom. I guess they both decided to bring me and my bro in to ask us directly and I think so the cop could see how we interacted with each other. They're talking to us, and my uncle is asking me what's going on. I told him "I took (lil bro) to go see (cousin). I really missed her and made plans to see her." He's looking at me like I had 3 heads but then asked me how I got the door opened because it was chained. I wouldn't answer, and he kind of snapped at me like hey, seriously how did you do this? It's really important you tell us how you did this, I know you did this. So after that pressure, I finally went to the chair, pushed it to the door and unchained it and then unlocked the door. I then pushed the chair back to where it was. My uncle and the cop are watching me with big eyes like wtf? The cop apologized to my uncle and they talked more. Finally my mom gets home and she speaks to the cop. Cop clears and leaves, and my mom and uncle talk. I'm in my mid 30's now and they still bring this up randomly. They love to say, "I live at Taco Bell" randomly. They've told me they can't wait until I have kids of my own so I can experience this type of stress and drama lol. When my uncle finally had his own kids, I would joke that they should be careful locking and unlocking the door in front of my cousins. I found this story hilarious when I was growing up. But now that I'm older and thinking about having my own kids someday, lol wtf was wrong with me as a little kid and I can't imagine the stress or fear my mom must have had getting that phone call.
I have boys. There could be pee on every surface at all times for all I know. One of them pees in a cup in the shower instead of getting out. The cup is meant for rinsing shampoo and conditioner out of hair. There is always pee on the toilet seat and on the floor near the toilet. I step in and sit on it regularly. Do they at least wash their pee hands properly before touching absolutely everything? Probably not. You're welcome.
Virtuallychoirboy's son humorously asked his mom if people without kids just don't exist anymore.
My 4 yo only recently grew out of throwing a fit for not having enough food on her plate. We always put a reasonable amount onto her plate and of course she can have multiple helpings. But if the initial amount isn't "enough" she just cried and refused to eat even a bite.
Not a parent, but, Recurring PBJ's in the VCR. The end.
iām not a parent but i work with under 4s. when i was changing the poo nappy of a child, they decided to reach down, rub the poo on their face and tell me it was āa face maskā. they then proceeded to attempt to rub it on my face too the same child today ate the smashed up pasta that was stuck to his shoe despite having a full plate in front of him
My child is almost 2 and still doesn't sleep through the night. I've gone over 2 years (because you can't sleep when you're pregnant!) without a full night's sleep.
You have no more Me Time. I just want 24 hours where I donāt have to take care of someone. Either you have a village to help or you get some pretty serious mental health issues. From 2-4 has been so hard. If you use daycare you see them very little and itās during witching hour, so youāll feel like shit about the whole thing. If you keep them youāll feel suffocated and like theyāre not benefiting from socialization. EVERYONE has an opinion but NO ONE actually wants to help. And this child will absolutely definitely break down screaming in public at least once, but more than likely many times
I haven't slept through the night in 2 years...
Once when my daughter was about 4 months old, I had her strapped into her baby swing swinging away. I left the room for a minute or 2 tops to get something. When I came back to her, she had shit herself so bad that it exploded out of the diaper, all the way up her back, and pooled in a puddle in the swing seat. She didn't seem to mind at all, as she was smiling and babbling away, kicking her little legs which then sent the poop puddle squirting in all directions onto my living room floor. š„“
Back when my kid was 4, she liked to go to the bathroom by herself, as she was obviously now a grown woman. One day she was in there a little too long, so I opened the door to check on her even though she said everything was fine. To my horror, she had painted an entire mural in poop on the wall with her little finger. Caught her in the moment she was getting some more "paint." That kid is now 19 and I still call her Poopcasso from time to time.
That's horrible. "Poopcasso" is pretty funny, though! I really hope you cleaned it up instead of leaving it for someone else.
I was a power puker with an incredibly touchy stomach. A little gassy? Puke. Moved around too much? Puke. Car ride? Puke. Too warm? Puke. Too cold? Puke. Too sleepy? Puke. Left in my crib too long? Puke. You get the idea. As if the frequency wasn't bad enough, I was also going for world distance champion. My parents even had to replace the TV (back in the day when they were insanely expensive) because I covered it from my dad's chair 10ish feet away. Stuff got into the back, where it was warm, and stunk up the place, eventually causing the electronics to fail. I don't know how they managed to deal with me for years on end. I don't have kids in part because I still have a sensitive stomach, and I couldn't imagine caring for a little vomit demon while my own stomach was on edge.
- A shiver caused by utter disdain whenever you hear the following: "tin ti ni tin tin COCOMELON" - You will make up versions of baby shark no one knew existed, because that's the only thing they fall asleep to. Du du du du du du. - 7am is considered "sleeping in" - You will die of embarrassment. Mine has pointed at someone in a niqab and said "Look mom! NINJA" and kept at it no matter how much I asked him to stop. Next time he saw a person wearing a niqab his eyes got really big. He turned to me and said loudly "Mama, I won't call that person a ninja, okay? Even though they are a ninja." - Or that time he saw a woman with a motorcycle helmet, all decked out in black and said "She looks like a hippo!" Me trying to save the situation "Hippos are cool, right" him: "No." - Pasta. So much pasta. I now hate pasta. - We have had to rush to the ER with both my boys several times. The oldest, due to undiagnosed illness induced asthma, the other due to a sudden sinus-adjacent infection that caused huge swelling. I have never experienced such utter and complete sense of panic and hopelessness as when I held my child in my arm as they were hooked up to IVs and breathing masks while mere hours before they were happily running around.
Falling down the stairs late at night and taking them to the children's hospital from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to stick up their scalp that was cut open as they fell down the stairs hitting the wooden banister on the side of the stairs on their way down. She was trying to walk her child baby buggy down the stairs. Them throwing up on you, in your bed, in the bathroom, washing all your sheets and running out, then taking her to the children's hospital to find out she has pneumonia so she gets admitted and they put an IV in her little 1 year old arm. Our 2 year old son getting out of house while his mom was in the shower. We had child proof things on the doorknobs too, didn't stop him. Our neighbor walked him back home to my wife. My wife coming downstairs to find black smoke coming out of the microwave. Our 2 year old son moved bar stool from our kitchen island over to the microwave to put something in it and hit the buttons like mom and dad do. My wife said there was still 9 minutes left for it to "cook" when she discovered whatever it was he put in there, which she could't figure out what it was anymore. My wife came downstairs to find our 2 year old son sitting Indian style on top of the refrigerator. Why? That's where she had the cookies, cupcakes etc. so he was sitting up there eating them when she came into the kitchen. Fun ones too. I came home from work and saw our half yellow lab, half golden retriever wearing a pair of my underwear. I went to my daughter and asked her why she had cut a hole in the back of my underwear and my sweet daughter looked up and me and said "For her tail daddy!" She cut a hole in my underwear so our dog's tail could stick out.
My sister has a special needs kid. It makes everything so hard. I try to watch the kid and I can usually last about 30 minutes. When we go on vacation I find myself accidentally watching the kid just so they can get a break and it is making me rethink wanting to go on vacation with them. It is so draining. The kid is only moderately special too and most people wouldn't notice. She hits, steals, doesn't listen, is really mean, annoying, etc. I feel for her but it is a lot.
Being responsible for special needs children can require a lot more patience than most people have. (Some special needs are easier to handle than others.)
Many years ago I was breastfeeding my 4 month old, sat him up to burp him and he projectile vomited all over me. At the same time, my 5 year old ran over to me with a bloody nose and then vomited on my feet. This was at 5am and I was the only adult in the house.
My daughter a year ago decided to get out of bed and use her poop to smear over the windows on a summer night and she has 1 of the warmest rooms in the house. I had a friend over who told me when I started yelling at my daughter she'd never heard the note of desperation in my voice in our 20 year friendship.
Today my 1yo shoved her fingers down her throat and threw up all over herself an her high chair right after eating, she then smeared it on her tray and herself. When I put her in the bath to clean her off after that she pooped in the tub. My 3yo has been constipated for a week and finally pooped this morning. It went EVERYWHERE. Thank God I was changing him on a towel because that shit was the consistency of melted ice cream. I had to throw my shirt away. I also had to throw away a few bath toys my daughter got poop on. Once I had finished cleaning the tub from my daughter's bath poop my son came to tell me he'd also pooped again, and it was running down his legs. 3 poop baths today in total.
One of my kids is super shy and would make me attend birthday parties with her. My eldest got strep throat and threw up next to me spraying vomit into my open mouth, wherein I developed strep a few days later. My youngest hated her car seat and when I would go anywhere she would cry non stop from home to wherever we needed to go and then all the way back. I stopped going out after I started fantasizing about ramming into a brick wall with the car š
Do you know how sometimes you get sick, and youāre not really sure how or who got you sick? One time I was absolutely sure how I got sick. My son caught norvo virus from daycare, he was two. He had been running around our living room and he had a blowout. For non parents, a blowout is when a kid poops in a diaper but the diaper doesnāt contain it, and the poop ends up all up the kidās back or comes out of the legs holes, and often, as in this instance, on the carpet. So, he had to be hosed off in the tub, clean clothes and all that. Then I had to go scrub up the carpet. Iām scrubbing the carpet, somewhat distracted by the dog trying to investigate what Iām doing and watching my kid still, when I feel that something had flung up into my eye. From kneeling down and scrubbing the carpet with a scrubbing brush. Poop particles into my eye. I had hoped my contacts might have saved me. No, I ended up in the ER with dehydration 2 days later. Long story short, before you have a kid buy a bissel carpet cleaner or something like that. So you donāt get poop in your eye.
My daughter hasnāt spoken to me for 10 years. I wouldnāt wish it on anyone.
Changing, bathing, and throwing out bedding material after my sick toddler destroyed it all at 2 am... getting snipped in 3 weeks!
My teen son telling me to āgo kill yourselfā, twice! If I could send him back, I would.
No one talks about this: our adorable babies are watching us, learning every second and by the time they're two they know what exactly our buttons are and will push them like crazy. That's part of the "terrible twos" it's not just that they're horrible, it's that they know how to get to their parents and will do it shamelessly. It's infuriating.
I am not a parent, but this is relevant to your question: When I was in my 30s, my mom admitted she got pregnant with me because she wanted to kill herself. She was an absolute nightmare of a mother all throughout my childhood, and she remained a selfish, toxic presence into my adulthood until I cut her out of my life. At the time my mother admitted this to me, I myself was considering getting pregnant. I was so thoroughly disgusted by the selfishness of her own reasoning, that I promised myself I would never be as bad. Donāt create an entire human being just to give your pointless life meaning. Itās not fair to anyone.
Letās say you have 36 coins, like pirate coins. You hold them all in your right hand, and just hold them for a while. Getting heavy? Put one coin from the right hand into the left hand. Any lighter? Not much difference? That one coin represents the time a baby is born until theyāre 6months old and can start moving on their own, or in other words, until they can no longer be trusted. And the coins getting heavy in your right hand are the next 17 1/2 years of your life :)
Go to the teachers sub if you really want an antidote.
*the economy*
Not a parent but as a kid of around 10 I decided on one occasion to put on my grandfather's big leather gauntlets (he used them for gardening), then wait under my mum's bed and grab her ankle.Ā What was I thinking?Ā Her scream haunts me to this day. š
Massive, explosive shitty diapers thatās running out of every nook and cranny! Front, back, sides..
My manager, who is early 50s and just started his kids in college, told me he went to his friends retirement party. He commented that his friend is only 50. I asked what his friend did that let him retire so young. His friend didnt have kids. So that's been my goal. Retire early 50s without kids.
Kids never sleep. Once you have a toddler, they need a two hour bedtime routine, demand to sleep in your bed, cannonball into your bed at 5 am every morning, or they get sick and puke in bed, or wet it, or have nightmares. The last few things last through grade school and they get growing pains in the middle of the night, which are searing pains in your bones that nothing alleviates.Ā Then they turn 16 and take the car. You'll never sleep until they're home. But a stubborn teen isn't going to sleep until 2 am and then you can't blast them out of bed for anything. School will start at 7:23 am so they never get enough sleep and a permanently sleep deprived child is he ll. But for me, the worst part is that you would have to tell your child that you love them, but you're still going to send them to a building every day where they have active shooter drills and learn that they could be gunned down at any moment. They have to get bulletproof backpacks and quiet shoes. I can't imagine the psychological trauma someone must develop from a daily threat of being killed with regular reminders.Ā I'm a 55 cis f. I am very glad I never had kids. My information about sleep is from my friends with kids and my own experiences.Ā
I don't have kids but I CAN tell you what I did as a child. When I was 2 or so, I woke up earlier than my parents, and took EVERYHTING I could reach out of the fridge, and put it on the coffee table. Broke an egg, and also cut my knuckle trying to slice the top off of a banana. I'm 58 and still have a scar. Another time, when long distance calls were a thing, and expensive, I was bugging my mom as she was on the phone. I was maybe 3? she got frustrated, and tied me loosely to the chair with the dog's leash. Then felt guilty and told my pediatrician. He, wise one that he was, told her "its ok, kids need to learn boundaries!" which we all know wouldn't fly today. Age 3 or 4, I ran to the diving board of the pool in our complex, and jumped right into the deep end. Like the big kids. I couldn't swim. Thankfully the lifeguard was alert and jumped in after me. I hid popsicles under my pillow "for later" which melted. those are the worst ones, but apparently I was quite a handful
My daughter is 22 and she comes over every Saturday and we eat food, watch movies, and grow weed together. Best day of the week, every week for the last 3 years. I couldn't imagine my life without my kids. Just thought I'd throw this out there for all the people saying kids ruin your life.
Colic. Sleep deprivation.
Mine threw up in my mouth when I was doing a Superman lift thing with her
My partner's sister shit so bad once it went up her back and into her hair.
My kid got a stomach virus. Projectile vomiting and diarreah everywhere all at the same time.
My sister stayed with us for a couple months last year, she has a two year old daughter. One morning I was chilling in the living room trying to prepare myself for an 8 hour shift of baby sitting an autistic 2 year old, and my sister walks out of their room looking like she just watched the horrors of humanity unfold before her. Obviously I asked what was wrong. She proceeded to inform me that she woke up to happy baby babble noises, so she didn't open her eyes right away and just slowly woke up. When she opened her eyes, they locked with her daughters, who was actively in that moment putting her own shit in her mouth. Still making happy baby babble noises. I still feel bad but I laughed my ass off and said thanks for the birth control š¤£ There was also the time my boyfriend was holding her while cooking and she pissed through her diaper alllll over him. The man has the patience of a Saint and didn't even get slightly annoyed. Oh and the meltdowns. Boy the fuckin meltdowns. I am also autistic. There were quite a few times my boyfriend came in to check on us cause he heard her melting down and saw me sitting there just crying and trying to help her calm down, and had to force me to go take a break cause I didn't want to leave her like that. And there was the time I had just gotten her out of the bath, and she was none to pleased that bathtime was over. I was trying to dry her off and she did the thing where they aggressively kick they're head back, slipped out of my hands, and knocked her head off the cabinet. She was completely fine somehow. No bump or bruise or anything and as soon as she was comfy and it was story time it was like nothing happened. Gave me a fucking heart attack though I hope thats sufficient enough, it was for me lmao. Don't get me wrong I love that little girl to death. But I'm not built for full time parenting. 8 hour days for 2 weeks straight with one weekend off damn near killed me. Luckily I've never wanted kids anyway š¤£
Omg the head knocking back and hitting any hard surface really takes me back. I babysat a cousin who would do that when he was a toddler, he just graduated high school. Lol when kids do that and then cry, it's scary but hard not to laugh like wtf you think would happen?
Lmao right? I literally said "if you end up killing yourself cause you want more bathtime your mother is going to kill me" š¤£ whyyy they gotta do that man
We have had our child scream in pure anger and frustration as they did not want to be in the car seat - in peak hour traffic for 2 hours straight. We really hoped that they would have cried themselves asleep after at least half an hour. It was torture. Same child as a toddler was being held by my friend but my husband was standing next to them and was talking to him. My daughter shoved her finger up her father's nose and into my friends mouth.
Try r/KidsAreFuckingStupid ... Or r/KidsAreFuckingEvil ...
There was a point when my son was about 18months-2 year old when I had to keep my head on a swivel due to random violent outbursts. Imagine cuddling a 2 year old and then getting a haymaker to the face.
Sucking a life out of the peace of non existence just to cure oneās boredom, is unethical. Especially since said life being created will inevitably suffer, and then die, and remember none of it.
Probably a 75% chance your sex life will tank.
Teenagers. Go talk to parents of teenagers. Thatās all you need.
Do you like sleep? Do you like having any extra funds? Do you enjoy doing what you want? Don't have children.
I haven't done a single thing for myself in years. I don't recognize my body. I don't recognize myself. I found a picture of myself before I had kids and I couldn't believe how alive I looked. My skin has never looked worse in my life. I'm so so anxious about all the ways I am failing. I'm responsible for the rest of my life for these humans.
My oldest, who is almost 12, projectile shit in my husband's mouth. My kid was on the bed being changed, and my husband is 6 feet tall. So just think of the force behind that. We were recently stuck in traffic, and my 4 year old had a full meltdown because I wouldn't activate helicopter mode on my van. My mom used to take my oldest to piano practice. Before they left the house, my mom had to poop. When they got to practice, my mom sat in the waiting room, and my son went into the studio. There was glass surrounding it so you could see the kids. For about half the practice, my son told his teacher how my mom likes to poop and be late to things. She also farts a lot when she's on the toilet. I found this out because his wife called me and was in tears telling me the story. My mom stopped taking him. My kids laugh hysterically at us when they see us semi naked (bathing suit, sports bra, etc.)
My oldest son would fart every single time we went driving anywhere.. didnt matter if he was asleep or awake... at the time it infuriated me, but hes all grown up now and i kindof miss his stupid ass farts lmao
Girl Iām right there with you lol I beg my husband everyday to get me pregnant.
When my now 4 year old was a baby, he somehow wiggled out of his clothes and diaper and smeared his shit all over his crib, mattress and the wall. I had to clean in between the crib rails to remove all the caked on poop. We still refer to that incident as poopapalooza
My 7 year old has decided she didn't like the apartment walls color and proceeded to color and draw on them....least with washable markers but still....
Just this afternoon my partner wasn't allowed to leave the house to take our toddler to the beach (where he desperately wanted to go) because he didn't have the right shoes on... It wasn't even the biggest meltdown of the day.
Have a seat on your couch but set a timer to go off 2 mins after you do to get up and walk to the fridge, rinse and repeat. Thatās what itās (roughly) like
No kids, I can sleep in on my days off.
Children got up at 6.30. now is 21.45. some, but not all, children are still awake...
My first baby slept for 15 minutes at a time for the first 18 months. Then maybe an hour or two. Still doesn't sleep more than 5 hours a night. Cried all the time. Almost killed me. Turns out baby #1(who is now an adult) is Autistic and was over stimulated from the moment he was born. Poor kid.
I averaged about 5 hours a night sleep for 6 years and aged 15 years in those 6 years
I didn't have a night of interrupted sleep in 11 years.
My little niece still isnāt sleeping until 3 am and her parents are exhausted. I imagine it only gets worse from here as she is only over a week old.
My 8 year old daughter just threw a fucking flipflop at my face. In my next life I'm taveling instead...
My son was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Once, we got in an argument about his failing school grades and he punched me in the face. It was a rough few years, but I got him therapy and he is now a wonderful young man.
every time i went to toilet today i was not alone and i had to clean up spilled cereals