Took my oldest for new boots when he was about 5, found a nice pair, salesman helped fit him properly and we took them home. Next day getting him ready for school, he''s sitting on the stairs and I'm helping him get his new boots on but he's fidgeting and fighting me and they won't go on. We're running late, I lose my temper and tell him to sit still while I try and cram his foot in the boot, he's crying telling me it hurts, they're too small, I tell him they fit less than 24 hours ago and they'll fit now, dammit!!! Yeah, the salesman wadded the tissue paper back into the toe of the boots so of course his foot didn't go in. Mother of the year.

As a teen, I was a fainter. I would frequently get light headed and my Dear Dad would tease me about it. Flash forward 30 years. My DDaughter is singing in a choir concert. She's tall, on a riser with her head close to a big hot light,.....Can you see where this is going? We are sitting with friends in the auditorium when my husband asks where DD is? I burst out laughing when I see her sitting on the riser with her head between her knees because she was lightheaded. I had the uncontrollable giggles that only the world's best mom would have! I'm sure my Dad was looking down and getting a kick out of it too.

Youngest DD is actually on medicine to raise her BP because of they same issue. Her pulse was running very high, had a 2D echo and stress test, proceeded to pass out after the test to the glee of the cardiologist. He was especially happy to hear that I used to be a fainter as well. Luckily she has no awkward fainting stories to tell.

My son was in kindergarten and didn't want to go to school one day. He gave me some excuse and I of course, told him he had to go, no excuses, blah, blah, blah. I get a phone call from the school just after the bell rang, he had walked into the classroom and immediately thrown up all over the carpet. Mother of the Year - Thankyou.

He's 27 and still reminds me it. There are more stories, believe me.

My son had been outside roughhousing with friends. Later on he was complaining that his arm hurt. I just kind of said , oh too bad it will be better in the morning. He kept mentioning it and I kept poo-pooing it. A couple days later he was sitting on the sofa with my father, who was a doctor. My father felt his arm and says " do you know your son has a broken arm?" Oops.

When my oldest was just a few months old we decided to to the "let him cry until he falls asleep" thing. After about a a half an hour of non stop crying I checked on him and found a hair wrapped around his finger, cutting off his circulation. I'm so happy that I didn't let him cry it out, because 36 years later he still has 10 fingers.

Hair tourniquet

Shee, I know just how you feel! I was out shopping (or whatever) and my DH calls me frantically saying our son (then 2 years old) swallowed a wooden golf tee and that he was taking him to the emergency room! DS was not choking or vomiting-so it either went down the right way or he never swallowed it. Drs. did not do an xray because it was wood and wouldn't show up? Anyway, that's what I remember!

Like runninginplace, I failed to pick my kid up. He was 12 or so, at baseball practice, in the days before every child had a cell phone. I don't know how it slipped my mind, but it did. What made matters worse was this: a severe thunderstorm came through the area. Hail. High winds. Torrential rain. Lightning. A coach had actually offered to give my son a ride before the storm hit but he declined, thinking I was just running late. Luckily, a kind man drove by an hour later, saw my kid huddled under the bleachers and convinced him that he was safer accepting a ride from a stranger than staying out in that weather. Yep, Mother of the Year, that's me!

Three situations immediately come to mind and they all were with DS. He was the stereotypical first-born Guinea pig and his sweet and earnest personality was ripe for my missteps. I was a harried full time working mom and my husband often traveled into Boston from our home in So. Maine which left me to do both school for DS & daycare for DD drop offs & pickups.

The weather during the first weeks of school here are notorious for erratic temperature swings. It's often in the '40's in the morning but can climb into humid 80+ degrees by afternoon. So I'd put a jacket on my 1st grade son as he headed off to school only to discover on the way home that he'd left it there. After 3 days in one week that we had to turn around to get it, in my exasperation I said, "You'd better not think of coming home again without your jacket." And he never left his jacket at school after that.

When we met with his teacher at Parents' Night a couple weeks later it was all glowing reports about DS, his work & temperament, but there was one thing.....Apparently, he refused to ever take off his jacket, even on the hottest afternoons when he was clearly sweltering in the heat...

Worst Mother Ever!!

omg, ladypat's is a gem.

Oh, I love these stories. Trust me, I have many similar to those posted above, so I'll share one that's a bit different.

My husband and I went to at least 5 stores looking for a limited release (?) beer that he wanted to try. We never found it but several stores said they were expecting to get it in a few days. They warned that it sells out quickly and a "shipment" usually means 2 or 3 6-packs.

So DH is at work a few days later and called to see if I called the stores to see if the beer arrived. Ugh! I just put the baby down for a nap so I started making calls. Keep in mind that DH never asks for anything, so if he wanted to try this beer I'll try to help. It's the little things, right?

Anyway, one store had 2 6-packs and I asked if she could hold them for a few hours (until nap time ended). She couldn't because of the high demand.

So I peeled my sleeping baby from his crib for a beer run! The shame..... I really felt like "mom of the year" (NOT!). DH said that I may not be mom of the year for that stunt, but it made me wife of the year. ;)

It was all for Bell's Hop Slam, if you're curious. DH liked it, but I thought it was gross lol.

amck2 - My first born doesn't call himself a guinea pig but rather the "science experiment" and, like your eldest son, his sweet and forgiving nature never faltered during my missteps.

The more I read these, the more I remember things I am ashamed to admit I did. Once my son was soundly sleeping and I needed something from the grocery store which is two blocks away. I took the chance and ran to the store leaving him alone. My heart was pounding the whole ten minutes. If the house had blown up during that time, I would have thrown my body on the smoldering ruins.

Seriously, I have a list longer than my arm of stupid motherhood moves. Another time I lost my kid in Sears. My son was a sweet faced, blue eyed blond wearing neutral clothes when I heard the loudspeaker announce "we have a little lost girl". I sheepishly went to get him. He was happy as a clam playing with the dolls they gave him.

I relate to many of the previous posts and am probably guilty of some sort of version of any one of them.

But, this one came to mind. While at the local pool, I was sitting on the edge watching both my DD's. Another mom came over to sit by me and I turned to say hello. My oldest pulled my leg and pointed at my youngest as she went under the water. I quickly pulled her up, but cringe to think about what could have happened.

I told both my daughters about this thread and asked them if they had any 'Bad Mom" memories of me. Youngest couldn't come up with anything, she said ask my oldest, who she was sure could come up with something. The best that my oldest could come up with was that I didn't buy her a sticker book. This has been an ongoing joke when something doesn't go her way.

DLM, I have the exact same story with my oldest DD. We lived in the city at the time and i used the stroller to get to and fro. She kept pulling off her shoe and I just kept shoving it back on. Finally after all day of this, it occurred to me to look inside the shoe. And, same as you, there was that wad of tissue paper.

My "bad mother" one year hid roasted chickpeas instead of jelly beans for Easter. We've never let her forget it. Bad enough we never got the big chocolate bunnies or baskets or even Peeps (in hindsight thank goodness for that!), but chickpeas????

My friend's "bad mother" was supposed to pick us up (10 years old) at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts after our art class. But she was late and we figured she'd forgotten, so the two of us took off to walk home. I remember crossing some city street and waiting on an island to cross the next one to the "Mainland" when the Northeastern U. Football team came trotting across to the island we were on. There we were, two little girls surround by these enormous in-uniform football players, what seemed like a hundred of them.

But then her mother found us (imagine showing up at the Boston MFA to pick kids up and find they are not there!), so we got into the car for the rest of the ride home.

We had been on a camping trip, and all had various bug bites. On Monday morning, DD said her back was really itching. I glanced at it and said it was ant bites and sent her to school (kindergarten). They called me to come get her a little later and said they thought she had chickenpox! I called the pediatrician, and they had me bring her in a side door, and sure enough it was chickenpox. It didn't even cross my mind that it could be that since she had already had a pretty bad case of it when she was 2. This was before the vaccine was available. Practically every kid in her class came down with it.

Our oldest DS was a real daredevil, and always rough housing. When he was in middle school, he was jumping around and got in trouble. The school called me to let me know, and when he got home he said his ankle really hurt. I told him it was a bruise, and he shouldn't have been misbehaving. We also grounded him. He kept complaining about it over the next few days, so I finally took him to the dr. Yep, it was broken. Worst mother ever!

When DD was six, I took her to a clubhouse pool for a friend's birthday pool party. Because they had several (6) lifeguards there on their raised platforms, I let myself relax and chat with the other moms. All of the sudden I noticed my daughter missing. A quick scan of the area showed nothing. I ran to the side of the pool, just to the right of the lifeguard there, and saw her at the bottom of the deep end struggling. I immediately screamed for help and dove in to get her. Not only was she on the bottom there, but her best friend, Anna, was also there, holding onto her, each holding the other down! Thankfully, I'm a strong, accomplished swimmer and was able to quickly drag them both to the surface where parents and lifeguards helped pull them out of the water. I was beyond furious. With the lifeguards for not doing their jobs, as it was not a very kid-filled, overly busy pool, but with myself for trusting anyone to care more about my daughter's safety than I did. Because of that incident, my daughter developed a huge, incapacitating fear of the water for years afterwards. I spent a small fortune with a private one-on-one swim instructor/ therapist in a private pool with just the two of them . . . and me sitting off to the side so as not to interfere with their rapport. It helped somewhat, but a year later, DD was too frightened to even walk furthest away from the water, holding her dad's hand, on San Antonio's River Walk while on a trip there. Our week-long Caribbean cruise the following year had her too frightened for us to sit at a table in the dining room next to any window, just in case the window fell out and she fell into the ocean. She's now 22 y/o and, with help, has no fear of swimming as long as she can touch the bottom or be close to shore, but still has a fear of deep water in some instances, that she may never get over. It brings me to tears every time I think of it.

Egads, Linen. How terrifying.

My daughter gave up naps really early, despite my best efforts. This happened during the phase where I was still trying to enforce the nap but more often than not, she just was awake in her room yelling, "I'm not tiiiiiiiiirrrred! I'm not sleeeeeeeeeeeeeepyyyyyyyy!"

Anyway, there was one day when I desperately needed her to take a nap because I desperately needed to take a nap myself. She wouldn't stay in her room. Finally, I locked myself in my room while she sat outside my door crying. She finally stopped and of course I panicked. So I opened the door to check on her to find that she had fallen asleep on the floor outside my door. But of course, me opening the door woke her up. D'oh.

Worst mom ever.

As a side note, every time my mother talks to her sister, she calls me by her sister's name for a week. The two names have some sounds in common, so it isn't quite as random as it sounds. One of my coworkers once called me by the same name, which happened to be his wife's name, and I told him I was used to answering to it.

When the kids were little- 4, 2, 1 years old, sometimes I would lay down too. One particular afternoon I dozed off. I was awakened when the 4 year old came home with her little friends who lived across the street. She had gone visiting while I was asleep. I did not hear her leave the house.

Oh my...I'm almost too embarrassed to tell mine. My twin sons are in 7th grade.

In 2nd grade "D" came home from school and told me he sucked a piece up his nose off of a mechanical pencil. I asked the teacher and she didn't see it happen. I took him to the Dr. the next day, he didn't see anything. We both kind of blew it off at that point....thinking D was telling a tall tale.

Fast forward five years, D starts having really disgusting drng and halitosis. I insist on an ent appointment with this lingering fear that we missed something five years ago.

yep...I should have trusted my maternal instincts 5 yrs ago.

ent pulled out a plastic piece lurking deep for five yrs.

true story. Bad mother.

That's funny Red. I remember when my first son was really young, probably about four I got him some kind of Lunchable type of thing one day. I think it was when they first came out. It came with what I thought was a piece of candy. My son asked if it was candy and I said Yup! He tried to take a bite. He asked are you sure? Yup! He was trying so hard to bite a piece off so I took a look -- it was an eraser....

Dedtired's story of losing her child in Sears sounds a lot like my DH's childhood story. He got lost in the Smithsonian when he was 5. He did just as they told him, and found a police officer. While the adults were running around like headless chickens looking for him, he was calmly sitting exactly where he was supposed to be. :)

Gail, sounds like those "Japanese erasers" that looked like really objects, including food, that were so popular with the kids.

After seeing a toddler reunited with grandma in a small children's museum very quickly because he knew his last name AND grandma's last name, we taught our own toddler how to spell our last tricky last name as well as my parents' name.

So, I have to ask, should the bad mother award go to the woman who let her son crawl under a barrier and fall into the gorilla exhibit? I know a lot of us have been following this story, and there is such fury and anger at the parents whose boy fell, causing the security personnel to shoot and kill the gorilla. It made me think of this thread, particularly my story of losing my son in Sears, and I wonder if the boy's mother was any more negligent than any of us? It is such a sad, sad story. I personally feel that the security officers had no other choice. In the video I saw, the gorilla was being extremely rough with the child and could have easily killed him.

Anyway, the incident made me think of this thread.

dedtired, I was just thinking about her being a bad mother...and the award goes to... that's my knee jerk reaction. I wasn't there so I don't know what she was or wasn't doing. But I can't help but think, how the heck could a child get into the enclosure in the first place. It should not have been so easy and the kid is only 4 years old.

Whether the award could go to her or not, she definitely can join us here on this thread.

Arkansa, I read that now they say he is 3. And I agree, where exactly was this opening that is wide enough and why isn't there a double row of safety?

There were many people at fault, unfortunately not the gorilla, who paid the price. Now I have decided the worst Mother (actually parents) award goes to the Japanese couple who left their kid alone in the woods to punish him, only to have him disappear.

Oh no. I haven't heard about this one.

Cawaps, I am starting to call my co-worker by my SO's name. It's usually when I am arguing with him about something that SO and I argue about, lol! We get along overall really well and he gets frustrated with me just like we were an old married couple and me the same. He even jokes, "One of these days Alice, one of these days . . . " which is nice because we are the same age and understand all the same cultural references, and we both have a sense of humor about our work.

this story

But let's get back to telling "bad mom" stories with happy endings!

My daughter was a bit on the thin side, but DH's was pretty slim as a child. At 9, she would sometimes get weepy and I would try to remain calm but inwardly would rail, you are too young for this hormonal mood swing (I menstruated rather young though, so I was not too worried, just annoyed). Sometimes driving home from the city to our more rural place (just about 20-25 minutes), she would really, really need to go to the bathroom, necessitating a stop at the library mid-way. Well, my mother has bladder issues so I was not terribly worried about this and she was not always this way.

Well, my mom decided to take her into the doctor just in case. We were more worried about depression because of the moodiness and she just seemed kind of down. After that doctor visit we had to take her to the hospital as she was diabetic. The symptoms developed gradually and were somewhat inconsistent because for a while her pancreas was able to still produce some insulin. Soda was only a treat when we went out (which is why she could not make it home, she had just sucked down sugar). For those who know anything about an A1c test, hers was over 14. I felt awful that I missed the signs that in hindsight seem clear and our doctor reassured us that it was because it was so very gradual but I still feel awful. She is doing great now, gained quite a bit of weight back once everything normalized but that will always be one of my most shameful parenting crisis.

When I was around five, I took swimming lessons with my brother. One weekend, my parents and I went to an art show at the university. I could see the pool from the hall above as we walked through the athletic center. It was very crowded and chaotic at the show. I remember asking my mother if I could swim in the pool. I am sure in all the noise and chaos, she didn't understand me but I thought she said yes. I don't remember the specifics, but somehow I found the car in the parking lot and got my swim suit out! I got changed in the dressing room and jumped into the swimming pool! The lights were off as it was closed and there was no one there, but I didn't understand this, being so young. I started to drown! Thank god a man saw me from the art show above. He ran down to the pool and jumped in with his clothes on and got me out. Somehow I found my parents afterwards. I don't know how they didn't miss me, but they may have been separated and one thought I was with the other. I don't remember what I did with the wet swimming suit. I also don't understand how they didn't question my wet hair. The funny thing is that my mother says she never knew this happened until I told her recently.

My middle brother and I were very active as children. We used to sneak out of the Windows downstairs to play outside at night. Sometimes we would even ride our bikes at night to the local quick stop or 711. We are lucky we never got hit. My mother never knew we did this. We were only 7 or 8. One summer, we left a bedroom window open. My 2 year old youngest brother was supposed to be taking a nap, but got out the window. He was found TWO miles away on a highway on his scooter in his pj's with his superman cape on. A police officer drove him home. I still remember my brother and I being shocked at seeing the police car pull into our driveway with him! The officer said he had even given him directions back to the house. My mother was beyond shocked!

When I was 7, I went to AZ to spend part of the summer with my grandparents, who I was very closed to. I had left the window to my bedroom open back home (as my brother and I used to sneak out at night). Apparently, while I was in AZ, my brother kept coming upstairs telling my mother that a man was sleeping in my bed in the room next to his. My mother told him to stop being so scared and go back downstairs to sleep. This happened a couple nights until my mother went downstairs and saw that someone HAD been sleeping in my bed. Apparently a vagrant had been coming into the house though the window to sleep while my tiny single mother and her baby slept upstairs, and her young son slept downstairs in the next bedroom! I don't know how it was resolved, but I do know she called the police.

Rockybird, you had some childhood adventures didn't you?!?

One of my sisters was always a wanderer as a child; back in the '60s parenting was definitely more free-range so she used to go all over our neighborhood unsupervised, which at the time was a relatively new development with lots of fields, woods etc. We lived in a military town which also meant lots of men around and I remember her at one point coming home to tell our mom that someone she met out in the woods was 'bothering' her. That turned out to be a guy who had been exposing himself to my 8-year old sister, repeatedly! OMG, I still recall how shocked and upset my mother was about that. She had no idea what had been happening and evidently my sister just wasn't fazed by the whole thing. Looking back as an adult myself she and my family are extremely fortunate nothing worse happened.

Tish, nothing as serious as your story but here's another Bad Mother memory from my files: both my husband and I are/were not terribly interested in food and eating. We are both eat-to-live types and for a long time our dinners were relatively informal to say the least. Till one night when my daughter was ~7 YO she came to me just before bedtime insisting she was so, so hungry. I couldn't understand why until I asked my husband what he had fed her because I thought he'd taken care of that. He looked at me blankly, then asked what *I* had given her because he thought I'd done something for dinner! Talk about feeling awful...that was the start of my many year 5-night a week family dinner schedule (the other 2 nights were leftover and pizza nights). I never missed feeding the kids dinner again :).

And while I'm here, one from parenting my son, teenage category. He, at my insistence, went to the senior prom. He wasn't dating anyone so took a girl who was a friend and he also told me the next day offhandedly that he had driven a group of kids home from the prom which was held on South Beach. A few days later I had gotten annoyed at something he hadn't done, homework I think, and was ripping him about being irresponsible, not doing what he should etc.

He lost his temper and blurted out that 'driven a group' meant that all the kids he drove home were blind drunk and he was worried they would get hurt so volunteered to get them home safely which meant he had to drive literally to the south end of our county from the north end (SoBe) taking various people to their houses. Not only that, his 'date' ended up drunk-dialing her ex boyfriend to try to hook up with him while my son was taking her home then proceeded to vomit out the window of the car all the way to her house. I'll never forget my son saying to me 'mom, you have no idea what I had to do because I was the only one who wasn't blasted out of my mind!'. Talk about feeling like the world's worst mother!

runningplace - You raised a good boy.

Trying to remember all the "bad" things I have done. Forgot another child at school, when I carpooled. Had the same issue with the shoe and tissue paper, kept trying to push my son's foot into the shoe. Also, have a daughter who has Type 1 Diabetes, I did not figure out what was going on until she became hysterical when we were driving home from Chuckie Cheese, because I was refusing to stop somewhere and buy her another drink, I had another boy with a migrane in the car at the time. We did not drink soda at home but let the kids have a soda when were eating out so she had filled up on sugary soda. She had some symptoms the year before and I had her tested for diabetes but the test came back negative, so I although she used the bathroom a lot and drank lot I did not figure it out until the hysteria.

With four kids, I have plenty of bad mom stories, several including broken arms. The worst was a couple years ago when ds1 and ds2 were playing soccer in the yard while we packed the car for a week at the beach, 2 hours away. Ds1 shot the ball very hard and hit ds2 in the wrist. Ds2 is very sensitive and cries/whines/sore loser frequently when they play together so I ignored him as usual when he came in the house crying. We headed to the beach an hour or so later. Next day, he was still complaining, to the point where he wouldn't even go in the ocean with his friends. Then I knew something was up. It was a Sunday, so I said if it still hurt in the morning, he'd go to ER. still complaining Monday, two days after getting hurt, so dh took him to the ER. Broken in two places! They wouldn't cast it as they wanted him to see an orthopedic surgeon so the next morning, dh drove him back home where he got a waterproof cast then brought him back to the beach. But poor kid missed several days of beach fun since we blew him off as the boy who cried wolf.

While I don't know if this qualifies as a bad mom, but certainly slacker mom! Long story, but this past weekend I sort of strongly encouraged the same ds to run a local 5K. It was last minute so the day before he was complaining when I asked him to do it. I should preface this by saying he has been on the cross country team at middle school the last two years so he's run before but hasn't done any training since last fall. He runs all the time with sports but not distance running. So he's complaining b/c he hasn't even run a mile in months and his sneakers were falling apart. We had already planned to get new sneakers this week on our way to the beach but didn't have time before the race. I knew he would be fine and was just whining as usual. I couldn't go to the race as my dd had a soccer game, so dh took him. After the race, dh sends me the following picture along with this text, "Poor kid. Wins race with sub par equipment."

I thought maybe he just won his age group. It was a charity 5K with about 150 runners. Nope, my 13y/o won the entire race with those sneakers (that's is toe poking out) and a personal best 5K time with zero training! So bad mom story with a happy ending. And, best part is that he won a gift card to a local running store so we can put that toward new running shoes next fall, but I promised I'd still get him some regular sneakers this week.

I'd probably be arrested for this in today's times. Ex-DH and I took baby girl with us to K-mart. DD is now 45 so this was back in the early 70's. Back in the day K-mart was like Target to us in this town and was the place to go for all your necessities. We had her sitting in the cart like all normal parents did back then. We looked at each other and I said I was going to the toiletries section for a few things and he said he was going to the fishing section to browse, and we split up. I assumed he was taking the cart; he assumed I had it. Yep, we left her right where we split up.

When we met up about 15 minutes later we both said 'where's DD?' We raced back to where we parted and there she was, happily throwing boxes of toothpaste into the cart from a nearby display. About 50 images of someone taking her out of the store went through my mind! Imagine what could have happened today! Mother of the Year.

Runninginplace, that must have been a proud moment.