THEY say when you become a parent, it’s to decide forever to have a little part of your heart go walking around outside your body. What they don’t tell you is that most of your life will also be spent living for your kids, and their activities. And when you err, that little piece of your heart will let you know in no uncertain terms — time and again — how you let them down.

Here some parents share their parenting mistakes, as told by their kids — sad, funny, even heart-wrenching stories of mommy or daddy messing up and the little kids who sometimes hold a grudge for years.

 

Did mommy mess up again? 1/1

 

 

I was trying to get my five-year-old to do her math homework in the car in traffic on the way home. She wasn’t having any of it, so I told her that if she completed it, there would be a bounceabout at school the next day for all the kids who finished their work. She went silent and got to work, and when she finished, she confronted me. “See, I finished. And I know you were lying, mommy. Now tell me some more about that FAKE bounceabout that’s going to be at school”. And she rolled her eyes. I learned then that lying never pays, as she reminds me every morning when we get to the school gate.

 

My three-year-old daughter had an eczema breakout and a little girl in pre-school would say “eeww” everytime she sat near her, my daughter reported. “What a brat!” I said when I heard. Well, the next day I got a call from the teacher, that my daughter had yelled, “my mommy says you’re a big, fat brat” to the little girl, leaving her in tears.

 

My son was in primary school and there was an event his at school and all the parents went but I forgot. I was the only parent who didn’t show up, he told me tearfully after. I almost cried, but couldn’t let him know that. I still feel bad today, and he’s in high school.

 

Career Day wasn’t high on my agenda, but apparently it’s a big deal to the kids at my daughter’s primary school. Well one Career Day I sent her in uniform, and she was so miserable that I still feel bad for what I did, even to this day because I made her feel left out.

 

My six-year-old son got really obsessive about his seatbelt use, after learning to read and then seeing one of those “seatbelts save lives” billboards. He’d buckle up as soon as he got in the car, and always encouraged me to do the same. One day I was just heading to the mall, just a two minute drive away, so I told him not to bother wrestling with the belt which had stuck in the slot. Well lo and behold, we were stopped by the cops, and the kid told the cop, “Yes, she ran the red light and almost put out our lights; and yes, she told me not to wear a seatbelt even though it saves lives. Are you going to take my bad mommy to jail now?”

 

I was experimenting with home remedies on a cut my two-year-old son got, and put tea tree oil on the finger which burned him. One day we were at the doctor’s, months after the incident, and when the cut had already healed. He told the doctor, “my daddy put THREE HOT OILS in my cut!” The doctor was concerned, and I had a lot of explaining to do, to try to convince him that I didn’t pour hot oil on my son’s skin.

— PC