Parenting Fails: 40+ Real-Life Stories of Moms and Dads Behaving Like Kids

Having a kid is easy, but being a parent is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. No one teaches you how to parent and you’re bound to make mistakes along the way.

From revealing dark secrets to having temper tantrums, these people shared real-life parenting fails on Reddit, showing that being a mom or dad comes with its fair share of challenges. You won’t believe these epic parenting mistakes.

u/waterholic19: “I teach elementary music but I also assist in before school care. There was one boy (3rd grade) who was sitting at a table with several other students. One girl was attempting to engage with the boy and he abruptly stands up, points at the girl, and screams ‘YOU ARE THE DEVIL’. Obviously at this age there needs to be intervention because you can’t talk to other in that fashion or with that language. We always try and talk through emotions rather than explode.

Call the mom and explain the situation. The mom’s first and only response is ‘Well, if he called her the devil, she probably is the devil.’ Pretty clearly can tell where that behavior comes from.”

u/TheseWereThePlaces: “My dad just loved to argue, and he loved a deal. We were shopping in a department store, and I found a pair of pants I was mildly interested in. The pants were tagged at (let’s say) $40, and the sign on the rack was ‘All pants $25’…I asked the salesclerk if they had them in my size, the clerk said ‘those aren’t supposed to be on that rack’.

My dad lost his s— and insisted on getting the pants for $25, and started asking for a courtesy discount on top of that. Escalated to the floor manager and the store manager… Eventually after like an hour of arguing the store manager said ‘we’re not giving you the pants at that price. Take them or leave them at $40’. So we left them.”

r/flibbyjibby: “My mum pulled up my skirt, causing me to involuntarily flash a room full of people, at a Christmas dinner. I was absolutely mortified. She wanted to check for self harm scars on my thighs, apparently.

I’ve never self harmed before. She should not be allowed to consume [drinks]. Edit, to answer the FAQs in the replies: I was 18, and I was wearing underwear.”

u/ohhellnoxd: “When I was a young child on a long distance flight my mother let me and my brother sleep on the floor. For safety reasons the flight attendants told my mother that we were not allowed to sleep on the floor. She started to argue with the flight attendants who then turned to the pilots.

The pilots threatened to turn the plane around unless we get up from the floor but she continued to argue. The pilots announced they were about to turn around because of my mother, so all the passengers got pissed. Eventually she caved in when she had all passengers and flight crew on a boeing 747 against her.”

“My parents always had a favorite child. And it wasn’t me. So, when they announced that they were leaving for a year-long trip around the world, they made sure to remind me that they’d chosen my sister to inherit everything if anything happened to them. Mom: Oh, and don’t try anything funny while we’re gone. We’ll be keeping an eye on the security cameras.

But they couldn’t watch the security tapes at every moment of every day—especially when I took a picture of each room and taped them in front of the cameras so they couldn’t see anything. Then, I started to take small things they wouldn’t notice were missing and take them to the pawn shop. If they weren’t going to write me into the will, then I would find a way to make sure I was set financially.”

u/Jrauch77: “My wife’s school was having a really hard time involving their parents in their kid’s homework…So what they tried to do was, start an after-school program where parents would come in and help their kids with their homework…None of the parents showed up. Not surprising I suppose.

Here’s where it gets interesting… so they decided they were going to raffle off a ham at each afterschool homework event. Amazingly, parents started showing up. I would have to drive with my wife every once in a while to Walmart to buy a ham, because the parents showed up for a 1 in 500 chance to win a ham. They wouldn’t come in for their kids, but they’d come in for…ham.”

u/breakyourbad: “I was teaching a sweet 13 year old girl, who obviously couldn’t see the board very well and needed glasses as she was falling behind in class.

I called her mother (this is in south London so imagine a jade goody voice) her mum told me to f— off and that ‘I didn’t need f—ing glasses, my mother didn’t need f—ing glasses so she doesn’t need any f—ing glasses’ and hung up. In that situation you just feel for the girl.”

u/snopal: “Not my parent but grandparent. When I was around 10 years old my grandmother went out and got us (her, my brother, and me) McDonald’s. We got home and we didn’t have napkins in the bags. No big deal, right? We have paper towels and napkins in the house, also me and my brother are pretty good with not making any messes while we eat.

Nope. Grandmother got us in the car, drove back to McDonald’s, demanded a manager, and screeched about how upset she was that we didn’t get any napkins. I wanted to just melt into the floor and disappear. It’s just napkins, Nanny….”

u/EthicalHacker17138: “My mom came to my school because she thought I was lying about what I got on my SATs. She didn’t think I was that smart. No one in my school would give her that information because they didn’t have to.

She got to my principal and said, ‘I want to speak to your manager’ in front of me. He refused and they argued for a while. The principal knew I was an okay guy and the score I told my mother was legit. It was really embarrassing though.”

u/FuzzyElf47: “The number of cashiers who my father demanded the manager fire because they were too slow, rang us up wrong, etc., including one they actually did.

u/Naala35: “I used to teach this little boy who was so disruptive—he would shout and pinch the other children in the class—and when I complained to his parents they said that he was a little angel at home and were shocked that I was saying that their boy was disruptive.

They even said they thought I had the wrong child’s parents in!”

u/xBlackBartx: “I was a manager of a bagel store. Had an interview with a kid, I think he was about 16. His dad came to the interview, and basically answered every single question I asked the kid.

At the end of the interview I turned to the dad and said ‘You’re hired,’ look on his face was priceless. The kid laughed his a– off.”

u/haylibee: “When I was 5 or so my pre-k did a play based on Noah’s ark…We were instructed that our costume was supposed to be raincoats/rain boots/umbrellas. I didn’t have any of those things but begged my Dad to get me at least one of them so I’d fit in and follow the guidelines. Fast-forward: the night of the play. I’m frantically scanning the audience because my Dad is ALWAYS late.

He finally shows up and brings me: a life jacket. I had to stand up there with all the kids in their little raincoats in a life jacket. I was really embarrassed. Dad’s defense was that I was the only kid who would have survived the flood. I can laugh now but I sure wasn’t laughing then!”

u/scoby-dew: “My mother ranting to all and sundry that she was going to get the brand-new Wal-Mart Supercenter in our town shut down because a cashier closed her register as we were walking up.

Apparently, she could do this because she ‘knew people on the internet.’ It was 1998. 14-year-old-me was mortified.”

u/Quirkycupcake56: “I used to work in a daycare, and on my first day in a new room with 15-24 month-olds I picked up a little boy and noticed he had dropped something through the neck hole in his onesie. I pulled it out and it was a lighter.

When we returned it to the mom and told her where we found it she laughed and said ‘This kid gets his hands on EVERYTHING!'”

“Daycare is closed at 6, parents come in at 6:05 and let their kid run around the daycare, opening the bean bag chairs and spilling the guts everywhere & pulling stuff off the shelf for a half an hour while my boss is obviously closing up and telling the kids to stop. The dad goes, ‘let her do what she wants’. One year old kid has a fever of 103 and has to go home. My boss calls the mom and tells her to pick up her kid, the mom says she’s busy and she can’t. She doesn’t’ call the father because they’re going through a really ugly divorce.

The kid has a seizure, my boss calls his father (boss fail) after that the dad shows up about ten minutes later and moments after he comes in to comfort his sick kid, the mom shows up and the couple breaks out in a massive argument while their poor boy is lying on a table in a very bad state.”

“A few years ago when my son was a baby, I went to a local park. It was summer and very hot/busy. My friend and I notice a baby crying near us and theres a girl of about 9 trying to placate her, but getting upset as well. This baby has really bad sunburn and a really soggy nappy, so we ask the girl where her mum is. The girl says her mum sent her out that morning with her little sister and told them to stay in the park.

This is where things just go from bad to worse – this little kid has the worst case of nappy rash I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I got my friend to stay with the little girl in the park and took the baby to a nearby restroom to change him and apply some lotion. When the mom came back, I gently told her that there were services she could access if she needed extra support with childcare, but that she couldn’t keep leaving her kids unsupervised. I never saw her or her kids in the park again—let’s hope she took my advice.”

“day, she stormed into my restaurant during dinner rush. All h— broke loose. KAREN: My salad is COLD!! ME: … that’s a Caesar Salad, ma’am. It’s served cold. KAREN: HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME! I want to see your manager RIGHT NOW!! So I called my manager and he came out. Manager: Good evening ma’am, how can I assist you? KAREN: This man insulted me by serving a cold salad! I want compensation! Suddenly, my manager breaks into a smirk. Manager: Well, ma’am, as per our policy, we punish employees by making them eat their ‘mistakes,’ so… He then turned to me, Manager: Eat the salad. He grins

Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t offer refunds, if that’s what you were asking, my manager said. She huffed and rolled her eyes, before saying, ‘I’ll see you at home, young man.’ My manager turned to me with questioning eyes, but I just grabbed the cold Caesar salad and took it to the break room before I had to explain why my mom insists on acting like that.”

“The day my fourth child was born, I sent my husband to pick up the rest of the kids from school.

When he arrived, he asked the secretary for the children, and when she inquired about which grades they were in, he replied: ‘How am I supposed to know?'”

u/Ginnylala: “Work at a school where over 80% of our population lives under the poverty line. I keep a cabinet full of hygiene products for kids to take. Deodorant, lotion, chapstick, hair gel, feminine hygiene products, shampoo, conditioner, those kinds of things in travel sizes…So one day the entire thing is empty. Odd, I refill the cabinet and two days later all of it is gone again. Refill with the last of my supplies, catch the kid in the act of sweeping everything in his bag…He told his mother about the cabinet.

u/cok3noic3: “[My dad] can be such a prick if you get his order wrong, it could be fast food or a nice sit down restaurant. He often yells at wait staff if they ‘undercook’ his steak. It has to be well done or he claims to have lost his appetite.

One time we went to Burger King…he took one bite of his burger, spit it out and immediately started b—-ing about it being under cooked. He cut in front of everyone in line to yell at the cashier, then he asked who was the cook. When the cook appeared, he launched his burger hitting the poor kid directly in the face with a lidless burger. He’s now banned for life from Burger King.”

u/loveleigh1788: “Elementary teacher here. We had a student who wouldn’t stop stealing things out of other kids’ backpacks. We had caught him on camera and would call the parents and they would just say ‘no, that’s his [insert stolen item], we just bought it for him.’ Then, we get him on a positive behavior plan and create intentional lessons about empathy to others.

Eventually, he gets enough positive days in a row that he gets released from the behavior plan and receives a free bike as his incentive for good behavior. The next day he tells me his uncle stole it and pawned it. He went right back to his old behaviors and it was heartbreaking.”

u/Boggo1895: “I’m not a teacher but when I was in high school my form tutor was ranting about one child’s mum. It was the final year and exams were approaching, this one lad would come to school but sleep the entire day and never do any work, like literally none and would often fall asleep…

After some digging they found out his routine was home from school, 2 hour nap, play Call of Duty all through the night and then have a bath before coming to school. His mum was called in and told what was going on and that her son was going to fail everything. Her response? ‘Well what do you want me to do about it.'”

u/Original_Score: “It was my 16th birthday and my family went to a fancy Italian restaurant. The staff came over to sing happy birthday to me and my dad started singing along loudly in a bad Italian opera kind of accent (we are not Italian).

The staff was so stunned they just stopped singing. The other customers around us laughed and applauded and the staff just walked away. I was mortified.”

u/esk_209: “I had a parent of a kindergartner tell me, in all seriousness, that she was told by their church prophet that my student was sent to lead the world into salvation. Her little girl was the second coming of Christ.

Gee, no pressure. ‘Here, teach the Christ-child to read.’ Plus, she was one of the meanest children I ever taught.”

u/tahsii: “As a teacher’s aide, I’ve seen quite a few badly behaved children with even worse parents but this kid was the most ‘out-there’…But this was nothing, I repeat nothing, compared to his mother.

She had multiple restraining orders on teachers and staff at the school as she would verbally and occasionally physically assault them. Her son would spin stories about other children hurting him and teachers being mean and she would lose the plot. She would enter the school whenever she wanted, usually during class time and insist on speaking with teacher, and refusal would mean getting cussed out in front of the kids or even get physical. She’s technically not even allowed on school property but has disregarded this. The police are called every time she comes but cause we’re a rural school, it takes about 25 minutes to get there.”

u/obtusefailure: “Woman I used to babysit for worked in a school as an assistant or some shit in Toronto, she always told this story about how the class rabbit would go home with a new kid each weekend. They kept trying to avoid giving one kid the bunny for the weekend because it was clear his home life wasn’t the best. But they finally caved and let him take the rabbit home.

The parents killed the rabbit and ate it. They killed the class bunny and fried it up for dinner. They weren’t even ashamed when they told the teacher what happened on Monday. Said they were out of groceries or something.”

u/dingusfunk: “My aunt never let my cousins have any kind of sugar or candy. She told them that it was poison and tasted nasty. One time while our grandma was babysitting them (they were 6) she let them have 1 capri sun each.

They loved it, saying ‘grammy, sugar actually tastes GOOD’ and threw up shorty after because their stomachs could not handle it. My cousins are alcoholics now.”

u/yowiezowie: “I had C cup [breasts] when I was eleven years old. My mom loved to LOUDLY talk about them to anyone who would listen.

u/somanytictoc: “My first teaching job, I had a fifth grader who was THE WOOOOORST (Jean-Ralphio voice)…[He] did a few things in the bathroom that no sane child would ever do, mostly involving feces…All of his previous teachers said he was actually one of the better-behaved kids, and he was pretty smart…

We (and by “we” I mean “all the fifth grade teachers and the principal”) met with his parents 4 times in two months, trying to determine the cause of all of this…In the fourth meeting, I said…’Can you think of ANYTHING that happened between 4th and 5th grade that might affect his psychological makeup?’ They said ‘Oh! Jamal’s uncle was found shot dead in our home this summer. Jamal was the one who discovered his body.’”

u/wednesdaynightalive: “I worked in a school for kids with behavior issues…Parents usually signed a release saying that we could touch their kids for restraint purposes…

Well we had one parent who wouldn’t sign it because little Johnny “didn’t really need to be there.” Since we couldn’t touch him, he could beat up on the teachers and nothing could legally be done. We would just move out of the way. One day he decided to leave the building and run down the road. We called the police and said we had a kid who left the building and we couldn’t get him back. Mom was notified and Johnny was brought back in a cop car.”

u/Shostakovich22: “This guy knows that his son is going to be a great NFL quarterback. The kid turned 10 recently and is a decent player, but his father has him work with different trainers and spend hours each day practicing. He takes vitamins, has a special diet, and isn’t allowed to play other sports because his dad wants him to focus completely on football and doesn’t want to risk an injury playing another sport…

He can’t have sleepovers or do any normal kid things. I know for a fact that the kid has told his father that he doesn’t want to play anymore, but the dad doesn’t care. He says that as a parent, he has to do what is best for his kid.”

u/clocksailor: “[My mom told] everybody at Thanksgiving dinner at her boyfriend’s house about my tween bout with anorexia.

I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and she just kept going on and on about how I had carrots for dinner for a year until I had to shout at her to stop.”

u/Hypogriff: “I used to teach/lecture at a university. I had one poor homeschooled student whose mother insisted on attending the university with him. She enrolled in the same course and used to follow him around to observe his social interactions, and dictate to him who he should be friends with etc…

In the end I put them in different lecture streams so that they had to attend separate lectures and labs. She spat the dummy and took me before the Dean to change them into the lecture streams, but the Dean was pretty happy with what I had done. A few weeks later the student came and thanked me personally.”

u/jonisneckdeep: “In like 5th grade, there was this girl I was friends with and we would always joke around and make fun of each other. So one day my mom was picking me up from school, and me and the girl were walking out together and she said, ‘see you tomorrow dumbo!’ (I had big ears as a kid, thankfully I grew into them)…

[My mom] stormed over and started yelling at her, saying things like, “don’t ever talk to my kid like that again! How would you like it if kids made fun of the freckles on your face?” She started bawling…We left and I didn’t talk to my mom at all on our way home.”

u/TheFire_Eagle: “Grocery store had this sign up that said if an item rang up higher than an advertised price it was free…Mom was buying a box of Little Debbie cakes and they rang up for $2.85 instead of the advertised $2.50. So now mom wants her free cakes. Cashier doesn’t know what to do, summons a manager. Manager tells her to ring up the sale otherwise and he’ll be right back.

Comes back and hands my mother 35 cents cheerfully and says ‘There you go!’ My mother points out the sign behind him and he says “Oh, the last manager put that up, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m the new manager and I just haven’t had the sign removed yet”…Mom insists they honor their sign, he says nah…Mom gathers her things, decides against taking the Little Debbies on principle.”

u/WellUpholsteredLady: “[My mother] bought me a diary, encouraging me to write in it.

Later stole said diary, broke the lock off, forged a bunch of made up ‘crushes’ in there, and then read it aloud at the dinner table to humiliate me. My mother was not very kind.”

u/kissLarryBirdsbelly: “Mom made me call my 8th grade social studies teacher at home to ask if I could use him as a job reference. He lived with his parents still and I asked for him by first name. He waited for me at my locker the next day to tell me never to phone his house again (parents’ house) and never call him by his first name again.

u/Sir_George: “I’m not a teacher, but when I was in elementary school I was a rather fat and unpopular kid. On one occasion I had a mother on a field trip look me up and down and turn to a group of kids who often made fun of me and tell them something that made them laugh.

On a second occasion I had a mother prevent me from going to a classmate’s birthday party…only to find out later that she made fun of me as being a pig at the party from other classmates. I mean I get that I was the fat unpopular kid, but shouldn’t those mothers have been acting their age?”

u/MoShellshocker: “Staff raised money to get an 8-year-old girl a winter coat (live in rural Canada). Girl came to school the next day in a t-shirt in the dead of winter, her mom wearing the brand new, child sized jacket.

Edit: For those wondering – the principal confronted her about it and mom told her to f— off and anything her kids owned belonged to her and she could do what she wanted with it. Children’s Aide was called and that student lives with a very nice foster family now. Edit 2: Mother was rail thin. Looked like the stereotypical junkie archetype. The sleeves were 3” too short, didn’t cover most of her stomach and she could do it up properly.”

u/subtlelikeatank: “I called a parent about a behavior issue. I must have been on speakerphone, because I heard the kid come home. Parent starts screaming at and whaling on the kid. Cussing, calling them all sorts of names.

I don’t even know if the parent remembered I was on the phone. I hung up the phone and went to my principal. Teachers are mandated reporters, don’t hit your kids in front of a teacher.”

u/noodlesthefood: “I went to school at an outpatient mental facility as a kid. It was Halloween so the instructors let us paint our faces and do arts and crafts all day. I knew my mom didn’t like Halloween for religious reasons so I just gave myself a cat nose with whiskers and made sure not to write Happy Halloween on anything I made.

When my mom came to pick me up she screamed at me about how I knew better, made me go to the bathroom to wash my face, as well as made me throw away all the stuff I made, in front of everyone.”

U/Jay_Normous: “I was at the store with my dad and we see this woman take her baby’s bottle and pour mountain dew into it before giving it back to the kid. This is a BABY, no more than a year old. My dad goes up to the lady and asks if she really just gave mountain dew to the kid and she replies

‘Yeah he likes it so I give it to him. I always give him what he wants.’ I fear for that generation”

U/thelynchmob1: “Saw a kid, probably 5-6, walking with his dad to soccer practice. They walk to one pitch, and there’s no one there, and the kid says ‘Oh, sorry, we’re over there’, pointing to another field maybe 150 yards away.

The dad slaps the kid on the back of the head and says ‘You stupid c—.’ Some kids have no chance.”

U/TeachMeMogster: “I once saw the queen of Chavs at a shopping centre in the Uk. She was talking to her friend, smoking her c——– and her little girl (maybe about 4/5 years old) starts asking for a hug. The mum ignored her for a bit and then suddenly bends down, blows a huge puff of smoke in the kids face and shrieks ‘Charmane! I’m ‘avin’ a fag!!’

I didn’t know which was worse, what she had just done or that she had called her kid Charmane…”

U/redundanthero: “The other day I was waiting for my mate at the top section of our local shopping centre, a suddenly hear crying from a little girl at the top of the escalator looking down and screaming ‘mummy!’. I asked her where her mummy was, and she pointed down. I had a look down at the escalator and there were a few people coming up but none looking at the kid. So I decided to take the kid back down the otherside to look for her mum. 10 seconds later as I was walking round she starts hugging this woman on the escalator, who just said ‘No’.

I honestly have no idea what happened that day… And all the people around looked at me like a pedo-bear as I am a 24 yr old male… I hate that generalisation as well…”

U/thesaxophoneone: “My mum is a teacher at a primary school (England) in a really bad part of town (Wokingham). The stories she brings home are appalling, from kids who have never been read to, or even talked to much who come to school aged 5 without being able to speak in proper sentences.