Just because he's your son doesn't make him perfect.

[mewmew]

What is it with parents always thinking their child is a perfect angel and could NEVER do anything wrong? They just talked on a news about a 16 year old who is accused of phoning in fake bomb threats to various schools, and that he would even do it for money, calling a school if you sent him money through paypal. Of course his mother insists that

Comments

[phyrbyrd]

Yes, he probably did it, and what you say about parents believing no wrong about their offspring is true - but I'm gonna have to play devil's advocate here and say that just because he's accused of it, and he's sixteen, doesn't mean he did it. Innocent till proven guilty, you know?
Could be true that some even worse monster tried to do this to bully the kid.
And also, it's kind of the parent's job to stick up for their kid. Somebody's got to be the back-up in a kid's life, unless they're the kind of unfortunate we call in child services for.

[rainarana]

Funny story. Growing up we had a neighbor with a hell spawn. Used to vandalize things, we once caught him throwing mus against our house, just generally terrorizing the neighborhood. When confronted his mother would always pull out the tired old "Not my child, he would never do anything like that!"

So he stole the phone books (?!?) of everyone on our street and even though we found them in his clubhouse his mother refused to believe it was him. We gathered them up and took them to our house and that night sitting in our kitchen having beers, (I think I was about 16 at the time and mom let me drink at home) my mother and a group of us decided that if the kid really wanted them he could have them. We shredded them into little strips and under the cover of darkness "decorated" her whole yard like it was x-mas. She was furious and came stomping over to our house demanding we clean it up. My mother, with a *shocked* look on her face said, "Well my children would never do something like that" and slammed the door in her face.

[chencheya]

LMAO! Your mother is made of win! :D

[rainarana]

Yes, there are some pluses to growing up hill-billy.

[ustmistress]

I had a neighbor kid like that. He once tried to beat me up, took away my glasses and bullied my friend I was walking home from a sleepover. I straddled his back and rammed my elbow into his back three times to make him give me my glasses back. When I went over to his mom, she actually said, "My angel J--- would NEVER do that." I wanted to smack her upside the head to wake her up, but being only 12 at the time, I didn't think that was going to work.

[visionari]

Some people can't tolerate criticism of any kind and that extends to their kids... because if you have something negative to say about their kids, what you're really doing is criticizing them and their lack of parenting skills.

When I was still teaching Sunday School, I had the "pleasure" of having a pair of brothers in my class. They were two of a family of four children, every single one of which was a known horror.

At that point, I'd been teaching for some 15 years; between that, daycare/day camp counseling and babysitting, I had a lot of experience with kids but I could NOT handle these monsters AT ALL. The superintendent wouldn't let me speak to their parents... because they would go BALLISTIC every time they were told that their kids were misbehaving (he'd call them up and let them yell at him instead

[musashi]

This lady I worked with used to blab on and on about everything in her life, including her grown kids. One day she was telling us that her oldest son and his family went on a skiing trip, and when they returned, their house had been ransacked and everything stolen- including pillow covers and toilet paper. Her son was convinced that his younger brother did it, but she was so sure he was innocent because why would her precious baby do such a thing. He could never steal diapers from his own brother's baby! Well, turns out he could, and he's some kind of hoodlum drug addict in and out of jail. When she told us a week later that the cops found all their crap at his house, she just acted like it was normal and these things happen. She didn't even want him to go to jail!

What does it take to acknowledge that you failed miserably at parenting and your child is something to be ashamed of?

[janusdog]

...

Well, that's enterprising, I guess.