Childrearing
6 Parent Screw-Ups To Make You Feel Better About That Time You Dropped The Baby
If you’ve ever screwed the pooch on your parenting duties of keeping your kid happy, healthy, and with an undented skull, congratulations: you are not alone. In fact, you’re a lot likely to be alone if you’re the only one whose kid has somehow skated through his infant and toddler years miraculously unscathed.
Reddit user eftresq was looking for commiseration in a thread about bonking his baby daughter’s head on a restaurant light fixture, and he got what he was looking for in spades. Fortunately for me, I’m both short and in possession of the upper body strength of an anemic Tyrannosaurus Rex, and so my kids are in little danger from our house’s ceiling fans and light fixtures. (They have, however, fared less well around the sides of door frames and cupboards.) If, like me, you have ever experienced the terrible feeling of helplessly watching a baby take a header off the couch or chomp on a dog turd, enjoy taking a moment to acknowledge that your parenting screw-ups don’t make you a bad parent – they make you a normal one.
1. The classic changing table dive
2. The multi-child pileup
3. The ‘oh god oh my GOD why’
4. The public spectacle