No one said being a parent was going to be easy. In fact the cold, harsh truth about parenting is that it is by the far the most rewarding and excruciatingly difficult thing one can undertake in life. There is no perfect way or exact right and wrong way but there are some definitive ways that lead to a healthy, stable person and relationship. It's difficult to not lead with emotion but when you're a parent it's often the most productive. There are definitely signs to out for that draw the stark contrast of a good parent and a bad one. It's all about helping the children in the end.
Redditor u/1994spaceodyssey wanted to discuss the light and dark sides of parenting by basking.... What are signs that someone is a good parent vs. bad parent?
You can't avoid....
GiphyGood parent - addresses issues
Bad parent - pretends they don't exist SpiritofGarfield
SELLS MY F**KING ADHD MEDS THEN TELLS THE DOCTOR I GAVE THEM TO MY FRIENDS!! mysteryman151
Explain your actions.
A good parent helps the child to understand what is expected and punishes appropriately. A bad parent only punishes when the child does something wrong without giving the child an understanding of what good behavior is. Morally_Inept
Yep. As a teacher, the difference between those parents with high expectations of their kids (and whose kids correspondingly behave really ethically and considerately of others) and the parents who hold no expectations of their kids out of a misplaced form of love is quite drastic.
Good parents often look quite frazzled at parent-teacher interviews and always sound surprised to hear that their kid is behaving really well and treats other people well; I suspect that their expectations for conduct at home are quite high. Whereas for kids who behave incredibly poorly (bullying, disrespect to people/property), their parents often leap in to defense and sing the praises of their kid's "beautiful nature." I suspect for some of them they lead quite indulgent lives and consequently never really have enough stimulus to arc up at their parents. noestofus
No such thing as perfect.
Having the self awareness to admit that they and their children have flaws. creedbrattonsdad
This continues through adulthood, too. Man, nothing worse than an enabler parent. chocolatespoonz
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
The amount of respect between child and parent. A parent showing no respect to their child is such a bad sign, same if the kid shows no respect. GamBub
This is SO important. You can demand all the respect you want from your child... but if you don't respect them either, you will have a very poor relationship with your child. BRZORA
Engage.
GiphyGood parents pay attention to their child and actually listen to what the child has to say, and engage with their child. They treat them with respect and how they themselves would like to be treated.
Bad parents treat the child like they are an intrusion into their life, and are rude and entitled towards others (especially to service staff). Stop_the_propaganda
Sorry. Not Sorry.
Bad parents never admit they are wrong and apologies usually are followed by excuses. nesquikthicc
Also the whole "I'm the adult, you are the child" talk. My parents have made countless mistakes and blamed it on my siblings and me but I've never heard them ever say "sorry" to us. I remember at one point my dad was whipping my brother for some reason I don't recall and he accidentally struck my ear. I still haven't heard any apology although it was years ago. Apologies really do make a big difference because it's how we remember you as parents. rbxVexified
Stay Calm.
I've seen two examples within a few minutes of each other. Two different kids tripped over the same electrical cord that was temporarily on the ground at a store I was shopping at.
Good parent: Child trips, falls, gets hurt. The parent tends to child. Gives love, cuddles, etc. Since the child is clearly still upset, they pick the child up and hug carry them away to finish their shopping. A few moments later I see the child get down and continue walking, hand in hand with the parent, smiling. All is well with the child. Parent took calm control of the situation and used appropriate responses to help their child get through it all.
Bad parent: Child trips, falls, gets hurt. Child gets up, starts crying, parent immediately slaps the crap out of them across the face, berates them for "Tripping over that visible cord!" and "Crying like a damn baby!," then forbids them to cry in public with angry threats of an even bigger ass whooping at home if "One more single tear leaves your eye." To top it all off, they angrily took a toy out of the cart that was intended for the child, and announced it loudly as "A punishment for tripping." Parent then takes their cart, and commands the child to follow silently behind them as they head to check out. Child follows, head down. All is not well with the child. Parent failed at responding in an appropriate manner to the situation and made it worse for their child in the end. FrankenCake
Give them some freedom.
The difference between a good parent and a bad parent is know when to let your kids spread their wings. Helicopter parenting your 19 year old in university isn't going to allow them to be self-sufficient.
There a lots of other very bad parenting issues, but this one is a bit deeper and is more related to a parents unwillingness to let go of their children in a selfish way, rather than using drugs or being in general a crap individual let alone a parent. O_P_S
Rage is Inappropriate.
I have always found it distasteful when a parent screams at or embarrasses their child in public. I recall seeing a kid a few Halloweens ago, probably about 10ish and he was with his mom at the grocery store. It's late afternoon so thinking the kid is a trick or treater, the cashier gives him candy. Mom proceeds to slap the candy out of the kid's hand and screams "HE'S GROUNDED YOU A**HOLE!" Kid looked so humiliated and the mom just stood there glaring at the cashier. Since then, that has been my image of a bad parent. GhostOfHamlet
Speak Freely.
GiphyGood parents talk to their kids on a level they can understand. kat_fud
I need to have an important conversation with my child tonight. Going to steal this! newsreadhjw
Take Action.
If their child is running around screaming. Their reaction would be :
Good : *send the kid to play elsewhere*
Bad : *do nothing and say he's hyperactive anyway* onions_cutting_ninja
Red Flags....
Do their wants come before their child's needs? That's a big red flag. llcucf80
I still remember my mother buying herself new custom leather cowboy boots to go dancing in with the entire child support check my dad gave her and we had no food. She called him and said she paid bills with it, needed more and we were to call him if we were hungry.
I told him what she spent it on and every bit of that beating was worth it. She said the money was to support her having to tolerate me. LOL. slightlydramatic
Children First!
When they put themselves in front of their kids. catcortez
Agreed. This is why I don't want any children. I love my life being about me and I'd have to give that up to have a child. Rachie__Lion
My Apologies....
GiphyI would imagine a sign of a bad parent is your grown child asking for you to apologize for the things that you did that you never once apologized for (or even acknowledged) and then telling your child this seems more like your problem, I'm not losing any sleep over it, just to have your child get out of your car, walk into their house, block your phone number, and aim to never speak to you again last year
Not that I'd know anything about that, it just seems like something that would probably happen to a bad parent. SoullessCreatures
Nurture.
Mediocre parents never provide an environment where you can learn about yourself and it takes until your 19 and live on your own to realize your favorite food. sassyandsweer789
Shut up!
I've always hated the "don't talk back to me" line. No matter how calmly or quietly I would talk, it was considered disrespectful.
It meant that I could never defend or explain a misunderstanding. And instead I had to shut up and let her yell at me. GoonsAndGhouls
Why so Loud?
If I see you yelling at your kid for making a mistake without telling them what they did wrong and how to do it right. You're a d**k. Dangloyne
When I was 14, my dad asked me to screw in a lightbulb. I wasn't trusted to do ANYTHING growing up, so I had zero confidence in myself and I was sure I would mess it up. I was taught that trying and failing was miles worse than never trying at all, so I cried and said that I didn't know how to screw in a lightbulb. Instead of taking the 2 seconds it would've taken to show me how to do it, he screamed at me for not knowing. He screamed for 5 hours. When he was done screaming about one thing, he'd find something else to scream about. I feel like this is why I'm so scared to try new things. Screwing in a lightbulb is the simplest shit ever. I was too scared to even attempt it. M0u53trap
Precious is Real.
I know a woman who was on WIC but bought a brand new Lexus. I saw the same woman slap her 3 year old son across the face because he wasn't eating his lunch. That's a bad parent. Citizenerased1989
Here's some coin....
GiphyBad parents make up for whatever upset feelings their child has through monetary value. Forgot a birthday? Just buy them gifts, as long as they arrive it shouldn't be a problem. Had a fight? Offer to take your kid shopping, they'll get over it after that. leflyingbison
Don't be a Bully!
If your kid is genuinely afraid of you, you are a bad parent. Controlling your kid with fear isn't parenting. There are much better ways to discipline your child, it just might take a little longer. theonionenthusiast
100%. That's bullying, not parenting. rock8879
"What funny thing happened at school that caused utter chaos for the faculty?
Holy Sh*t
"2000"
"Teachers trying to stop kids smoking in the bathroom so they locked the bathroom doors."
"Kid took a sh*t on the carpet in front of the bathroom door, like right in the main hallway."
"Chaos ensued."
"Today, that kid is a pastor."
"Lol."- Jimmycapped
Cheaters Almost Always Get Caught
"It wasn't funny, but when I was in high school, there were two teachers in the school that were married."
"I was sitting in the husbands classroom waiting for the class to start when another kid ran in and said 'Hey Mr B, your wife is making out with Mr H in his classroom'."
"Turns out they'd locked the door, but about a dozen kids were looking through the skinny door window watching them."
"The guy didn't even say anything."
"He just looked crushed."
"He just walked out of the class and never came back...I mean we never saw him again."
"Turned out his wife and the other teacher had been having an affair and he'd might have suspected, but having it confirmed by one of his students in front of the whole class was too much."
"The school didn't discipline the two cheaters, but the students sure as hell did."
"Both of them had to listen to 'cheating' puns and jokes every day."
"'Hey Ms S, I'm going to copy off Joe's test, cheating is cool with you right?'" kind of stuff."
"Neither came back the next school year."- McFeely_Smackup
Cartoons Button GIF by NickelodeonGiphyWhere He Went, Music Followed...
"Hired a mariachi band to follow around our principal for our senior class prank."
"It was hysterical."- JulieFromJerz
Complicated Role Model...
"In middle school, a staff (not a teacher, he watched lunch and was a basketball coach for a high school) got arrested for selling weed to the kids."
"He won an award for 'best staff of the year' that year which had an entire yearbook page dedicated to him, but he was arrested after the yearbooks were printed."
"They had to go into each yearbook and cover that page with purple duct tape (to match the color scheme)."
"Prior to him being arrested, I was getting bullied horribly."
"None of the teachers or other staff could get the kids to stop, but once the staff who was arrested said 'leave Spencer alone'," the kids would immediately stop."
"I later realized he was threatening to take their weed away if they bullied me, and that's why he was the only one who could get them to stop."- Spencer2091
Funny Might Not Be The Best Word...
"Someone had a baby in the bathroom stall."
"I wish I was making this up."- JacobCStowe
baby GIFGiphyLegs Are Legs!
"They banned shorts because they were not professional enough."
"So all the boys wore skirts as a protest."- Haboobalub·
Or Did They Just Have A Time-Turner In Their Pocket?
"One of the classrooms at my school was a prefab hut, and over time it developed a hole in the floor at the back of the room (developed, or was helped, unsure)."
"Every lesson I had in there for a good few months before they fixed it, someone would arrive, greet the teacher, and sit down."
"Then after a few minutes they'd arrive again, straight-faced 'sorry I'm late sir', and sit down."
"Then again a few minutes later they'd arrive again... etc."
"The fun part was watching the teacher playing the memory game of figuring out who'd arrived too many times."- telnorp
Depends On How Short We're Talking...
"Freshman year one of my friends wanted to me run for student body vice president as a part of his counterculture party."
"He insisted on having me be his VP, to the point where he got all the necessary signatures for me to run without my knowledge and just went ahead and signed me up."
"We had to write speeches to get other kids to vote for us, and those speeches had to be approved beforehand by some faculty member."
"So I wrote a very disparaging speech about the validity and purpose of student council, laden with curse words and personal attacks towards our administration, thinking it would get screened ahead of time and they would disqualify me."
"I guess no one actually read my speech and just rubber stamped it, so on that morning they pulled me aside and handed me a printed out copy of my speech."
homer simpson drinking GIFGiphy"I went ahead and gave my speech and I guess none of the faculty knew what to do because no one stopped me but they were clearly panicked and furious."
"I got a lot of laughs and applause."
"I assume it was too late to print all new ballots because when we went to vote my name was crossed out with a sharpie."
"I also got suspended for 5 days despite my explanation that I did not want to run and submitted my speech for approval, on time, fully intending to be disqualified."
"I was also told by some older student council members involved in the ballot counting process that I won by a landslide due to write ins and people just circling the black line of my name, but I have no idea if that's true."- pieonthedonkey
Ladders Must Have Been In Short Supply...
"A student got ahold of a LOT of explicit pictures and taped them to all of the school clocks, suspended from the ceiling. None of the teachers were tall enough to pull them down, so they were up there for a bit."- Unlikely_Use
A Hard One To Erase From Memory (...Pun Intended...)
"My wife is a school teacher, and a couple years ago the senior prank was them sticking a bunch of those suction cupsex toys to the windows."
"And let's just say that the school has a lot of windows."
"It was the brain child of some douche bag architect who thought building a high school with no walls just windows was good idea."
"Any way, they managed to get the largest of the them stuck to the 3rd floor outside window, of one of the classrooms."
"So the male assistant principal gets a ladder, but its not quite long enough so he's teetering on the top of this ladder trying knock a 2-foot long purple d*ck of the side of the school with a broom handle."
"She said he was beating that thing as it owed him money, and it was just bouncing around, flopping and banging against the window."
"While everyone watched through tears of laughter."- Nutesatchel
What The Hell Comedy GIF by Paramount+GiphyDid ANYONE Find This Funny?
"Someone in my high school sent letters to everyone they deemed 'virgins' parents saying their son or daughter was tested for and found to have an STD by the school nurse and that they needed to come to the school immediately."
"Used the school letterhead etc so they got charged with mail fraud lol."- B__Malz
When In Doubt, Follow Moses...
"In my HS, there was a solid week where somebody set a trash can on fire daily."
"Nobody knew if it was one person or a group of people, but I think after day five everyone got pretty tired of having to stand out in the football field while the fire department inspected the area.
"It stopped after that week with no explanation and no word from the culprit."
"Second best was definitely the senior prank performed by the class two years ahead of mine."
"They bought crickets from our local PetSmart and set them free on our school’s main staircase."
"It took forever to get rid of them and I can remember sitting in class and hearing faint chirping coming from seemingly every direction."- Livingroxets
"A boy in my class brought some locusts in to show and tell."
"They escaped and got into the air vents."
"This was just before summer break."
"School came back to a full-on plague."- Big_Explanation_8803
Bugs Insects GIF by The GuardianGiphyNeedless to say, one has little doubt that any of the planned occurrences in these stories were ever meant to be found funny by the faculty or staff.
Even so, one also has little doubt that they've all looked back and laughed about some of these with the passage of time...
A deleted Redditor wanted everyone to share about the times we've been left red in the face, so they asked:
"What is the most embarrassing thing you've ever said to someone you were trying to impress?"
I once fell off of a treadmill trying to flirt with my high school crush.
I was running way too fast to show my "stamina."
I destroyed my Discman and my dignity.
Oh My
Licking Ice Cream GIF by MLB NetworkGiphy"Crush in High School worked at an ice cream store. When she asked for toppings I said 'I’ll have Reese’s penises please.' The store laughed."
WhaleyWino235
Tom Morello's Hometown
"I worked at the local guitar shop in town in high school. It happens to be Tom Morello's hometown (of rage against the machine fame). The owner used to babysit him when Tom was little and he'd always stop by to say hi when they were in town on tour. This was around the time of the evil empire and they were at peak popularity."
"He came in one day while I was there and asked if John was in. 16-year-old me just looked at him and asked 'Do you know who you are?!?!' He just laughed and said yes. Humiliated I went and got the owner and then tried to hide and die from shame."
matthewmichael
Echoes
"I was around 15, going through the receiving line at my cousin's wedding. This was my first 'grown-up' wedding and I wanted to act it. As I hugged my cousin I blurted out 'I'm so excited to be here! The last wedding I was at was your first one!'"
"That has echoed in my head for 30 years."
"E: This was my cousin's second wedding. The groom's first."
LGBecca
No Tip
"A server trying to get a tip: I went to clear a shared dessert dish from a table of 4 - mom, dad, and 2 sons. One son jokingly pointed at his mom and said 'She ate most of it.' I, the braindead server who was/is terrible at banter, but trying to get a tip said the first reply that came to mind: 'I can tell.' No idea why. Terrible reaction, as expected. No tip."
1nd1anaCroft
Snap
Buffering Back To School GIF by Rodney DangerfieldGiphy"I can do a Kickflip, then proceed to elegantly snap my ankle."
Mrlightyboy
Why do we risk our lives?
Have we really lost the ability for a simple flirt?
Where?
The Beautiful Game Thumbs Up GIF by World CupGiphy"I did once (truthfully) tell a girl from Austria that I didn't know what the capital of Austria was - which wouldn't be too embarrassing, except that I was wearing a t-shirt which said 'Vienna Rocks' on it at the time. She thought I was joking."
Ok-Fudge8848
The Red Lights
"I told everyone I knew about my plan to go on a trip to Europe. I had planned to tour different countries by train with a special visit to… Amsterdam. My intention was to visit a marijuana cafe, but in my ignorance, I thought that these were all located in the red lights district. I would tell people I was going to the red light district and they would understandably pause and ask me… why?"
"Trying to be sly I would say something like 'to do what the locals do of course,' believing that this meant smoking marijuana in a cafe… I was actually telling everyone I knew, friends, teachers, relatives, coworkers, that I was going to cross the Atlantic so I could hire a sex worker."
Virtual-Elderberry31
How Far You'll Go
"Was on an airplane years ago with my girlfriend and her parents. My girlfriend couldn't get a seat next to me and sat directly behind me. During the flight, I thought I would surprise her and reached my hand back onto her knee. Slowly I kept extending it up her thigh until I heard giggling."
"Looked behind through the seats and saw that my hand was on the leg of the guy next to her. He saw my face and said, 'I just wanted to see how far you'd go.' Of course, my girlfriend was in on it and started laughing along with the rest of the row. Was so embarrassed."
Ladon1949
Not Cool
"I was skating at a school and my girlfriend calls me and says she wants to hang out. Tell her I'm skating but she can meet me at the school and we can figure out what we're doing from there. She shows up looking cute AF, so clearly I need to impress her. There was a little two stair where she was waiting for me and I went to do a BS 180 down it. Instead of just landing normally, I thought I would look more bada** if I stomped the landing."
"As I landed my lead foot came off the board and I landed with all of my weight on that ankle... Immediate excruciating pain ensued and I'm on the ground rolling in pain. My sad attempt to look cool skating had turned into one of the worst injuries I received and an extremely embarrassing moment. The pain was so bad I could barely drive my car back home because I severely injured my right ankle."
"Didn't break my ankle but I did have a severe ankle sprain. I've had surgery on it and it's much better, but it just has never been quite the same. As far as the girlfriend goes, we're still together and have been married for 10 years."
DJAXL
Listen Again
Go Away Beyonce GIFGiphy"I told a musician I like that I liked a specific song. It was not his song."
Naca-7
We are so silly.
Why can't we just say 'Hey' and get on with it?
Such drama.
