15 Parents Confess Their Biggest Parenting Mistakes

From Redditor u/peeplup:

(Not parent) But at age 7, my parents told me I [eliminated] my grandpa.

My mom and dad are very superstitious and dislike white. White appears in funerals in my culture, so living people cannot wear white on their heads, like hats, bows, or hairbands. One day, I played with white thread, and it got stuck in my hair. My mom saw it, ripped it out, and yelled at me. A week later, my grandpa (who was on the other side of the Earth) slipped and hit his head. My parents said playing with white thread on my head caused his death.

As a seven-year-old, I lived with the guilt of [slaying] for ten years.

From Redditor u/Alduwin123:

Neither parent has Reddit, but they say this was their biggest mistake with me. I was about 14, riding my bike in the front yard. I fell, landed on my bike while standing up, and didn't move. It felt like I was drop-kicked in my [crotch]. I went inside, lay on the couch in pain, and asked my parents for the hospital. They refused. They told me I was a baby and the pain would stop. An hour and a half later, tears made them agree to take me. I had testicular torsion, and the lack of blood meant emergency surgery. I lost a testicle that same day, less than ten minutes later. I never forgave them.

From Redditor u/rapidnash:

My wife and I took our son to the harbor because he was old enough to go. After a fun day, driving home, my wife looked in the backseat and asked, “Where’s our son?” We had not gotten used to having a third person with us when we went out. That is how we almost forgot our child.

From Redditor u/deleted:

I put my son, about eight months old, on our waist-high changing table and turned to grab more diapers. That was a terrible decision.

I saw him roll off the table from the corner of my eye, but it was too late. He fell three feet, hit his face, and did a full scorpion. He never cried that hard before or after. I held him and started crying because I felt guilty hurting him.

From Redditor u/KLWK:

Five months old:

He'll be fine. He can't roll over yet. I placed the baby in the middle of the king-sized bed and finished getting ready for work.

THUMP

He could actually roll over.

There are more, but that one really stands out.

From Redditor u/cieluv:

When I was six or seven, I ate watermelon seeds. Then, I became super paranoid they would tear my insides. My dad sat me down. He told me my intestines were as strong as this trash bag. He tested the bag's strength and ripped right through it. I cried for two hours.

From Redditor u/president_hippo:

My dad has a few answers:

When they had my older brother, he was a tiny baby on my parents' bed. My dad got on the bed. The baby flew off and landed on the floor. They claim that's the only time they dropped any of us on our head, or generally.

The other answer was having twins. (I am one of those twins).

From Redditor u/DespiteGreatFaults:

I was too fearful and now they are fearful.

From Redditor u/cardboardshrimp:

I like listening to music in the car. Some music has naughty or dubious words. When I had my young son in the car, I skipped certain songs. Sometimes one song slipped through.

Kings of Leon's 'Cue Sex on Fire'. He got home and repeated parts of the song. I tried to distract him so he would forget, but he did not.

I had an idea to ask him to change the word. He was still learning to speak, so things sounded garbled. I succeeded with the word 'Shed'.

For about a day, he wandered around singing about his shed burning. Then he forgot and moved on. My fear of him saying it at childcare went away. I have not played that song in my car since; it has been many years.

From Redditor u/easineobe:

We are only at age 1.5, so we have not had major ones. Teaching my toddler to throw out her own trash proved bad for items in our house that end up in the trash anyway. Recently, her favorite stuffed puppy was missing for a long time.

From Redditor u/phroexx:

My biggest regret is telling my now teenaged toddler to sing real songs instead of letting her sing nonsense.

From Redditor u/FlippingPossum:

I asked my daughter. She said, "Me." Awesome.

From Redditor u/Somerset3282:

A lady cut me off and stopped in the lane to turn left, even though there was a turn lane. I yelled, "YOU F*CKING *SSHOLE!" Then I heard a small voice from the back of my car, "What's a f*cking *sshole?" That day I taught my 2.5-year-old the words f*cking and *sshole.

From Redditor u/fitcht3ll:

A three-year-old woke up in the middle of the night. She told me she had a bad dream. I walked her back to her room. I talked to her about the dream. She said bugs crawled on the walls and in her bed. I told her it was just a dream; the bugs only existed in her head.

She stayed awake for a long time after hearing she had bugs in her head.

She will be six in a few weeks. This incident did not scar her mind.

From Redditor u/TechyDad:

My worst parenting mistake involved a trip to the ER. That happened about eight years ago in December. It was my wife's birthday. We did not travel because a huge snowstorm hit our area. I would shovel all the snow. I could not have her shoveling on her birthday. My son, then about seven or eight, came with me to help shovel. We cleared the snow when it happened.

As I brought my shovel up, my son bent down for more snow. The sharp corner of the shovel hit his head. He shrieked and held his eye. I worried I hurt his eye. I did not. I hit him above his eyebrow, and he bled a lot. His coat got covered in blood.

We went in. We could not stop the bleeding. I put my son in the car. I stopped at my in-laws' house, less than a mile away, to get my mother-in-law. My wife stayed home with our younger son, who was a toddler then. I drove to the ER in the blizzard.

They glued my son's eyebrow shut. They used a special glue instead of stitches. He was fine. I felt like the worst dad. His coat was ruined. I messed up my wife's birthday. Still, you can see where I hit my son's head with the shovel.