Adventures in Obnoxious Parenting

The past few days, I have seen some parenting skills that have really made me shake my head in disbelief - and of course, I have to share:

1) There is a 4 year old boy that we know - let's just call him Wild Child - who is completely out of control. Now, normally I try to give kids the benefit of the doubt (maybe they are having a bad day, didn't take a nap, etc.), but after watching this little hellion down five Coke Classics in a row at a BBQ and then eat two bowls of ice cream with a popscicle chaser, all while his mother looked on without so much as batting an eye, I realized that this kid's problem is actually a serious lack of parenting. He's consistently disruptive, pitches a fit when he doesn't get his way, and rarely does his mother even look in his direction, let alone try to curb his behavior. The last time we ran into him, Wild Child decided to make Rory his new "best bud"" and was constantly jumping on him, putting him into a strangle hold and trying to get him to be his partner in crime. Hoby and I kept having to step in and pull Wild Child off of our son and tell him to quiet down - and to my utter disbelief, his parents were NO WHERE TO BE FOUND. And trust me, I looked. AND LOOKED. Who the heck leaves their hyper-active four year old son without direct supervision for 40 minutes? UNBELIEVABLE!

2. Shortly after that, we took Rory to an outdoor mall where they have a cool little fountain/wading pool that keeps him happily occupied hours. As we were sitting there keeping an eye on Ro, we saw a little girl slip and fall down on the pavement pretty hard. I mean, she REALLY ate it. I quickly looked over at her parents, who were sitting across the fountain from us, and then jumped up to see if she was okay. I helped her up, and again looked over at her parents because this girl is obviously upset and probably hurt and astonishingly, her parents are not even moving! They don't come over to see if she's okay, don't call to her, no reaction at all! And it's not like they didn't see what happened or couldn't hear her crying. They just sat there and watched us. Uh, don't bother to get up or anything, people - feel free to let a perfect stranger look after your injured child while you finish your soda. Sheesh!

3. And last, but certainly not least... Yesterday Rory and I went to an indoor play area called Playsource. There weren't a lot of kids there, but being the social butterfly that he is, Rory went over and started to try and play with the only two little girls in there, who were probably around five years old. I was sitting right next to both of their mothers watching the kids interact, when I suddenly hear one of the girls say to Rory, "You're a LOSER and I don't play with losers, so get lost!" I was totally stunned - I actually think my mouth may have dropped open in surprise - and poor Rory had no idea what she meant but I could tell he knew she had said something mean. So I looked at her mother, expecting her to say something to chastise her little bully-in-training, but all she does is turn to me, shrug her shoulders and say with a smile, "Kids these days! They just say the darndest things, don't they?" Uh, WHAT? That's it?! Are you KIDDING?

Now, obviously, I'm not exactly in the running for "Parent of the Year" either, but when I see crap like this take place, it actually helps me realize that I may not be doing such a bad job after all...