Parenting Fails: 40+ Real-Life Stories of Moms and Dads Behaving Like Kids

Having a kid is easy, but being a parent is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. No one teaches you how to parent and you’re bound to make mistakes along the way.

From revealing dark secrets to having temper tantrums, these people shared real-life parenting fails on Reddit, showing that being a mom or dad comes with its fair share of challenges. You won’t believe these epic parenting mistakes.

Light It Up

u/Quirkycupcake56: “I used to work in a daycare, and on my first day in a new room with 15-24 month-olds I picked up a little boy and noticed he had dropped something through the neck hole in his onesie. I pulled it out and it was a lighter.

When we returned it to the mom and told her where we found it she laughed and said ‘This kid gets his hands on EVERYTHING!'”

Sugar Addiction

u/dingusfunk: “My aunt never let my cousins have any kind of sugar or candy. She told them that it was poison and tasted nasty. One time while our grandma was babysitting them (they were 6) she let them have 1 capri sun each.

They loved it, saying ‘grammy, sugar actually tastes GOOD’ and threw up shorty after because their stomachs could not handle it. My cousins are alcoholics now.”

Hunger Games

u/chads3058: “Oh man, where do I begin. I teach first graders and I’m convinced most parents should not be raising children. Here’s my most recent story. One day I start afternoon class and I ask my students how they are doing. One girl says ‘bad’ and I ask her why. She says that shes hungry because she didn’t eat lunch.

I ask her why she hasn’t had lunch yet and she says it’s because her mom was playing on the computer and she forgot to feed and then didn’t have time. How…do you forget to feed a 7 year old? Later I brought her a snack when I had a minute because there’s no way I could let a kid go with out food.”

Skirting Around the Issue

r/flibbyjibby: “My mum pulled up my skirt, causing me to involuntarily flash a room full of people, at a Christmas dinner. I was absolutely mortified. She wanted to check for self harm scars on my thighs, apparently.

I’ve never self harmed before. She should not be allowed to consume [drinks]. Edit, to answer the FAQs in the replies: I was 18, and I was wearing underwear.”

Busting Out

u/yowiezowie: “I had C cup [breasts] when I was eleven years old. My mom loved to LOUDLY talk about them to anyone who would listen.

‘Yeah, she’s only eleven! You wouldn’t think from the way she’s filled out up top! Hehehehururhurhurhur.’ Then I’d start crying from the humiliation and she’d tell me to ‘lighten up.'”

Little Knowledge

“The day my fourth child was born, I sent my husband to pick up the rest of the kids from school.

When he arrived, he asked the secretary for the children, and when she inquired about which grades they were in, he replied: ‘How am I supposed to know?'”

First Name Basis

u/kissLarryBirdsbelly: “Mom made me call my 8th grade social studies teacher at home to ask if I could use him as a job reference. He lived with his parents still and I asked for him by first name. He waited for me at my locker the next day to tell me never to phone his house again (parents’ house) and never call him by his first name again.

Didn’t get the job either. Mom denies this ever happened and claims she would never demand I do something so strange.”

Cousin’s Cousin’s Cousin

u/WINGSONAPIG: “I had one kid who was the cousin of someone who was the cousin’s cousin of the Prince of Saudi Arabia. He came the first day and signed up for the class and I never saw him again…At the end of the course he showed up the last day to collect his diploma. I told him he wasn’t getting one because he didn’t attend a single class

[He] shows up with half of Saudi Arabia, his mother, father, uncles, aunts, brothers, the whole family. I was called into the office by the Dean and spent the next 30 minutes being screamed at by my boss, half the staff, and his belligerent family. Didn’t I know who he was? How DARE I not give him what he asked for!! I was docked a month’s pay and I ended up quitting 2 months later. Oh, and he graduated the class. With honors of course.”

Big Mac

u/snopal: “Not my parent but grandparent. When I was around 10 years old my grandmother went out and got us (her, my brother, and me) McDonald’s. We got home and we didn’t have napkins in the bags. No big deal, right? We have paper towels and napkins in the house, also me and my brother are pretty good with not making any messes while we eat.

Nope. Grandmother got us in the car, drove back to McDonald’s, demanded a manager, and screeched about how upset she was that we didn’t get any napkins. I wanted to just melt into the floor and disappear. It’s just napkins, Nanny….”

Financially Free

“My parents always had a favorite child. And it wasn’t me. So, when they announced that they were leaving for a year-long trip around the world, they made sure to remind me that they’d chosen my sister to inherit everything if anything happened to them. Mom: Oh, and don’t try anything funny while we’re gone. We’ll be keeping an eye on the security cameras.

But they couldn’t watch the security tapes at every moment of every day—especially when I took a picture of each room and taped them in front of the cameras so they couldn’t see anything. Then, I started to take small things they wouldn’t notice were missing and take them to the pawn shop. If they weren’t going to write me into the will, then I would find a way to make sure I was set financially.”

Spoiled Brat

u/BreadItAnd_Reddit: “I am so f—— spoiled. I managed to somehow get out of a top 30 university alive basically after blowing my knee out on baseball scholarship and my Dad is almost done helping me pay off 200k in bills. I have had everything I have ever wanted and they are so selfless they basically live through me and my sister. They used to travel the world, now they just enjoy seeing us do well.

I (again somehow) managed to get my dream job in real estate at arguably the best company one could work at in the business and I find it really hard to motivate myself. Possibly the only thing is the feeling of giving my dad back some money.”

Jacking the Jacket

u/MoShellshocker: “Staff raised money to get an 8-year-old girl a winter coat (live in rural Canada). Girl came to school the next day in a t-shirt in the dead of winter, her mom wearing the brand new, child sized jacket.

Edit: For those wondering – the principal confronted her about it and mom told her to f— off and anything her kids owned belonged to her and she could do what she wanted with it. Children’s Aide was called and that student lives with a very nice foster family now. Edit 2: Mother was rail thin. Looked like the stereotypical junkie archetype. The sleeves were 3” too short, didn’t cover most of her stomach and she could do it up properly.”

Lost Child

u/redundanthero: “The other day I was waiting for my mate at the top section of our local shopping centre, a suddenly hear crying from a little girl at the top of the escalator looking down and screaming ‘mummy!’. I asked her where her mummy was, and she pointed down. I had a look down at the escalator and there were a few people coming up but none looking at the kid.

So I decided to take the kid back down the otherside to look for her mum. 10 seconds later as I was walking round she starts hugging this woman on the escalator, who just said ‘No’. I honestly have no idea what happened that day.”

Soda Swap

u/justpat: “Mid 20s man enters bodega with son, maybe 5yrs old. Man: ‘Go get what you want.’ Kid runs to cold case, gets small container of milk, runs back, is just tall enough to put it on the counter. Man: ‘What is that s—? You said you were thirsty. Go get something else.’

Kid takes milk, puts it back in cold case, gets a Pepsi, bring it back to father. Man: ‘OK. Put it on the counter.'”

Jesus Walks

u/esk_209: “I had a parent of a kindergartner tell me, in all seriousness, that she was told by their church prophet that my student was sent to lead the world into salvation. Her little girl was the second coming of Christ.

Gee, no pressure. ‘Here, teach the Christ-child to read.’ Plus, she was one of the meanest children I ever taught.”

Dragon Slayer

u/lovelylayout: “About once a month my dad [drinks] and calls various customer service centers demanding stuff. Once he finally gets off the phone (frequently 45+ minutes later) he spends the next few days telling us all about how he slew the customer service dragon and boy people sure don’t appreciate their customers nowadays blah blah blah

If you’ve worked for DirecTV customer service any time since 1996, I apologize on behalf of my dad.”

Monkey’ing Around

“My son came home from school today with a shocking story to tell. He said, ‘Mom, you won’t believe what happened to Dad!’ Intrigued, I asked him to spill the beans. He began excitedly, ‘Well, Dad went to the grocery store, and there was this big commotion at the checkout. I heard a lady yelling, ‘I need a manager! This man stole my groceries!’ Dad turned around and replied, ‘Excuse me? I didn’t steal anything!’

The lady pointed to her cart and said ‘Those are my groceries, right there, and half of them are missing. You took all my bananas and I know it.’ And then my son told me that my dad picked him up and threw him in the air and said ‘Well I didn’t steal your bananas but maybe it was my little monkey.’ Accusing your kid of stealing isn’t the best parenting but at least it diffused the situation.”

Pile of Poop

u/LetsGetAtEr: “I have aggressive Crohn’s that started showing up around 8th grade. My mom took me to all of my Dr. appointments, which were all pretty embarrassing, because no teenage boy wants their mom involved in their butt related illness.

One particular visit, we were about half way through the appointment, when she whipped out a Cool Whip tub…I used the bathroom and it didn’t all go down, so she thought it would be helpful to load that up in our poor people tupperware and haul it on into the Dr., so he could look it over. He had the confused/’what am I supposed to do with poop in a Cool Whip tub’ face for a good 5-10 seconds, then politely dismissed it.”

All in the Family

u/loveleigh1788: “Elementary teacher here. We had a student who wouldn’t stop stealing things out of other kids’ backpacks. We had caught him on camera and would call the parents and they would just say ‘no, that’s his [insert stolen item], we just bought it for him.’ Then, we get him on a positive behavior plan and create intentional lessons about empathy to others.

Eventually, he gets enough positive days in a row that he gets released from the behavior plan and receives a free bike as his incentive for good behavior. The next day he tells me his uncle stole it and pawned it. He went right back to his old behaviors and it was heartbreaking.”

Captain Underpants

u/NerfCat: “When I was young we had a pajama day at school but I always just wore my boxers to sleep. Well obviously a kid can’t show up to school in just underwear but I was too little/dumb to understand that.

Why my mom allowed me to go and even drove me there, I have no idea. It was the most embarrassing day of my life, and the school had to call my parents to come pick me up halfway through the day.”

Tiny Troublemaker

u/pigmanAFM: “I was at a local supermarket. There was a 2 year old running amok, pulling stuff off the shelves, and screaming at the top of his lungs. I was standing in line when he tried to punch me in the balls. He missed, just to the right. I instinctively pushed him back and suddenly had his 98 lb. methhead father in my face. (I’m 6’2” and 380 lbs) I explained what had happened and he continued to threaten me.

I gave him a nice malevolent grin and told him that I didn’t want to make him cry in front of his son as I began to stick my car keys between my fingers. He shut up and turned around. Store manager who had seen the whole incident grabbed the methhead by his belt buckle and ran him out of the store. He had apparently been a problem before.”

Read the Room

u/longlelady: “I had a third-grader who was well behind all the other children in reading skills. He seemed capable of reading, but just never put forth any effort. So I would pull him aside every chance I got and tutor him…Then his mother showed up one afternoon mad because the boy was learning to read.

It took me a while to figure out what she was screaming about, it seems she was receiving disability payments because her boy was ‘intellectually delayed’ (she used stronger words) and incapable of reading, if the caseworker found out the boy could read the payments would stop. Luckily, she caused such a commotion that the assistant principal got involved and she was threatened with arrest.”

Can’t Touch This

u/wednesdaynightalive: “I worked in a school for kids with behavior issues…Parents usually signed a release saying that we could touch their kids for restraint purposes…

Well we had one parent who wouldn’t sign it because little Johnny “didn’t really need to be there.” Since we couldn’t touch him, he could beat up on the teachers and nothing could legally be done. We would just move out of the way. One day he decided to leave the building and run down the road. We called the police and said we had a kid who left the building and we couldn’t get him back. Mom was notified and Johnny was brought back in a cop car.”

Lonely Loner

u/LetThemEatCurry: “Thanks to my parents, I’m socially crippled. I dont know how to interact with people normally because during my childhood I was ‘protected’ from other people as everyone was a bad influence on me. My parents were firm believers of the ‘speak when spoken to’ style of interaction. Thanks to my wonderful parents I also grew up believing that hurting someone/raising my voice is a better option than keeping calm in a stressful situation.

Though I still love them and have great respect for the numerous sacrifices they’ve made so I could improve my life, I know they really failed at raising me up.”

Panic at the Library

u/pickleeater: “I was a children’s librarian. There was a small fire, so we were trying to get everyone out of the building. The father ran out without his five year old daughter. She was hysterical. When we realized what he had done, we took het hand and started walking her out. When we finally found her dad outside, she was crying and told him that she left her stuffed animal inside.

He grabbed her by the hand and they ran back in the building. We kept screaming that it wasn’t just a drill, it was a real freaking fire. A small one, but still.”

Shorts and Spokes

u/PANDADA: “Probably not the absolute worst (sadly), but I rate this pretty high up there. The other day at a gas station I saw a father on a motorcycle with his daughter (I assume) on the back. They both had helmets, but the girl was in tiny shorts and a skimpy tank top; she had to be no more than 8 years old.

Look, if you don’t want to wear a leather jacket and jeans to protect your body, fine, that’s your choice, but d—– at least protect your child!”

Love Game

u/medullah: “I worked at Best Buy. I stopped in with my mom one day because she wanted to buy me the Star Wars DVD box set for my birthday. I had a huge, HUGE crush on the girl that was working the customer service counter. Well, the DVD set rang up $10 more than it was priced, and my mom deliberately didn’t say anything until after the transaction…

My crush didn’t know how to process it and the manager was busy, so my mom tore into her about how it was her job and how she should understand how to do things. At my job. To a girl I liked. My life was misery for a while afterward.”

Getting Discounts

u/Deminla: “Before Value Village (Savers in the States I think) changed policies, [my mother] would cut tags to get discounts since the cashiers would basically make up whatever price they thought it would be, on the spot.

If they high balled it, she would get a manager involved and I hated that.”

Going Ham

u/Jrauch77: “My wife’s school was having a really hard time involving their parents in their kid’s homework…So what they tried to do was, start an after-school program where parents would come in and help their kids with their homework…None of the parents showed up. Not surprising I suppose.

Here’s where it gets interesting… so they decided they were going to raffle off a ham at each afterschool homework event. Amazingly, parents started showing up. I would have to drive with my wife every once in a while to Walmart to buy a ham, because the parents showed up for a 1 in 500 chance to win a ham. They wouldn’t come in for their kids, but they’d come in for…ham.”

Football Star

u/Shostakovich22: “This guy knows that his son is going to be a great NFL quarterback. The kid turned 10 recently and is a decent player, but his father has him work with different trainers and spend hours each day practicing. He takes vitamins, has a special diet, and isn’t allowed to play other sports because his dad wants him to focus completely on football and doesn’t want to risk an injury playing another sport…

He can’t have sleepovers or do any normal kid things. I know for a fact that the kid has told his father that he doesn’t want to play anymore, but the dad doesn’t care. He says that as a parent, he has to do what is best for his kid.”

Elephant in the Room

u/jonisneckdeep: “In like 5th grade, there was this girl I was friends with and we would always joke around and make fun of each other. So one day my mom was picking me up from school, and me and the girl were walking out together and she said, ‘see you tomorrow dumbo!’ (I had big ears as a kid, thankfully I grew into them)…

[My mom] stormed over and started yelling at her, saying things like, “don’t ever talk to my kid like that again! How would you like it if kids made fun of the freckles on your face?” She started bawling…We left and I didn’t talk to my mom at all on our way home.”

Angel Child

u/Naala35: “I used to teach this little boy who was so disruptive—he would shout and pinch the other children in the class—and when I complained to his parents they said that he was a little angel at home and were shocked that I was saying that their boy was disruptive.

They even said they thought I had the wrong child’s parents in!”

Crying Over Spilt Milk

u/Kahonii: “I work Customer Service at loblaws part time while I go to school (lucky me… i’ve grown resentful of people) and one day I encountered a lady who was absolutely flabbergasted that her milk, on which the expiry date was clearly written, went bad. She was b—-ing and b—-ing, had the store manager called down, the front end manager, the dairy manager too!

Once this whole ordeal was handled, she turns to her 14 year old daughter (aprox 14) and says ‘now, thats how its done.'”

Healthy Habits

u/Ginnylala: “Work at a school where over 80% of our population lives under the poverty line. I keep a cabinet full of hygiene products for kids to take. Deodorant, lotion, chapstick, hair gel, feminine hygiene products, shampoo, conditioner, those kinds of things in travel sizes…So one day the entire thing is empty. Odd, I refill the cabinet and two days later all of it is gone again. Refill with the last of my supplies, catch the kid in the act of sweeping everything in his bag…He told his mother about the cabinet.

She ordered him to bring her everything he could get. She was returning the items to Walmart for store credit…I told him to tell her the cabinet is locked now.”

God’s Plan

u/hashtag-blessed: “Lemme tell you about crazy parents. The hyper-religious family that home-schooled all 5 of their kids. The youngest was 12 years younger than the second-youngest because the parents decided in their mid-forties that they wanted another kid.

The odds of a special-needs child at that age are pretty high compared to 35 and younger, but they insisted that they wanted whatever ‘God had in store for them’ and now play martyr about everything related to their daughter.”

Just Purrfect

u/noodlesthefood: “I went to school at an outpatient mental facility as a kid. It was Halloween so the instructors let us paint our faces and do arts and crafts all day. I knew my mom didn’t like Halloween for religious reasons so I just gave myself a cat nose with whiskers and made sure not to write Happy Halloween on anything I made.

When my mom came to pick me up she screamed at me about how I knew better, made me go to the bathroom to wash my face, as well as made me throw away all the stuff I made, in front of everyone.”

Getting Physical

u/tahsii: “As a teacher’s aide, I’ve seen quite a few badly behaved children with even worse parents but this kid was the most ‘out-there’…But this was nothing, I repeat nothing, compared to his mother.

She had multiple restraining orders on teachers and staff at the school as she would verbally and occasionally physically assault them. Her son would spin stories about other children hurting him and teachers being mean and she would lose the plot. She would enter the school whenever she wanted, usually during class time and insist on speaking with teacher, and refusal would mean getting cussed out in front of the kids or even get physical. She’s technically not even allowed on school property but has disregarded this. The police are called every time she comes but cause we’re a rural school, it takes about 25 minutes to get there.”

Bad Behavior

u/subtlelikeatank: “I called a parent about a behavior issue. I must have been on speakerphone, because I heard the kid come home. Parent starts screaming at and whaling on the kid. Cussing, calling them all sorts of names.

I don’t even know if the parent remembered I was on the phone. I hung up the phone and went to my principal. Teachers are mandated reporters, don’t hit your kids in front of a teacher.”

Kid on a Leash

u/Coastie071: “Not sure if this is a fail or win. I was at a mall, and saw a kid on a leash. Mom is looking at something in a window and the kid sees something and takes off. The kid is running, then the leash goes taut.

His little arms and legs keep moving forward as his torso comes to a complete stop. He landed straight on his a–. I still laugh when I think about it.”

Class Pet

u/obtusefailure: “Woman I used to babysit for worked in a school as an assistant or some shit in Toronto, she always told this story about how the class rabbit would go home with a new kid each weekend. They kept trying to avoid giving one kid the bunny for the weekend because it was clear his home life wasn’t the best. But they finally caved and let him take the rabbit home.

The parents killed the rabbit and ate it. They killed the class bunny and fried it up for dinner. They weren’t even ashamed when they told the teacher what happened on Monday. Said they were out of groceries or something.”

Sweet 16

u/Original_Score: “It was my 16th birthday and my family went to a fancy Italian restaurant. The staff came over to sing happy birthday to me and my dad started singing along loudly in a bad Italian opera kind of accent (we are not Italian).

The staff was so stunned they just stopped singing. The other customers around us laughed and applauded and the staff just walked away. I was mortified.”

Feeling Grounded

u/ohhellnoxd: “When I was a young child on a long distance flight my mother let me and my brother sleep on the floor. For safety reasons the flight attendants told my mother that we were not allowed to sleep on the floor. She started to argue with the flight attendants who then turned to the pilots.

The pilots threatened to turn the plane around unless we get up from the floor but she continued to argue. The pilots announced they were about to turn around because of my mother, so all the passengers got pissed. Eventually she caved in when she had all passengers and flight crew on a boeing 747 against her.”

The Real Test

u/EthicalHacker17138: “My mom came to my school because she thought I was lying about what I got on my SATs. She didn’t think I was that smart. No one in my school would give her that information because they didn’t have to.

She got to my principal and said, ‘I want to speak to your manager’ in front of me. He refused and they argued for a while. The principal knew I was an okay guy and the score I told my mother was legit. It was really embarrassing though.”

Freebies

u/TheFire_Eagle: “Grocery store had this sign up that said if an item rang up higher than an advertised price it was free…Mom was buying a box of Little Debbie cakes and they rang up for $2.85 instead of the advertised $2.50. So now mom wants her free cakes. Cashier doesn’t know what to do, summons a manager. Manager tells her to ring up the sale otherwise and he’ll be right back.

Comes back and hands my mother 35 cents cheerfully and says ‘There you go!’ My mother points out the sign behind him and he says “Oh, the last manager put that up, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m the new manager and I just haven’t had the sign removed yet”…Mom insists they honor their sign, he says nah…Mom gathers her things, decides against taking the Little Debbies on principle.”

Momma’s Boy

u/Hypogriff: “I used to teach/lecture at a university. I had one poor homeschooled student whose mother insisted on attending the university with him. She enrolled in the same course and used to follow him around to observe his social interactions, and dictate to him who he should be friends with etc…

In the end I put them in different lecture streams so that they had to attend separate lectures and labs. She spat the dummy and took me before the Dean to change them into the lecture streams, but the Dean was pretty happy with what I had done. A few weeks later the student came and thanked me personally.”

The King of Burger King

u/cok3noic3: “[My dad] can be such a prick if you get his order wrong, it could be fast food or a nice sit down restaurant. He often yells at wait staff if they ‘undercook’ his steak. It has to be well done or he claims to have lost his appetite.

One time we went to Burger King…he took one bite of his burger, spit it out and immediately started b—-ing about it being under cooked. He cut in front of everyone in line to yell at the cashier, then he asked who was the cook. When the cook appeared, he launched his burger hitting the poor kid directly in the face with a lidless burger. He’s now banned for life from Burger King.”

Water, Water, Everywhere

u/phoenix-corn: “My grandmother (who lived with us) did not let me walk up and down stairs, and I was also not allowed to let shower water hit my chest. She believed that if I either fell on the stairs or did them too quickly I would die. She also told me that if shower water pounded on my chest it would destroy my heart and it would be my fault if I had a heart attack and died. Both of these were enforced rules (amongst 10 million others) in my house.

She did have a kid who had died of heart problems, but the shower water thing is only an instruction for like RIGHT AFTER open heart surgery.”

Little Spitfire

u/40_lb: “Headed up to the San Juan Islands (Washington State), I’m on the car deck about to walk off before the cars. Little girl about 4 or 5 is walking back and forth excited to get off the ferry. The workers are about to raise the gate and let the passengers off, so Dad to my left say ‘Come hold daddy’s hand Mary’.

At which point the girl turns to her dad an f—— spits at him! His response (actual quote!) in a sing song voice: ‘No sweety, don’t spit at daddy!”

Not So Thankful

u/clocksailor: “[My mom told] everybody at Thanksgiving dinner at her boyfriend’s house about my tween bout with anorexia.

I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and she just kept going on and on about how I had carrots for dinner for a year until I had to shout at her to stop.”

Faking It

u/KKLante: “We travelled a lot when we were younger and would skip lines at the airport since we were kids. But now we were all in our early teens and my mom faked having a heart condition to skip the long line to get on the airplane.

Flight attendant would have none of it and told us to go back to the end of the line. I still remember the smiles and looks of everyone there.”

Kind Defense

u/fasdy: “I was at a movie theatre and we had just walked in and sat down in our seats since the theatre we were going to was open. An employee, probably around 35 years old, walks in and asks everyone (a small handful of people) to leave for a few minutes so he can clean it. He had a stutter and had some type of ‘disability’. The employee was SUPER friendly and nice about having to ask us to all leave.

This dad (lobstery, b— belly, cut-off sleeves), who was there with his three pre-teen and teen kids, started making fun of the employee and the way he spoke. Joking, mimicking and trying to get his kids to join in with him.”

Yes or No

u/hashtag-blessed: “The mom who taught her son to say ‘No daddy’s house’ even though he loves his dad. He understood ‘yes’ and ‘no’ perfectly before this.

After she did this we had to re-teach it by taking things away when he said no, he didn’t want it. He was so confused and cried so much. His mom is literally the devil.”

Childhood Trauma

u/somanytictoc: “My first teaching job, I had a fifth grader who was THE WOOOOORST (Jean-Ralphio voice)…[He] did a few things in the bathroom that no sane child would ever do, mostly involving feces…All of his previous teachers said he was actually one of the better-behaved kids, and he was pretty smart…

We (and by “we” I mean “all the fifth grade teachers and the principal”) met with his parents 4 times in two months, trying to determine the cause of all of this…In the fourth meeting, I said…’Can you think of ANYTHING that happened between 4th and 5th grade that might affect his psychological makeup?’ They said ‘Oh! Jamal’s uncle was found shot dead in our home this summer. Jamal was the one who discovered his body.’”

The Original Karen

u/scoby-dew: “My mother ranting to all and sundry that she was going to get the brand-new Wal-Mart Supercenter in our town shut down because a cashier closed her register as we were walking up.

Apparently, she could do this because she ‘knew people on the internet.’ It was 1998. 14-year-old-me was mortified.”

Yes Man

u/hockeyfreak567: “My parents were the type to give me the guilt trip whenever I did something that disappointed them. Now I will feel really guilty for disappointing someone even if what i do has no effect on their emotions at all.

I will just assume because I do something it will disappoint someone and I feel like an a—— because of it. I am basically a yes man because of it, and I hate it.”

A Pant Leg Up

u/TheseWereThePlaces: “My dad just loved to argue, and he loved a deal. We were shopping in a department store, and I found a pair of pants I was mildly interested in. The pants were tagged at (let’s say) $40, and the sign on the rack was ‘All pants $25’…I asked the salesclerk if they had them in my size, the clerk said ‘those aren’t supposed to be on that rack’.

Boss Fail

“Daycare is closed at 6, parents come in at 6:05 and let their kid run around the daycare, opening the bean bag chairs and spilling the guts everywhere & pulling stuff off the shelf for a half an hour while my boss is obviously closing up and telling the kids to stop. The dad goes, ‘let her do what she wants’. One year old kid has a fever of 103 and has to go home. My boss calls the mom and tells her to pick up her kid, the mom says she’s busy and she can’t. She doesn’t’ call the father because they’re going through a really ugly divorce.

The kid has a seizure, my boss calls his father (boss fail) after that the dad shows up about ten minutes later and moments after he comes in to comfort his sick kid, the mom shows up and the couple breaks out in a massive argument while their poor boy is lying on a table in a very bad state.”

Open the Floodgates

u/haylibee: “When I was 5 or so my pre-k did a play based on Noah’s ark…We were instructed that our costume was supposed to be raincoats/rain boots/umbrellas. I didn’t have any of those things but begged my Dad to get me at least one of them so I’d fit in and follow the guidelines. Fast-forward: the night of the play. I’m frantically scanning the audience because my Dad is ALWAYS late.

Image by Denisfilm/Depositphotos

He finally shows up and brings me: a life jacket. I had to stand up there with all the kids in their little raincoats in a life jacket. I was really embarrassed. Dad’s defense was that I was the only kid who would have survived the flood. I can laugh now but I sure wasn’t laughing then!”

Four Eyes

u/breakyourbad: “I was teaching a sweet 13 year old girl, who obviously couldn’t see the board very well and needed glasses as she was falling behind in class.

I called her mother (this is in south London so imagine a jade goody voice) her mum told me to f— off and that ‘I didn’t need f—ing glasses, my mother didn’t need f—ing glasses so she doesn’t need any f—ing glasses’ and hung up. In that situation you just feel for the girl.”

You’re Hired

u/xBlackBartx: “I was a manager of a bagel store. Had an interview with a kid, I think he was about 16. His dad came to the interview, and basically answered every single question I asked the kid.

At the end of the interview I turned to the dad and said ‘You’re hired,’ look on his face was priceless. The kid laughed his a– off.”

Being Lazy

u/wellgolly: “My father used to blame any health problems I had on being lazy in order to avoid getting me to a doctor. I mean, he still does, but now I’m old enough to go myself. To avoid sounding like a hypochondriac, I’ll give the last one that happened: I lost hearing in my left ear for a couple days. My dad said it’s because I don’t clean out my ears. He also said I was just tired when I was having breathing problems when I was 12.

He genuinely seemed to think I didn’t know what being tired felt like. I didn’t get to see a doctor until I got lightheaded and passed out. And then it was only because my sister was home. Thank god for her.”