Friday, January 27, 2012

Some of My Bad Parenting Techniques

Feeling guilty seems to go hand-in-hand with being a mother. I am against feeling guilty (what a useless emotion, either improve or get over it!); however, I frequently feel guilty about little R anyway. Here are five mini parenting fails:

--not putting sunscreen on her. We live in Singapore (=the tropics) and she has two pale Northern European-descended parents, so she really should wear it every day. But I hate putting it on (me or her), so I only do it if we are going hiking. I feel guilty about raising her risk of skin cancer though.

--not clipping her fingernails. She hates having her nails clipped (she fights like I'm trying to put her in a strait jacket). I also am afraid of accidentally clipping off part of her finger. For these reasons, I avoid clipping them. They get longer and longer, and I think, "I really need to cut them. I'll do it tomorrow for sure!" But I don't. She's needed a clipping for at least two weeks but I keep procrastinating. She is going to end up like that man in India.

--letting her lick her shoes. She loves playing with the velcro tabs on her shoes (chewing on them), which I guess is OK because they don't touch the ground. However, sometimes she will also start tasting other parts of the shoes (like the soles!) and I don't stop her out of laziness. She is probably getting all kinds of diseases. (I worry this is what caused the latest one, although I know that's irrational.)

--letting her eat food off the ground. Being a baby, she is a messy eater and food from her meals frequently ends up under the high chair. Once she's done eating, she likes to go for seconds on this new supply, and I let her (even if it's been sitting there a while because I felt too lazy to clean it up). I don't actually think this is dangerous, but it does teach her bad habits (like eating food OFF THE FLOOR is a good idea). Bad mother.

--letting her play with bottles of lotion/hand sanitizer/etc. B has actually told me several times that I shouldn't do this, because little R is sneaky and can get child-proof caps off now. I agreed with him, but continue to let her play with them when she's getting her diapers changed (as a distracting technique). Yesterday she was playing with a hand sanitizer bottle, and when I briefly wasn't looking, got the cap off and tried to guzzle down the contents! Luckily I prevented her just in time (good, because it would have been really embarrassing to take her to the ER to get her stomach pumped, admitting to all I am a careless mother).

Really I need to improve in these areas, but somehow I lack the necessary willpower/impetus. Maybe listing them here will help? (Probably not.)

3 comments:

  1. LOL, well if it makes you feel any better I have 4 kids (almost, due may 31st1) and I have let things happen, out of laziness, ignorance or true accident!

    Once I was getting dressed in the bathroom doing my hair, etc... This was when things were easy and we only had the one (at the time I would have scoffed at anyone who tried to tell me one was easy) and my son who had just started walking came into the bathroom and grabbed my deodorant. I thought no big deal, he cant get the cap off (it is pretty tricky to open) well sure enough as he amused himself on the bathroom floor with my deodorant, he figured out how to open it....

    Just as I noticed what he had done, and he realized I was going to take it away he took (what I thought at the time was) a huge bite out of it before I could stop him!! I was a wreck! I thought I had failed him as a parent, LOL. I quickly fished my finger in his mouth to try to get what I could out but he had swallowed most of it already. In utter humiliation and severe panic I called poison control, only to be told not to worry, happens all the time and it was really no biggie.

    The truth is that we're all human and subject to flaw, even when it comes to raising children. I would be more concerned about a mom who didn't feel guilt!

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  2. Letting her eat off the ground totally helps build up her immune system~

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  3. HA! My favorite is when Little G spies a crumb under the oven or the fridge and lunges for it and eats it. Yeah. He's two and a half.

    And the shoe licking...oh the shoe licking...I can't do a thing about it...it's usually when he's in the car seat. Perhaps it would be best if he DID drink some hand sanitizer* ;)

    (*I feel like I should make it abundantly that I'm kidding on the hand sanitizer front...never know who's watching/reading, right?)

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