So Back the F**k Off…
Dear Perfect Parents,
How’s it going? Actually I probably shouldn’t even ask you that as it’s quite clear you are acing this parenting lark. You must be. I’m pretty sure from the moment you found out that your firstborn was on its way you knew exactly what to do at all the right moments. You knew why your baby was crying, how to feed your tiny bundled blessing, how to reprimand them as they got older, and I bet you haven’t made one tiny mistake since the day that little angel took their first breath.
Right?
Oh, it’s not easy being a parent? Are you sure?
Only the way you have all been trolling this week and being perpetually offended and outraged over various news stories I was under the impression that I was the only one finding being a mum tougher than a three day old steak. I thought maybe I was the only one stumbling around in a sleep-deprived zombie state muttering ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do’ while desperately hunting for the world’s last dummy in the dark and lacerating the soles of my calloused not-seen-a-manicure-since-2009 feet on abandoned Lego.
I presumed that I must be the only woman on this planet that wakes up every morning against her own free will to the screams of ‘muuuummmmyyyyyy I’ve fiiiiniiiiished. Wipe my buuuuum’ and starts to count down the fourteen hours until their bedtime when wine awaits, and I can cry my big fat tears of guilt and regret into my Ben & Jerry’s.
I thought maybe I alone was at the end of my parenting tether and everyone else was finding motherhood pure joy and delight.
The world must be FULL of Perfect Parents seeing as everyone is so quick to judge others.
Let me tell you a cold hard fact. Being a parent is difficult. I don’t care if you gave birth to the child you are in charge of, adopted them, fostered them or are just looking after them for a few days… when a grown adult (with other things to do in their life occasionally other than look at a child 24/7, you know, like take a shower or eat or something) is in charge of a small human being that can’t do things by itself it is impossible – IMPOSSIBLE – to not make a mistake at least once.
If you are lucky, it may be that you put their shoes on the wrong feet and they hobbled a bit all day, or you fell asleep and missed their school pick up time. But if you are really unlucky you may have turned your back for a fraction of a minute while your four year old climbed into a gorilla exhibition at the zoo or you told your little shit of a kid to get out the car to teach him a lesson and he ran off into the woods and wasn’t seen again for six days.
And now the whole world hates you. Like REALLY hates you. They are asking for your child to be taken away from you, to have you imprisoned, to have your child shot instead of a caged animal and to throw YOU to man-eating bears.
And who are these people baying for your blood as only the loving and supportive internet community can do? Why Perfect Parents of course, or even better the Not Even Parents Yet (those people who claim to be better parents than those who actually are parents! Yep, they are my favourite).
So to everyone, everywhere, that has commented more than ‘oh dear what an unfortunate occurrence’ regarding these stories, I have something to tell you:
Back the fuck off!
People make mistakes. Have you never made an error of judgement? Do you think that mum at the zoo looked on happily with an ice cream in her hand while her four year old walked trapeze-like along the gorilla enclosure’s wall completely unfazed? Do you think she half-heartedly mumbled ‘careful, don’t fall into the gorilla pit’ but really wasn’t fussed either way.
OF COURSE NOT!
Her four year old ran off because that’s what four year olds do! She does not have octopus arms and simply couldn’t grab him in time.
It happens.
Normally it means that you are running through the supermarket shouting ‘mummy said stop!’ or someone saves them from running into the road. Rarely do they end up in the hands of an caged primate with the capacity to crush a child’s head with one leathery hand.
As for the seven year old Japanese boy that was lost in a ‘bear-infested’ (that bit is important, even if he didn’t see one all week) forest for six days after he was told to get out the family car for being naughty? Well cue worldwide xenophobia and ‘well that’s the Japs for you’ comments.
Let me tell you something about the Japanese. This story has NOTHING to do with them being Japanese. Bear-infested woods are not habitually used as extreme ‘Naughty Steps‘ in the East. So enough of the racism. Japanese Twitter trolls condemned the parents as much as anyone else did, even though every other country was also condemning all Japanese parenting methods along with the parents.
Yes, his parents made a grave mistake. That in itself is indisputable. Their kid was throwing stones at cars and people and the parents were at their end of their ever patient tether.
So much like the tried and tested tantrum technique of ‘I’m going, if you don’t get up off that floor I’ll leave you here’ that we all love so much, they told him to get out of the car and pretended to drive off. But their child double bluffed them and ran off into the woods.
Oops! #EpicParentingFail – but we have all had at least one haven’t we?
They called, they searched, but he’d gone. So they panicked. Sensing the inevitable parental judgement that would ensue, they told the police straight away but lied and said they had been on a hike when they lost their child.
Yes we know – stupid of them, but kind of understandable. What probably seemed a good idea at the time would appear somewhat extreme when sat in a police station an hour or two later.
Now, is mucking about in a dangerous forest a good idea when you have a child with attitude? Probably not. Were they at their wits end and thought they’d scare their kid into behaving? Probably. Did it work? No. Clearly it didn’t.
That poor child endured six days of starvation while a 180-strong search party battled through torrential rain to find him. His parents spent that entire time hating themselves, blaming themselves and thinking that their actions had killed their child.
Had their extreme disciplining worked and their pretend driving away resulted in their child crying and begging forgiveness as planned, this would have just been a funny story at his 18th birthday party.
But they fucked up.
Because that’s what parents do. We fuck up. We make mistakes. We have regrets. Some bigger than others, some irreparable, some with lasting damage. No, it is never okay to throw your child into a zoo enclosure or abandon him in the woods for six days, but neither of these cases were done out of malice with the intention of endangering their child. Neither of these parents purposely went out of their way to hurt anyone. They had no history of abuse, this was not neglect.
They simply both dropped the ball for a moment, let go of a hand for a second and made a rash decision. Both parents were pushed to their limit. Both parents have to live with that terrible decision and the world’s hatred for their rest of their lives. Every day that they look at their sons they will be reminded how their actions nearly cost their child his life, and how much they are being judged for it.
So before you Perfect Parents start trolling this article now and say that I shouldn’t be supporting child abuse, think back to all those times YOU have fucked up. That hot cup of tea that your toddler nearly grabbed, or that stair gate you left unlocked that you found before your baby did, or that time your kid ran off down the street and an old lady brought him back. It happens, we have a close call every single day… but unfortunately for some it’s too close.
Thank goodness both kids were rescued unharmed (I am truly sorry for the sacrifice gorilla, it wasn’t his fault). Thank goodness that these stories make the news so that we parents can think twice when out and about with our unruly kids. We can only hope we would never make such stupid mistakes.
But could we?
Who knows, tomorrow’s horrifying news story might involve my child or even your child. I hope not. Which is why I’m keeping my mouth shut and my hand firmly grasping that of my child’s.
None of us are Perfect Parents – it’s time we backed the fuck off.
