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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Parenting Scares for Rookies

I just read this article from Today's Parent magazine:  http://www.todaysparent.com/6 parenting scares .

Hilarious!  In a not intentionally funny way.  All this time I had been thinking I must not handle stress well as I tumble down the wrong side of the nervous breakdown spectrum.  Turns out we are NOT normal. If you don't feel like reading the actual article, according to Today's Parent normal parenting scares are:

  1. Baby swallows penny.
  2. Toddler eats dog food.
  3. Your preschooler writes on the couch with a permanent marker.
  4. Your first grader stuck a peanut in his ear.
  5. Your eight-year old glues his fingers together with Crazy glue.
  6. Your ten year old got gum in her hair.

How it goes down in the MacFuddle house:

  1. Toddler swallows six metal marbles from his brother's magnetic building kit.  Intern in the emergency room actually gasps when she views X-Rays.  I suggest she may want to tone down the gasping in shock around the average nervous parents.  Probably okay around damaged, beaten-down parent like me, but you never know. In case you are wondering, as long as the marbles aren't actually magnetic, and they are smaller than a penny, they will pass. And, no, the sitter will not check the diaper and keep a running tally of the marbles.
  2. ?? I don't get it.  Was there not enough food left over for the dog? That is a pet owner issue, not a parenting scare.
  3. At the MacFuddle house, most items, including walls, clothes, furniture, are "labeled". My advice is to let them turn the drawing into a mural to show their classmates.  It will seem like homework and they will quit doing it.  True Story. But, again, not a true parenting scare.
  4. Eighteen month old sticks so many unpopped popcorn kernels into his left nostril that kernels start coming out his mouth.  I worry that he could actually be touching his brain with popcorn kernels so I rush him to the emergency room.  They still have our file out from discharging us only hours before.  (Probably need a whole post to describe that incident.)  Doctors have really long tweezers. They say no big deal, but I would still like to see a CT scan of the child's brain to check for popcorn.  To this day I don't let him get overheated.  Think about it.
  5. Today's Parent, are you spying on us?  This just happened last week.  Boy 2 glued his fingers together out on the deck so that it looked like he was giving the A-okay sign.  I didn't want him in the house until I was sure the glue was dry so I kept saying how are you doing out there?  And he would give me the A-okay sign.  Oh, and if it is a large amount of glue, nail polish remover will take that right off.  Don't even worry about that.  Unless they have glued a piece of their body that shouldn't have nail polish remover on it.  Then you have a real problem. Call somebody.
  6. You guys aren't even trying now.  Gum in kid's hair is called Saturday.  Gum in hair is likely to happen anytime you have gum and a child in the same home.  Isn't it?  Don't you just use the kitchen scissors to chop it out and get on with your day?  Maybe that's just when you have boys.
In the last 24 hours alone I heard in my house: "Here goes nothing!" and "Hey Mom, look I am on the roof!" I was wishing for crazy glue and gum. But, weirdly, I feel better. It's them, not me. 

2 comments:

Underparenting Guru said...

Like get real...parenting scares I think not...How about a kid biting his tongue off while jumping in a black garbage bag (oh that's a prune not his tongue :-P) Or your kid mixing up recess/home time in 40below weather. Or you kid coming to work with you and drawing beyond the whiteboard & onto the office wall. Or ... Or... Or...tsk tsk rookies really...

Mrs. MacFuddle said...

Dear Underparenting Guru:
I can still make myself laugh in wildly inappropriate situations by thinking of you putting a prune on ice and asking the doctor to attach it to your kid...Thanks for that.