Wah.
As ive mentioned before (not that anyone cares),
my mother tried kidnapping me when i was about 8. The day before we were in blackpool eating dinner when she stormed out causing a big search for her though she had taken me to an Ann Summers shop during the day (I had to sit on a massive shoe whilst she went into the over 18 section).

She had found out that we all wanted to live with our father (a decision i now regret) and decided to take me away. She was crying all over the place after interviewing us all and then grabbed my wrist announcing we were going out.
I didn't really know what to do but knew i definitely didnt want to go with this mad crying woman. I had no choice but to follow her reluctantly, crying myself.
When we got near to the car she told me that:
"We're going to your Grandma's, i'll pick your clothes up later."
I remember screaming but still getting into the car (i was 8, i seriously didnt know what to do).
The car journey was awful; my mother was crying whilst asking me why i wanted to live with my father over and over again. I thought we were going to crash into a lake or something - she scared me that much.
Anyway half way down to my grandma's my mother was all like "OH YOU WANNA GO TO YOUR DAD'S? I'LL TAKE YOU THERE THEN."
She did.
She took me to the friend's house where he was working on their computer and made me get out of the car, sodden with tears, and knock on the door myself and ask for him.
A teenage boy answered the door with a questioning look but still went and fetched him.
He came outside and they started arguing, my mother gritting her teeth saying "Get in the car Vicky."
I didnt and spent the rest of the day crying on my dad's knee as he fixed the guy's computer. He called for my brothers to come and their friend generously paid for the bus fare.

Sorry about the length :[ I've probably bored you to death.
I have more posts to come.
(I've got the clap has some cool sentence here, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 17:07, Reply)

my parents
were amazing at it. my brothers and i had fab childhoods with brilliant holidays, christmases, birthdays, solid loving background, spoiled rotten in general.

which now means that everything from council tax to office politics to cellulite to dead kittens to world politics to traffic jams to no chanel store in uxbridge is a horrid grown up shock that bursts my happy sheltered the-whole-world-is-lovely-and-happy bubble on a daily basis... damn them!

ha, i was once babysitting a lovely little blond angelic looking child called freddie. he was about 18 months old and i had to pick something up from the village centre. so we walk into town and i naively let him out of his pushchair in the shoe shop. then i stop to drool over some shoes.

one minute later and he's dropped a hiking boot on himself. amidst his shocked howls and sobbing, his clear little treble pipes up:

FUCK!!!

i was mortified. plus as i was about 16 at the time, everyone assumed i was some chavtastic twat who knew no better. i scooped up the sobbing freddie and dragged him out of there, my face burning.

it was only when i strapped him back in his wheelchair and his sobbing was slowing down to that hitching breathing that doesn't happen after the age of about 10 that he said again, in a plaintive little voice this time:

"FOOT... FOOT... FOOT..."

oh dear. he'd actually been saying "foot" because that was where he'd dropped the boot and his little toes were all bruised...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 17:05, Reply)

I was only 10...
... and on a trip to a very crowded Madame Tussauds in London, managed to get lost in the chamber of horrors for nearly half an hour! I was pretty freaked out by it all and by all the uncaring strangers brushing by, so by the time I finally found my mother and was on the verge of tears I really needed a hug. Got a serious slap for my troubles instead...
(PsiPhi, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 17:01, Reply)

His own fault
This was my half-brothers mum. My older brothers are six and seven years older than me, and when we were younger we used to play fight all the time. The younger of the two was always pretending to be hurt so we'd stop and he could grab us and start chucking us about. Great fun. Then the day came when he really had broken his arm. And my sister and I jumped on it, just to be sure.

When we realised he was really hurt, we called his mum, who came round, and proceeded to chase the older brother down the street, Screaming at him and beating the crap out of him leaving my screaming younger brother to be looked after by myself and my sister, aged 4&5.

We all laugh about it now though, even if youngers arm and olders head are no longer the right shape

Just a bit of girth
(becca_kitten Is odd at best, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:51, Reply)

Voice-controlled Power Showers
Cool trick.

The alternative is to use the car remote to drop the windows, but with your "key" hand in your pocket and the other arm making a "use the Force, Luke" gesture.

Wide eyes guaranteed....
(patently Was somewhere else on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:51, Reply)

re: naive swearing
We try to be careful about swearing around our kids (girl 5, boy 3). However the other day my wife overheard this conversation, as they navigated the dining room in their cardboard-box 'boat':

Girl: Right, time to go. Do you have the map?
Boy: No. Do you have the map?
Girl: No.
Boy: Well, we're buggered then.

...clearly we're not quite careful enough.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:50, Reply)

naive swearing
Mrs spluff driving around with the kids, gets cut up and proceeds to call the bloke a wanker. Nothing wrong with that at all. I am told this by my 9 year old son. Conversation goes like this:

Son: Mum swore at someone in the car today.

Me: Really what did she say?

Son: I cant tell you its swearing.

Me: Oh ok then

Son: She said wank with E and R on the end!

I nearly shat. Bless him.
(SPLUFFMYPANTS, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:44, Reply)

My dad's a rozzer
and not some tit-headed flatfoot, but the tazer-wielding fast car-chase sort.
One morning he's doing a morning shift, on patrol in a big Land Rover, with ALL the toys. Multi-band radio broadcast unit, tannoys, and, best of all, rear programmable LED board (so that you can type messages to the car behind you.)

Thinking, at the age of 15, that it would be fucking A to get a ride to school in one, I readily accept his offer of a lift (which he wasn't supposed to do, but who cares.)

It was all smiles and gloats as he pulls into the car park, watching my peers and enemies gape their jaws at such a majestic vehicle. I jumped out, try and pass off a blase "cheers Dad," slam the door, and nochalantly stride off towards my comrades. Five seconds later, the sirens blurp out a high-pitched squeal, I turn to look at the departing van to read on the LED board "DADDY LOVES YOU TOO XXX"

You simply cannot imagine the shit I put up with at school for the next three years. All policemen are bastards.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:39, Reply)

My mental mother...
Literally mental. She would:

Tell me asthma and TB are not good excuses for not wanting to breath in her fag smoke.

Feed me food I'm allergic to, then scream at me for being lazy when I started fainting from oxygen deprevation.

Blamed me for wrecking her life, by being born while she was still a teenager... cos I'm responcible for my own conception apparently..

And more recently, when I got pregnant "you only did this to hurt me" ... um, what? Then when I lost the baby "Its your fault 'cos you didnt get your hair cut short"... WTF?

My mum, schitzophrenic, but entertaining
Length... some
(becca_kitten Is odd at best, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:33, Reply)

my ex
his parents, clearly feeling frustrated at not being able to emotionally cripple each other enough, decided to go all out on their five kids. i could get into a lot of very messed up and serious stuff, but let's go with the funny one, shall we?

his youngest brother, aged two at the time, they had exorcised by their latest fad, the spiritualist church.

he was a two-year-old, for crying out loud, they're *meant* to tantrum like that.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:29, Reply)

Absent minded scientist dad
Dad was the one who got me ready for infant school as mum was a nightshift queen (in the 70s/early 80s you got paid as much as a plumber for packing biscuits). As he always had his nose in a journal or research paper, these are some of the situations I found myself in when dropped off at the school gate:
1. Wearing a blouse with strawberry yoghurt from yesterdays packed lunch smeared all over the inside.
2. A thin layer of Bubbalicious gum (cola flavoured) coating my chin, refusing to come off.
3. White gloss paint on the back of my head from leaning against a newly painted radiator.
4. Bald patches on the back of my head after I cut out aforementioned white gloss paint.
5. Cat poo on my socks.
6. About to pass out from a blood infection.
(bonjelafiend, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:27, Reply)

I was in Cardiff today...
... and I saw a father and son chav duo come out of Sport and Soccer wearing matching white track suit tops.

No need for that, don't drag the kid down to your level!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:17, Reply)

Father / son chat
I recall with fondness the time I was driving with my dad and we stopped to buy porn. I suppose I was 14 and begining to simmer with toxic hormones. He popped into a newsagents and came out with two mags and some toilet roll, and we drove out into the countryside.

"Don't be shy, Frank," he said, levering his own rigid manhood from his fly. He balanced the centerfold on the steering wheel and began to whack away quite unselfconsciously oblivious to my embarrassment. I flicked through the magazine until I found a particularly impressive lady, apparently attempting to retrieve something from her rectum with a manicured finger, and I made to unleash my own growing tool.

That's when a policeman in a high-visibility garment rapped on the window. My dad was done for indecent exposure and I was interviewed by social services for the rest of the day, answering questions about whether anyone had touched me inappropriately. And they confiscated the mags. Wankers.
(frankspencer, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:13, Reply)

Nice to know the truth
My childhood was fairly crap, dad was train spotter so weekend afternoons were spent waiting in a cold wet field waiting for some pile of crap. Not as bad as the arguments we would hear coming from the neighbours of a friend where a lad about the same age lived.

I can still remember those nice summer evenings when we were pissing about and a scream 'we never wanted you, you little fucker, you were an accident'
(inkworm, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:07, Reply)

Wacky parent funster
On our power shower, there's a delay between switching it off and the water stopping. I've managed to convince both our kids that it's actually voice-controlled: I switch it off when they're looking the other way, count to five and then get them to shout 'stop!'...and presto! it stops.

I love watching them try to stop and start the water by shouting at it.

In years to come, they'll be posting this sort of thing on Internet message boards. And using it to justify putting me in a home.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 16:06, Reply)

Bad Aunty Dingo
I was at a theme park on a day out with my brother, sister-in-law and their young kids, and my niece was fascinated by the water rides, as all kids seem to be.
So naturally, me being the cool aunty, I took her to stand on the bridge over the ride where spectators can get nicely splashed as the ride comes out of the chute and sends a wave of water up. The wave when we were stood there was the biggest one I'd ever seen come up, and we both got drenched. There was me, a little shocked, trying to laugh and make her laugh, she turned around dripping wet, looked at me laughing at her, and slapped me right across the face! She was 4!
My brother and sister-in-law were peeing themselves laughing, but all the other parental types stood around the bridge awww-ing and coming forward with suggestions like *poor dear, put her in the dryer!*
I could feel the scorn.
Fortunately my brother found it funny!

Length? About 12 foot high at the peak
(dingo_aber Put the chocolate in the bag and no-one gets hurt, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:51, Reply)

I wouldn't call it bad parenting
as I now find it hilarious (and wasn't even that bothered at the time), but I'll never forget the time Mrs. Todd told an eight year old me that I looked like "an explosion in a sick factory".
She's fairly mortified whenever I bring it up, and is glad that I find it funny and don't hate her for it.

She also once poured a bucket of water over me because I wouldn't shut up. I resent her a tiny bit for that. Ah, fuck it, it's funny in hindsight.

Furthermore, this woman invented the song, now infamous in our house, "Frozen Chicken Nuggets Stuffed up Yer Bum"*, and proudly showed me a Photoshop she'd done of Rolf Harris farting. She also made me a birthday cake in the shape of an arse. My dad tells me that he drops silent trumps next to nasty kids when invigilating exams and of the time he wrote 'LITTLE SHIT' on some kid's school report, and he freely admits that he spent his second year at uni smoking pot and weeing out of windows. Not the best example to set an impressionable young Todd, is it?

Oh, and to the person who asked if anyone on this site had a normal childhood/parents -- of course not.
a) we ended up on b3ta, didn't we?
b) becoming a parent isn't something that any sane, rational adult would choose to do, so all parents are fucked in the head.
Don't forget also that our parents were raised by people who were raised by Victorians, and they were fucking bonkers.

*Gaz me for the full lyrics.
( Bob Todd whee, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:46, Reply)

Prepare for the worst
My mother has the most godawful prepare-for-the-worst mentality of anybody I've ever known. Basically, the way she sees it, you may as well go through life assuming that the world's about to end because it'll then be a nice surprise when it doesn't. And if it does, you won't be disappointed. Mental.

When I was a child, she used to impose this philosophy on me quite a lot.

I didn't have my pre-school immunisations until I was six, which was bad enough as it is. I hadn't had occasion to have any shots of any kind since I was a baby, so my mother thought the best way of preparing me for this procedure was to tell me that it was going to be really, really, excruciatingly painful.

I was absolutely dreading it and could barely manage any breakfast on the day of the appointment. By the time we got into the nurse's office I was literally trembling with fear - in addition, of course, to being tortured by that childhood code of honour that says that you mustn't ever cry in such situations.

"Do you want to sit on Mummy's lap?" asked the nurse. Oh God, you know it's got to be bad if they think you ought to sit on Mummy's lap.

The nurse prepared the syringe, which was somewhat smaller than I'd been expecting, told me to think about something happy and stuck it into my arm.

I think both her and my mother were quite surprised when I yelled, WAS THAT IT?????

I still got some Smarties though.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:43, Reply)

My parents,
Are adorable little potheads.

My dad is rather open about it, honest and understanding. In fact sometimes he'll front me some when the times are dry or I get good grades. (I go to art school and get VERY good grades). Once when we were visiting my college we lit up a doobie in the mini van. That what memories are made of, if you can remember them.

My mom tries to hide it, and fails. She likes to pretend I don't do it either. Bummer, where's the love?

Also my little sister (10) found my vibrater once, thought it was a bomb, took it to my mom, who promptly told her it was a "neck massager" and massaged my crusty juices all over her neck. Ahh retribution.
(AbbaZabba, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:31, Reply)

Not me
But something i saw in a Burger King about 3 months ago.

My eye was drawn to this guy with his kid. I'm assuming he was a single parent or had taken the kid out for a hearty Obesity-Burger.

Anyway, the kid had an ice cream. She was lovin' it until it slid out of her hands and onto the floor. She starts wailing and screaming, tears flying everywhere.

Now, heres where the terrible parenting comes in, Did the dad:

a) console his daughter and buy a new ice cream straight away
OR
b) Ignore the child for 3 minutes as he was too busy watching the Pussycat Dolls on Smash Hits! TV.

No prizes for correct answers
(Jizzbiscuits-Murphy wroted this on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:29, Reply)

Oh yes, another one...
That reminds me - about the broken bones. I broke my wrist, and my foot, and my mum didn't believe me until I was still swollen and limping 8 weeks later. Then she said "hmm.. well maybe you might have broken it." And when I had renal colic and kidney stones during my A level exams due to being anorexic (which of course, to my parents was not a proper disease and I was 'just doing it for attention') and whilst I was on the floor literally screaming in agony, then taken to A&E 4 TIMES in 2 weeks to be injected with pethidine and have tramadol shoved down my neck just to stop me from shaking and blacking out. And I was accused of faking it to get out of doing exams. Cause you can fake having spastic pain fits and throwing up bile and blacking out at 3 in the morning...
Oh, and my dad trying to steal my anti-depressants to flush them down the loo saying that depression wasn't a real illness either.
They loved me really..
( Bathory, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:26, Reply)

Water...
My darling father used to pick me up and run my head under the cold tap when I was making noise...which made me scream. Great idea, dad. He also tried to run me over when he was dropping me off at work. He would literally chase me around the car park in his car, trying to hit me. I now take great delight in in telling him awful stories about nursing homes.
(Demagogue69 did your grandad 3 times., Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:17, Reply)

I thought I was a bad parent..
.. until I saw the state of what goes on in Peterborough..
Now I'm a fecking saint in the parenting stakes.
(LunarJim, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:00, Reply)

not me but an old flatmate...
His Dad was a nice man but on occasion slightly gruff. He was a farmer. Y'know working long hours is pretty rough. Anyway, one night Dad comes in in a bit of a mood flatmates brother jumps up and runs towards him "Daddy, Daddy, you're home" etc. Dad clearly not in the mood to show attention to sprog bats him aside with a "not now". Small boy, travelling at quite a speed by all accounts trips over the fire place and breaks his leg. Cue Mum and Dad frantically gathering things up and heading to the hospital. On the way they spent time making sure the boy had his story straight worried that the kids would get taken away "you fell over, no one pushed you" etc. Get to the hospital first question "So how did this happen?" Little boy: "Daddy pushed me but told me not to tell" - lead to a few more questions before it all got sorted out, probably lucky this was twenty years ago or my old flatmate and his brother would have probably grown up in care.
(cannonfodder fodder for cannons on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:59, Reply)

My mother
Told me every gory detail about where babies came from

Repeatedly tried to engage me in conversation about my vagina

Once made me watch her insert a tampon

Told me all men were bastards

Lectured me on the harmlessness of masturbation. "It's okay, as long as you wash your hands afterwards"

All of this happened before I was ten.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:46, Reply)

Oh, I've got more...
My brother tripped over a toy and spent the entire weekend in agony as my mum refused to believe that he'd broken his arm. He'd broken his arm.

It must've looked suspcious after she also managed to dislocate his shoulder by thinking she could just stretch his arm instead of unstrapping him from the push chair to press a button in an elevator.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:40, Reply)

my parents
were normal so I had to generate my own bad parenting. I did this by getting lost in every shopping centre possible and would then make my way to the information desk to announce I'd been abandoned.

Throughout my childhood my parents had to listen as 'Can Mr and Mrs Sneep please come to the information point to collect their son' boomed out into every shopping centre they visited.

If I was proper evil I could have asked the lady in the information booth to add 'and can Mr.Sneep please stop fiddling with Sneep when no one else is around'.

Now that would've been funny. Harsh....but funny.
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:36, Reply)

Holiday theft
On Holiday in Cornwall once, my sis and I had been to the beach. We returned to the apartment to find our parents having a snooze. I was bored senseless and to find something to do I decided to take my swiss armyknife and pick the lock of the electricity meter (this was back in the day when you had to continously pump £ coins into a meter to get any leccie). When my parents woke I got such a scolding I went out for the rest of the day in a grump. Cue the day getting dark and my parents calling me in from the green at the back "hmm" I thought, "they obviously want to say sorry for shouting at me"
nope:
"We've run out of cash,can you do that thing to the meter again?" We spent the rest of the holiday putting the same coin in the meter over and over and got a weeks worth of leccie for free.
( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:28, Reply)

I'm leaving my job a week today
So I'm celebrating by getting pissed a lunchtime, reading b3ta all day, and generally not getting any projects in on time.

I should get fired for that.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:22, Reply)

my parents were professional comedians.
I was amused as a child.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 14:07, Reply)