June 27, 2005

Tales From The Crib

Avoid the Bad Parent Award

Jennifer Margulis

The Bad Parent Award is when you get so many demotions on your Mommy or Daddy Punch Card that you are actually eligible for a prize. Prizes include gray hairs on your head (or chest if you’re a dad), major back spasms and accompanying pain, multiple calls from in-laws on the same day, and citation or imprisonment by the Parent Police.

My daughter’s kindergarten teacher was definitely up for a Bad Parent Award when she took her two children to the county fair many years ago. Her daughter, who was slumped in a back carrier, had 105 degree fever and her son had such a bad case of poison oak that his face had swelled up to twice its normal size (okay, she told me three times but is that really possible?).

Are you asking yourself now who would take two sick kids to the county fair? If you’ve never taken a sick kid anywhere but the doctor it’s either because you don’t have any children (and never plan to) or you only have one cuddly cherub and can’t fathom being in a situation where you would, say, need to attend your older daughter’s Out of the Garden graduation ceremony (after all, she will only graduate from kindergarten once, you hope) and you have another small child who just so happens to have a rash from his hairline to the tips of his toes and maybe a fever and you have no one to call to stay with him while he’s napping and you reason that he does seem to be on the mend so you wake him out of blissful slumber to run to the local elementary school with a bewildered feverish baby crying in your arms.

Not that anyone I know would ever do such a thing.

But tell the truth, you probably have a story that trumps the county fair.

I have several.

Only this is a small town and I’m not going to tell you what they are.

Instead I’ll tell you about other people’s Bad Parent Awards. Think Plutarch’s "Lives."

I was sitting in a bakery with my daughters when a colleague of mine came in with her newborn. Her face was as white as the walls. "I bonked Sophia’s head against the side of a counter," she whispered hoarsely. "My mother says to remember that it’s hard to kill a newborn."

Right after my second daughter was born my husband took our toddler (the big sister) to music class. In the middle of a blizzard. Only he didn’t make it out of the driveway. Walking to the car in his street shoes (he’s from Buffalo, where it snows for nine months out of the year; who needs boots?), he slipped and fell in the driveway. The fall fractured our toddler’s leg and she couldn’t walk for almost two weeks.

Then there was the time we took our firstborn to the emergency room because she was … crying. "The baby’s crying. It sounds weird. The books say high-pitched crying can be a sign of brain damage."

"First-time parents?" the 25-year-old unmarried resident asked us at least five times after four hours of tests could find nothing wrong with her.

Then there’s my friend who thought her third child’s illness was nothing more than a cold. Until, that is, both eardrums burst from infection and pus and blood were dripping from them.

So sometimes you overreact and sometimes you don’t react enough. Real Life with Baby is a messy, scary, unclear business and often we do it wrong and make mistakes. Every day. Once an hour. Every 10 minutes.

You may feel moved to write an angry letter about parents who bring their sick kids to social events and expose others to illness. I’m up for several Bad Parent Awards of late, totaling at least 10 demotions on the Mommy Punch Card and enough to win the prize I’ve had all week — searing back pain — so a little extra public humiliation (for someone else, that is) seems right in order. Now pardon me while I go take some more Advil.

Jennifer Margulis is a columnist for the Ashland Daily Tidings. The mother of three, she has won dozens of Bad Parent Awards. Learn more about her at: www.ToddlerTrueStories.com.