Mum of the Year Award Goes To... (Long, Stupidly Stupidly Long)

[Ternasthebard]

As for the "you obviously never had children" my response to that is, "What the fuck does that have to do with your piss poor parenting?"

That is a good question. My personal response to "You obviously never had children." happens to be: "And yet I seem to take better care of mine than you do yours. Might tell ya something there."

Then again, I have a bad habit of being slow of wit so I memorize comebacks to pretty much any potential situation so I can just pull them out at will.

[notalwaysright]

Arg, I can't deal with parents like this. Oh, I'm not a mom btw. I'm not particularly understanding of kids, so I never say anything to a parent or child unless they are literally preventing me from doing my job. Or if they are climbing shelves or our ladders or whatever. I'm pretty much obligated by my employer to say something in that case.

To be honest, in my store (which is full of parents and grandparents) the other customers usually say something. Like once a lady was letting her kid push the cart around while they waited at the cutting counter. He finally hit another woman, who was understandably cranky about it. Did the mom apologize for her child? Nope. She said nothing to the other lady but since everyone was watching, made her son apologize.

[Shyla]

I doubt she kept the kids for tax reasons. I bet the dad actually wanted them. So she fought to keep them just so she could "win." Disgusting but happens in many divorce cases.

Those poor kids will have so many problems in life. She's beyond awful. If I was the parent of the random kid that got bitten, I might have called the police. The child was running around unsupervised and biting.

[Latekin]

To the folks saying call CPS, I'd need a lot more details about the lady than what I know about her as of now.
We never managed to get her license plate number because, well, our store is pretty damn understaffed. We couldn't get anybody to go out there and get it. We didn't even have someone to get the carts.

If she was a regular, there might be something I could do, but I'd literally never seen her or her kids before. She didn't use I.D. for anything, so that's a no go.
=[

Only time we ever managed to get the AUS version of CPS out to the store was when a lady left her kid in the playground so she could go to work. For nine hours. She never told us he was there. We only realised someone had ditched their kid because after four hours of being stuck in the playground he approached our Garden Manager and asked him when he was gonna get lunch.

[LesserSouthernFroglet]

I doubt she kept the kids for tax reasons. I bet the dad actually wanted them. So she fought to keep them just so she could "win." Disgusting but happens in many divorce cases.

I take it this is in Australia? She probably kept them for the compulsory child support payments from the father. If he got custody, she'd have to pay him...

[Latekin]

Froglet, you're probably right.

Also, hi! I have some of your relatives living in my yard. They're very social.

[LesserSouthernFroglet]

Hehe, my family all love the rain!

[Evannah]

I'm not surprised she gave you attitude about it. Even though I didn't see her or interact with her, I knew she'd be the sort to tell you off just by reading...

[dawnfire]

I take it this is in Australia? She probably kept them for the compulsory child support payments from the father. If he got custody, she'd have to pay him...

not to mention all the payments from Centerlink (social security) which can add up to over $1000 a fortnight.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Urgh, I grew up as an ADHD kid, and it never went away. Dietary changes can help, but they're not a cure, by any means. You know what does? Scheduled home lives, understanding parents, and at times, medication. I've been on the meds. Yes, the side affects can suck. The sudden energy crash at the end of the day can suuuuuck. But it doesn't turn you into a zombie or addle your brains. I should know. I've been there and done that, and you know what? I'm freaking worse now because my folks caught a hint of the anti-meds scare going around and took me off them. Grades dropped, behavior shifted into disruptive and distracted mode, and never got back. These days I'm being put back on them.

Sorry, ADHD is a subject I'm pretty damn hyped up on, since it's literally been my life.

/endrant

I have ADD (no H) and I find I'm more Zombie-esque ON the medicine than when I come off it. It works though. I might be less energetic but I am definitely more focused.

Honestly it's the lost of appetite/abdominal discomfort that I hate the most.

[wolfie]

Every year, I used to mentally make a "Parent of the Year" award for people who were just astoundingly bad at the whole "not being a raging douche-canoe to their own kids" thing.

Did the mental image of that award look like a bottle of either Massengil or Summer's Eve sitting in the kind of vehicle the West Coast North American natives made from a cedar log, and that the natives around the Great Lakes made out of a frame covered in birch bark?

[manybellsdown]

I doubt she kept the kids for tax reasons. I bet the dad actually wanted them. So she fought to keep them just so she could "win." Disgusting but happens in many divorce cases.

I've got a friend going through this right now. He's actually been awarded full custody, but his ex is refusing to hand over the child AND telling the poor kid that her mean old daddy wants to put poor mommy in jail. Because, she IS going to jail as she's refusing to comply with the court order.

[Captain Trips]

Yeah, it's horrible when the kids are used as weapons. We ran into that with my wife's ex. Once, after his weekend with the kids, they came home and asked "why does Mom want Dad's money?" We explained how it wasn't Mom that wanted it, but them - and as their father, he should pay his fair share of raising them. They said, "but why, since Mom's now married to you?" To that, I offered to adopt them, but that would mean that their father would no longer be their father - and that no one wants that.

Our kids understood what we told them. Sounds like this lady's kids never will.

[carryonnow]

A couple of years ago, during a heat-wave where afternoon temps were over 95* (35C for those overseas), I noticed 2 children sitting in a parked car with the windows up. At about the same time a concerned customer approached me to say that there were THREE children in a maroon car...the same one that I had noticed....the two older children and one strapped into a safety seat. The concerned customer had taken down the registration number and I phoned the local police department who turned up about 5 minutes later.

The female DNA contributor was standing in line with her weekly grocery purchase watching the entire situation unfold. She remarked that she was STUNNED some one would leave their children in the parking lot during such hot weather. The female DNA contributor said that she had even phoned the police when she discovered that some one left their pet locked in a hot car.
Imagine her surprise when she reached her vehicle to discover the police were removing HER children with sweat soaked hair and red cheeks from the car and giving them water.

I was absolutely shocked when she paraded the children inside the location to "formally complain" that ANY ONE would question HER decision to leave HER 9 year old, 5 year old, and 9 month old infant SAFELY locked inside HER vehicle. She demanded the number to the corporate office so that she could inform leadership that store staff jeopardized her children's safety by calling the police and allowing them to be removed from the safety of their car and traumatized by being "interrogated" by the police without HER present.

Needless to say the female DNA contributor was my 2013 Mother of the Year.

[Latekin]

I was absolutely shocked when she paraded the children inside the location to "formally complain" that ANY ONE would question HER decision to leave HER 9 year old, 5 year old, and 9 month old infant SAFELY locked inside HER vehicle. She demanded the number to the corporate office so that she could inform leadership that store staff jeopardized her children's safety by calling the police and allowing them to be removed from the safety of their car and traumatized by being "interrogated" by the police without HER present.

Love the absolute hypocrisy in that one too. I'm expecting a few kids/pets left in car calls this Summer. We just had our first 39C/102F day here. It was bloody horrible, and we've already had one lady try and leave her dachshund in her car.
It's always the same excuse.

"I'll only be a few minutes!"