At What Point Has Bad Parenting Gone Too Far?

Have you heard the latest?  There’s a new outrage being talked about in not so quiet voices, about the latest leader in the Mother of the Year race.  This one beats the beauty pageant mom who admitted to using Botox on you little girl.  This one even tops the tanorexic  mom who reportedly took her daughter into the tanning room with her.  This mom, really is your have eaten lately, you might want to come back.  This mom, took her twin daughters to a restaurant for lunch.  Not a fast food grab and go restaurant. This was a sit down and order your food from a menu with a waiter.  A nearby patron thought it odd that the girls’ pants were pulled down.  Until she realized those were not booster seats the girls were sitting on, but potty chairs!

I don’t even know where to begin here.  The Bitchy Waiter tells the story with much more flair and humor than I can bring to the table. (see what I did there?) The thing is, I don’t know if parents today are just stupid, are clueless, have an ungodly overinflated sense of entitlement, don’t know or care to know how to be parents, what?  There are some “parents” (and god do I use that term as loosely) who are taking ‘free-range parenting’ clear to the I don’t give a fuck limit.

Parents today are micromanaging their children’s time down to the minute so that they don’t have to spend any real quality time with their kids.  Soccer, baseball, ballet, and violin lessons are surely enough discipline for any child, why discipline them at home?  In the world of everyone gets a trophy because everyone is a winner, parents and children neither one have to deal with disappointment.  They also never have to live in a little place the rest of us like to call reality, where it sometimes rains and you sometimes lose because here, we keep score.

The mother of the twin exhibitionists (yes I realize it is a bit unfair to use that word about the girls because they didn’t know better. Just like their mother. Clearly) had left the restaurant before management was made aware, which make the patron who discovered it a chicken shit.  Once I saw that, (and got a great picture to post on the internet) I would have gone straight to management.  I also don’t understand the waiter who waited on them.  What he so desperate for a good tip he kept his mouth shut?

This situation raises so many questions about parents today.  I know parents who don’t say no to their children because they don’t want to be the bad guy.  I know parents who buy stupid ridiculous things for their children because they are trying to get the kids to like them more than the ex spouse.  I know parents who potty trained their sons by telling them to go outside and pee on the trees.  Which made for interesting forays out in public.  But bringing potty chairs to a sit down restaurant?  And USING them at the table? I don’t get it.  I just don’t get it.

There are other patrons to consider.  I don’t care if the girls were two, or twenty two, there is a time and place, especially a place, for that transaction, and the dinning table is not it.  There are health codes the restaurant is required to meet.  I am almost positive that this behavior is in clear violation of those health codes and could get the restaurant shut down. And for what? A lazy clueless mother?  And then there are the logistics of the whole transaction. How did she get two potty training aged twin daughters, two potty chairs, and herself into the restaurant without drawing attention to herself?  If the other patrons believed them to be booster seats, the chairs had to have some substance to them, and how did nobody notice and say something?  Then lets say, one or even both girls had a “transaction” during lunch.  That brings up a whole different set of logistics that now must be worked out.  How would she deal with it?  She clearly would have to take both girls with her to the bathroom, which would require pulling up pants at the table. Again, how would she transport everything and everyone without drawing attention to herself?

Look, I know that parenting is not the easiest job in the world.  It’s not as difficult as rocket science (until you get to science projects) or brain surgery either.  It is demanding. There are days you consider selling them on Ebay.  And potty training is not easy either.  It doesn’t happen overnight. It may not happen in a week.  And I can only imagine what it is like with twins.  But Honey, please, for the sake of everyone else eating around you, and out of respect for the health codes, for the plain simple common courtesy and human decency, if the girls are not completely potty trained, please leave them in diapers, or leave them with a sitter.

*Photo taken from The Bitchy Waiter website.