When you discover you’re going to have a baby, your first parent confessions are the adorable promises you made to yourself. You promise to be generous, patient, a role model, and to teach honesty. Then the kids come, and your parent confessions include the fact you might have set the bar a wee bit high for yourself. Like, miles too high.
Parenting is all about balancing your good intentions with the reality and logistics of having kids. You do your best, but in order to do that you also need to do a few things that you might not exactly be proud of. It’s not that you regret them — they did get the job done — but you’re not about to note them in the baby book.
From hiring a sitter just so you can take a nap to eating every last peanut butter cup out of the Halloween candy stash, we can confirm that you are not alone. Here are some parent confessions you’ll be able to relate to:
- “My 8-year-old put his tooth under his pillow for the tooth fairy. After he was asleep, I took a dollar out of his piggy bank and put it under his pillow. Done.”
— Anna Luther, Ohio
- “I ran out of diapers for my 13-month-old son, so I used a maxi pad and planned on going to the store later. I totally forgot and then dropped my son at a friend’s house to babysit just a few hours so I could run errands, and came back to pick him up to her giving me a ‘WTF’ look and saying, ‘Um, I went to change his diaper and um, well, there was a maxi pad there.’ Yup. There was, all right.”
— Alexandra Rosas, Wisconsin
- “I have IBS [irritable bowel syndrome]. When my kids were little and I was having an episode, I would blame my toots on them and their ‘poopy’ diapers.”
— Joy Hedding, Wisconsin
- “To this day, all three of my kids think I don’t know how to replace a battery. When a toy makes an annoying noise, the battery ‘dies’ (into the trash can). Replacing batteries is sadly just not a skill their mom has.”
— Stephanie Giese, Pennsylvania
- “Because my boys are four years apart, they’ve so far never been in the same toy stage at the same time. So I take every toy of Asher’s and put it in the attic as he outgrows it, leave it there a while until it no longer looks familiar, then pull it out, clean it up and put it under the Christmas tree (or wrap it in birthday paper) for Meyer.”
— Suzanne Fleet, Alabama
- “I confiscate birthday and Christmas gifts and re-gift them to other kids at birthday parties.”
— Brenna Jennings, New Hampshire
- “The bakery that makes my famous ‘homemade’ cupcakes just went out of business. I ordered several dozen to put in my freezer so I’d have enough to keep up the charade through my kids’ tenure at their school.”
— Angela Fellers, Illinois
- “When my kids were little I told them the ice cream truck only played music when it was sold out.”
— Jen Mann, Kansas
- “I told my 3-year-old my individually wrapped, expensive chocolates are grown-up vitamins and they’re very spicy.”
— Pam Moore, Colorado
- “My husband and I put our toddler to bed early last night so we could eat Coldstone without having to share with him.”
— Melissa Mowry, Rhode Island
- “We told our kids, 13 and 9, that we needed to go to Home Depot (knowing they would want to stay home). Then we went out to sushi and fed them ramen noodles. “
— Mandy Brasher, Utah
- “When my kids were little, we’d sometimes change all the clocks so we could put them to bed really early. This was particularly effective at this time of year when it gets dark early. We’d pretend 3:00 was 5:00 and feed them dinner and then have them in bed at the new 7, which was actually 5. Those were my favorite days.”
— Allison Hart, New England
- “I may have once used my toddler son as a human shield while running from a roach. Maybe.”
— Rachael Pavlik, Texas
What are your parent confessions? Tell us below!
And for more parenting confessions, take a look at 21 Best White Lies I Tell My Kids.
Kim Bongiorno is the author, freelance writer, and blogger behind Let Me Start By Saying. She lives in New Jersey with her handsome husband and two charmingly loud kids, who she pretends to listen to while playing on Facebook and Twitter and if she were less tired, she’d totally add something really clever to her bio so you’d never forget this moment.
