Parental Wisdom® by Tina Nocera

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. Albert Einstein, US (German-born) physicist (1879 – 1955)

Parenting is like no other job in the world. There are no qualifications, preparation, licenses or follow up evaluations. It’s as if you have to do something extreme before anyone checks up on you. Here are two recent cases in the news where that happened:

Two uncles taught their 2-year-old and 5-year-old nephews to smoke pot, thinking that it was pretty funny. The mom of the two little boys felt the uncles should receive probation rather than jail time. She said she didn’t know it was happening and therefore doesn’t understand why her children were removed to foster care. Well, then I certainly can’t explain it to her.

This second incident happened in England where an 8-year-old weighed in at over 200 lbs because the mother is literally feeding this child to death. As the mother stepped in to see if it made sense to take the boy away, the mom’s view was “If I was abusing him, he would be a skinny little runt.”

A parent’s first job is to protect their children and keep them safe. Both families neglected to do that and therefore are awarded the coveted Stupid Ticket from Parental Wisdom Free Reports.

For those parents that realize that one of their (many) jobs is to raise a healthy child, please see the Today Show where they featured Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD, FAAP Author of Good Kids, Bad Habits: The RealAge Guide to Raising Healthy Children. You can also get a free chapter including some charts and other helpful information by clicking here.

Yes, parenting is a tough job, but it is the one you signed up for.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Parenting 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.