11 Parenting Confessions That You Don't Feel Guilty About
In a February blog post, dad John Kinnear listed 20 so-called "horrible" things he and his wife do to their kids that they just don't feel guilty about -- they tell the kids eating food before dinner will give them nightmares, eat the filling out of the Oreos, and avoid teaching them how to read time so bedtime can be earlier. If the hilarious comments from other parents on Kinnear's piece are any indication, he and his wife certainly aren't alone in their "horribleness."
We asked the HuffPost Parents community to reveal the "horrible" things they do, and we discovered some important information -- like fun places are often closed, and there are many more spicy foods than you'd think. Check out the confessions below, and who knows? You might get some inspiration from these clever parents!
1. Use play time as nap time. During hide and seek, I count for a really, really long time while lying on the sofa. And then I don't seek. I call it "hide and sleep."
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2. Pretend that food is spicy. My kids always want to eat our food, so [my husband and I] started telling them our food was spicy so they wouldn't touch it. Chocolate ice cream? Spicy. For a Mother's Day questionnaire last year, when asked what Mommy's favorite food was, my daughter answered "spicy food.”
3. Lie about what's on TV. Anytime I want to watch TV alone, I tell my kids I'm watching a scary movie and they run away.
4. Lie about dessert. My 3-year-old thinks yogurt is ice cream. WIN!
5. ...Lie about dessert. I used to tell my kids that if the ice cream truck was playing music it meant they were all out.
6. Lie about lying. My kids think a blue dot appears on their forehead when they lie. They also think it's invisible to those under 21.
7. Intervene with the time. I use to turn the clocks ahead an hour and put my son to bed early at least four days a week.
8. Say everything is closed. When our 3-year-old son tells us he wants to go somewhere like the bowling alley, Chuck E. Cheese, or the toy store, we tell him they are closed for the day -- even if it's in the middle of the day!
9. Skew their perception of toothbrushes. My kids think a new toothbrush is a treat, because I pretend that they have to be really good for me to buy them one.
10. Give them a permanent record. To get my kids to behave, I once panicked and told them if they did whatever bad thing again that "it would go on their permanent record." They had no idea what that meant, but they looked terrified and stopped.
11. Pretend the DVDs are broken. We have so many DVDs that don't work anymore... all the ones I can't stand to watch!
Do you have a funny confession to add? Tell us in the comments!
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
