Why I Am An A**hole Parent

So all parents have a dirty little secret.  We throw our kids junk out.  Like 100%.  If your mom used to say things like, “I don’t know where that went,” she is lying.  She threw it out, and buried it.  Unfortunately, my children have figured this out and rifle through the trash like hobos outside a seven-eleven.  So it was no surprise when my four year old confronted me in a furious tone screaming, “You threw it away.”

I started racking my brain about what terrible craft of hers I had disposed, or perhaps some cheap plastic toy from a fast food restaurant.  What had I hidden in the trash?  She goes on to further explain that I had thrown out the “calendar that tells her how old she is.”

Meanwhile I am thinking, “What the crap is she talking about?”

Through her angry tears she continues to describe it to me and she manages to explain that she is referring to our fifteen year-old, broken bathroom scale.  I had no idea how attached she was to this device, but she proceeded over the next thirty minutes to educate me.

“Did you take a picture of me with it?” she wailed.

“Of you and the bathroom scale?” I asked.

“Yes,” she cried, “so I can remember it.”

“Well, we bought a new one, just use that one,” I replied.

“I hate the way that one sounds,” she says unreasonably as that it is a bathroom scale and makes no sound.

She starts sputtering so hard and crying inconsolably at this suggestion that she vomits just a little.

I ask, “Sweetie, are you ok?”

She reassures me, “It’s ok mommy.  It tasted like a Sonic grilled cheese when I threw up.”

Now I might puke.

After thirty minutes of howling we finally negotiated that I would not dig the item out of the trash, but that I would take a picture of it so she could remember it.

Four year olds are like little terrorists that cannot be reasoned with.