Friday, February 01, 2008

The Michael Jackson Parenting Award

NewFNP sees plenty of examples of parenting which she hopes to never incorporate into her repertoire.  


Most, but not all, involve feeding practices.  These include Gatorade or chocolate milk in a baby bottle when a child is 6 months old, Hot Cheetos in the hands of an 18-month old, fast food on a daily basis and tamarind/lead candies from the ice cream truck.

Some "don'ts" involve discipline and behavior modification.  Spanking and name calling. NewFNP will take a pass on these.  Threatening a child with vaccines if they don't behave.  Telling them that a shot won't hurt.  NewFNP frowns upon these as well.

Others involve soothing techniques.  Feeding a crying child just to stop them from crying is a no-no in newFNP's Theoretical Guide to Child-Rearing.  

NewFNP does, however, approve of gently rocking and employing a soothing voice to calm a child after vaccine administration.  However, when a mother soothes an infant by lovingly saying, "It's not my fault... they're assholes.  Yeah, there there, they're just assholes," newFNP believes that she must modify her approval of the soothing voice technique.  

NewFNP hears a fair amount of crazy shit, but she had never heard a parent attempt to calm a crying child by calling clinic staff assholes.   

A class act indeed.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saw an 7-year old new patient whose mom would not believe me, the radiologist who read the kid's MRI, or 2 of my SPs (veteran ortho surgeons) who told her that the kid did not have any structural defects shown on the MRI or on exam. She was sure her daughter had a major injury...even though the kid had even forgotten which knee she had injured last week.
Told us she was taking her to as many doctors as it would take "to diagnose her properly".
BTW, her 8-year old was very bright but very disrespectful to her mother and my SPs-- AND the child's regular meds include an SSRI and Buspar, for a freakin' 7 year old!!!
Munchausen by proxy or mom simply making the child a nervous wreck with her demands from the the kid and the world?

Anonymous said...

God I love your blog. I'm a peds nurse and YEA we get some jacked up parents. Thanks for giving me a much needed laugh. :)

And I really related to your BuhBye post. It'd be nice to simply walk away huh? Too bad we're too sensible for that...

Anne said...

Seriously? Gaterade in a bottle? And calling you an asshole to their child? This is why I am somewhat hesitant about going back to school for primary care.
But it does make for a fantastic blog.

Unknown said...

Threatening kids with shots just pisses me off! I tell them not to do that as soon as I hear it. God knows I hated going to the doc because I knew what was coming but don't use me to threaten a child.