What's the worst parenting move you've seen lately?

Today we went furniture shopping and while browsing through all the furniture we encountered a couple who were not paying attention to their two children whatsoever... the 2 little girls were having a high old time bouncing all over one of the beds on display and were pushing each other and I just knew an accident was waiting to happen. Low and behold, the older girl pushes the younger one off of the bed and the child smacks her head on a nightstand and all hell broke loose with screaming/crying. The parents didn't even react that quickly to their sobbing child... some people are unbelievable.

This lady told her daughters, 10 and 3 to sit down at Chickfila. She ordered food. The 10 yr old girl was sitting w/ her sister. Her sister, 3 yr gets up and leaves. She runs around and goes in the men's room. I had better visual spot than the sister. The mom yelled and searched for the 3 yr old. They finally sat down and ate. The mom criticized everything about the 10 yr old. I couldn't stand it. The other moms heard it too. I said why do you blame her? You are the mother. She said her 10 yr old has been watching the sister for years. I said you can't blame your kids for your shortcomings. She said the girl had the cell phone so she can't pay attention. Again I said you are the parent. Very sad. The poor 10 yr old didn't respond and ran out the door. She had chores to do when they got home.

Some lady was texting while she was driving, and she had a little kid in a carseat sitting in the back. I saw this a few days ago, and what was worse was that we were on a highway, so the traffic was pretty fast, and if that lady crashed the car because she wasn't paying attention to the road in front of her, her kid could have easily been injured or killed. It already iks me so much when I see anyone texting and driving, because it's obvious that they're so self-centered and only care about themselves and don't even think about how they're jeopardizing everyone else on the road...but then you do it when your own child is in the car with you?! Shameful.

And I also recently saw a lady in a restaurant at the table next to us, who took every opportunity to snap at her son and bark orders at him (he looked like he was maybe 8 years old). The kid wasn't behaving badly at all, but she found something wrong with EVERYTHING he did. She didn't like the way he was eating his carrots (but I didn't see him do anything that was rude or bad table manners) and snapped at him for that, and he casually asked his dad a question (not in a disrespectful tone or anything) and the mom snapped, "Why are you even worried about that?!" It looked like the mom was probably like this all the time, because the kid had obviously learned to tune her out. I was just thinking, "geez, he's not being bad or anything, couldn't you just leave him alone?"

Edit: Wow, lots of other people have witnessed some bad stuff too! And wow, the lady who hit her daughter for having to go to the bathroom...what a stupid jerk. I hate parents who hit their kids for stupid reasons and bully them like that. If I had witnessed that I would have had to use every ounce of restraint to not to punch that lady in the face! Someone oughta force her to not be able to use the restroom and then beat her when she complains about it and see how she likes that. And the one that the asker mentioned with the baby sitting in the mom's lap is bad too!! Geez, some people just have zero common sense!

Wow, and I just read a news story today that a 2 year old girl died and her 3 year old sister is in the hospital in critical condition after the two ran off from their babysitters, wandered into a neighbor's hot car, and got stuck in there and died. The girls' "babysitters" were their 13 year old cousin and her 12 year old friend. That's why I think 12/13 is too young to be responsible for a toddler, and especially more than one toddler. It sounds like the girls must not have been watching them, I mean, if the little girls actually got out of the house! And would girls that young be mature enough to handle an emergency situation like that where the kids run off? I don't know what the two girls watching them did, when and if they realized that the kids had escaped. Did they call 911 or anything? But yeah, I definitely would never trust preteens to watch my toddlers! Now I'm sure the parents are suffering enough already, so I won't sit here and point fingers at them, but I definitely think the moral of the story is to not leave toddlers in the care of such young babysitters! Or, I guess it's more just make sure the person you're letting watch your kids is completely qualified, no matter how old they are. I suppose some 16, 18, and even 20+ year olds might talk on the cell phone all day or have their boyfriend over, and not properly watch the child, resulting in something bad happening.

My sister was living with a woman from her church because she was recently divorced and broke. She has a son who is about 3 and a daughter who is 11. Well, the other day the woman they were living with hit the 11 year old until she had a handprint bruise in two places. Apparently, my sister listened to both stories, and came to see me. When she got here, she started telling me what the 11 year old said happened, and then the 11 year old pipped up and said "No," and corrected a minor detail that wasn't even important to the overall incident, and my sister got really angry and hateful with her... her child who had just gotten a beating! I was so mad at her.

Not relating to my family, at my local Walmart about a year ago this little girl was whining and crying because she had to use the bathroom, and the father just stood there, and after a minute the mother pulled the little girl over roughly and spanked her very hard about 5 or 6 times. Because the girl had to go potty! Oh, and yeah that REALLY made her stop crying. Right.

I was recently in a store and saw this mother with two boys - one was a toddler and one was maybe 6 years old. The mom clearly just wanted to shop and not watch her children. The toddler wasn't in the cart or restrained in any way, so he was just wandering around all over the place. Then at one point, he actually started running off, and what did the mother do? She just looked at the older boy and said, "go get your brother!" and kept shopping. Again, the older one was only about 6 and had to keep chasing after his brother and play babysitter.

My mom and I were at a restaurant a few weeks ago having lunch on the patio, gazing out into the parking lot of a nearby business. We saw a family get out of a car - there were two adults and two children, and one of the children was a toddler. The adults pulled the kids out of the car and proceeded to not pay attention while they got their bags and whatever else out. Meanwhile, the toddler saw some seagulls quite a distance away, and bolted after them - completely unsupervised in a busy parking lot/shopping area. I gasped and stood up out of my seat when I saw a car turn the corner and slam on its brakes in front of her. I don't even think the adults saw what happened, as shortly after that the little girl went running back over. Not once did I see anyone take her hand to guide her the rest of the way into the store they were patronizing that day....

I was checking-out, the store was packed and all of the lines were long so I had the pleasure of witness an older girl, probably eleven, antagonize her two year old brother, cousin, whichever. She did such that the little boy when from whining to crying to screaming with no end. Turns out they weren't parked far from me, and as I was loading my groceries, the mother spanked the poor tike hard two or three times yelling at him to stop crying while the girl laughed.

Another time, I was at Kohl's looking at picture frames when I hear "Do you want me to beat your @$$?". Yikes, I look around don't see where it came from but then I hear in a young boys voice "F*** you!" and hear running. I'm now standing and catch sight of him running (he's eight or nine) to the end of the home department. I gather what I want to buy and turn the corner to look at the other aisle and there's mom just standing there. I was there for another twenty minutes, so was she, although it looked like she was pretending to browse at that point. Never saw the boy again.

Here's a kicker. About 2 days ago, my husband went to the gas station and when he was walking out, he say a woman holding a 2 week (not real sure but was that little) baby on her chest and driving down the road. In a old run down POS car.

A few months ago, there was this girl in a town over from me who was living with a roommate. Her roommate worked at the daycare where her daughter went. Her roommate was supposed to take the baby to daycare because she worked there. Well the roommate left the baby in the car in 100+ heat. She even had other kids in the car with her that said something about the baby. She left her in there for 3 hours. Went to lunch, the little girl was still back there. She came back from lunch and left her in there again. A couple hours later, someone came in the daycare saying there was a little girl in the back of the van. By this time, she was dead. And all the roommate said was oops I'm sorry.

It wasn't the little girls mom, but this lady is a mom too and should have all her kids taken away! They are pressing charges and she's going to jail for a loooong time!

Ok so

1- My neighbors have 2 children oldest- 4 youngest- 1 or maybe 2

A few months ago Their mom was putting stuff in the car not paying any attention to the kids. And we live on a VERY quiet street so she thinks its fine to let her kids run around. We live VERY close (less than 2 blocks) away from a university so many teens/students live here and they drive like maniacs! Then one of them was driving like 60 mph and it was crazy!!!! (I am a teen and a few years ago i was drawing with chalk leaning out on the street (I was drawing a flower for my moms b-day and they almost ran over me!!! Then when that happened my mom screamed and ran to me trying to save me but she would not have made it and i threw myself to safety) And the baby was running around in the street and the mom did not notice. And the car could not even stop! Guess who saved her??? Her sister! She grabbed her little shirt and yanked her to the yard. (Thank GOD because I was watching and I would have been soooooo sad if I saw her die.)

2- Today I was at Gap Kids and there was this mom with like 5 kids and 2 of them were like 1 or 2 and they had lollypops and they were screaming and yelling and the mom was hitting them for not eating their lollypops!!!! Then the other two about 6 and 8 were running around the store with 2 lollypops! And they were knocking down set ups and ugh I wanted to leave! Then the oldest about 10 was just pushing the stroller up and down and side to side and trying to make them fall off!!!

3- A few years ago there was this guy in a car with 3 kids and he was falling asleep and he crashed but I drove off before I knew if anyone died and this was on the highway.

I cannot believe this!

A couple of years ago I was out with my youngest for some one on one time with him and we were at Target in the toy section looking at toys. Well I heard yelling behind me so I turned around. A 4 or 5 year old boy had taken his clothes off in the middle of the toy section and his mom was chasing after him and smacking his bare bottom in the middle of the store while scolding him. Now I am all for spanking at times but this made me want to grab the women and shake some sense into her. I have to wonder if the kid had special needs I would bet that he had as its not normal behavior for kids to undress in the middle of stores.