Parents Anonymous: Killing Off Santa

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Hi, it's Annalise Todd here from this Glorious mess introducing Hot Pod Summer, one hundred hours of curated listening across the Mumamere network, just for you to escape the chaos and enjoy with the kids at home and the weather warming up. We've got episodes of little love Stories and Parents' Anonymous to share.

From the beginn to the yang.

Parents Anonymous is part game show, part church confessional. You share your deepest parenting shame, and myself and Stacey Hicks rate you, but the worst parenting wins the most points, so really you can't lose. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Mama Miya is officially presenting one hundred hours of summer listens, from meaningful conversations to incredible stories, fashion, beauty and more.

There's a link in the show notes.

Parents Anonymous.

Welcome to this glorious mess. I'm Analie's Todd, and I really hope that Santa has a plan and is on the case, because I sure as Helen not.

And I'm Stacy Hicks. I'm the deputy editor at Mamma Maya and the mum of a three year old, and I have already threatened to call Santa and it's only November.

In cancel, I mean cancel Santa.

Yes, yes, good exactly old, but a goodie. Welcome back to Parents Anonymous.

This is a safe space where you get to release those secret parenting confessions you've been holding in in the name of entertaining us and everyone listening.

This is Parents Anonymous.

So what that means is you share your story and you get the guilt off your chest, you release, and then we give you points based on our very serious and scientific grading system. We award the best worst parenting.

Exactly, so there are no losers. The worse you are, the better you are in our eyes. So it's part church confessional, part game show, one hundred percent chaos. But before we get into that, we always make it a trusted space by confessing to something ourselves, just so you know what hot messes.

We are all right, you go first, Okay.

I feel like to be a bad parent this week. I probably had to parent, which I did very little of.

Welcome to my world, I shared custody world.

Well, we did the very selfish thing of going away for a little kid free holiday for our anniversary. Bloody loved it. I loved not having to peel anyone's bananas. That's not a euphemism.

I loved your husband.

Maybe I did.

No, I.

Loved not having to cut up anyone's food, put sunscreen on anyone but myself. It was lovely.

Didn't you put sun's been on your husband's back? Isn't that what nufples do?

Nah, you're on your own, mate, burn I can do my own. You deal with that yourself. I don't want to look after anyone but myself, and that's what I did for four days. And it was bloody lovely. We missed her like crazy, We talked about her pretty much the whole time, but it was lovely.

Can we just circle back to the banana. It's been a while since I've had a three year old. I know my youngest is nine, but to three year olds not be able to open a banana like the monkeys can do.

That's the end. It's that tricky bit at the end, and God forbid it breaks in the process, then we've got to open another one. So it's just easier if I'm doing it.

I feel like we need to come back to some resilience.

To gottle Bit, well, leaving her with her grandparents for four days was a little bit of resilience. So she's learning.

So my confession is more I wouldn't say it's a bad parenting, although it's linked. It's just a bad human So what did you do? Well, it's more what I haven't done. So we are mid November, we can safely say roughly a month till Christmas.

Yep.

I have not thought, bought or done anything remotely to do with gifting and Christmas.

Sorry, are we meant to have by now?

You know there's some people that they actually finish it by Halloween, that's the thing. They've done all their gifting by Halloween.

Well, that's just not our vibe. So to anyone else who hasn't, you're just making them feel better. We're fine. This is what Black Friday sales are for. We're just being thrifty.

We are being cozy lives.

You're right, it is actually targeted and it was a strategy.

Thank you, Alon you go.

So this jow doesn't exist without your guilty confession, So please leave us a voice note or we actually like to read them at ourselves for dramatic effects. We'll be honest, and that way you can be fully anonymous and email us everyone who sends in your confessions. We just think you because, first of what makes us feel better about

We're all in it together.

Yeah, we're all doing it badly, is what I've learned exactly.

So spill your dirty secrets, come on, send them to us.

All the options are in the show notes.

And on today's show, our mystery confessions are called Santa's Canceled. We're aligned on that one. This heavy flow, yes, wrong time of month for me to be aligned with you on that one, and terrible twos.

Let's go, let's go.

You may want to turn this off if you have little ears around or put your headphones in. I killed off Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth Fairy. In one conversation with my daughter as in murdered or well, she asked me, are you and Daddy Santa? And I said, what do you think?

Hang on, mate?

How old?

Doesn't say how old? The child doesn't say.

I like the I know I want to know the age, but I'm guessing we're probably talking six or seven.

Yes, seven.

So she asked me are you and Daddy Santa? And I said, what do you think? And she said yes, so I nodded slowly. She then looked thoughtful and asked Easter Bunny. I'd already fessed up and didn't want to lie to her, so I nodded slowly again. Tooth Fairy. She started to look a bit upset by this point, but in for a penny, in for a pound, so I nodded slowly again. She was pretty upset for a day or so, but boom sorted in one go, She's killed off every fictitious person that her child believed in.

This is just really effective parenting, because, first of all, you know how I love honesty.

I was about to say, this is you to a tea. You will never lie to those.

Kids then ticity tick. Yeah, you've also saved yourself a lot of time yep, you know, laying out of the cookies and the milk, and the spreading crumbs everywhere, and the taking a bite of a gross carrot.

That's the worst.

So you've saved a lot of you know, admin in theater.

Yeah.

Yeah, and also money for the teeth.

I was about to say the Tooth Fair is actually the best one to kill off early because no money.

Needed expensive, Yeah, because I think they lose about fourteen teeth.

I think my brother played along with the tooth Fairy Delius.

Too long in the two.

Too long in the two, that is for sure, because he's tactical and he wanted to keep getting the money. It is devastating when you find that out. I remember that I wasn't as smart as your child. I feel like this child's quite smart to put them all together, all the different ones from throughout the year. So I mean, you've got a smart kid on your hands. Points for that.

Yeah. My youngest from five just went yeah, right, this is a sham m cynical and clever.

Yeah.

And you know, I think that this is just also resilience training, which I always really go on a. I'm all for resilience, training, cruel to be kind, yes, and authenticity.

I feel like this was a parenting win.

Yeah.

I think that this is a good thing because I always get annoyed that Santa gets the credit for the best presence like that annoys me that the character energy. I want to be the main character. I want to be the one that gets thanked for giving her presence. So I actually think it's kind of genius.

Yeah, I'm confusing and confused myself because this is good parenting, yeah, from my perspective. So I'm going to just sort of go middle of the line and just give it sort of seven stockings out of ten.

So it was so good that you've deducted points, is what you're saying.

Correct, it's actually good parenting, in my opinion, parenting, So you get points off for me.

Yeah, okay, Well, given you got rid of the tooth fairy as well one foul swoop, I think I will give you six coins out of ten. That's pretty harmless. Well done to you, good parent.

All right.

Confession number two heavy flow. I ran out of nappies for my thirteen month old son.

I had a full day of errands, including going to the shop to buy more nappies. So, in a moment of desperation, I used a Maxi Pad as his nappy. I totally forgot i'd done that, and then dropped my son at a friend's house to babysit just a few hours so I could finish the errands. When I came back to pick him up, she was smirking at me and said so when I went to change him. I cut her off and said, yep, my worst or proudest parenting moment yet. So she used a pad instead of

I had us desperate times, calls for desperate measures.

Yes, and you yourself, Stacy, have confessed on this very show that you once used a nappy to weep into I did, and by that point the damn was about to burn. I had to pull out two of my daughter's nappies and just release right there in the car.

I did so look I was toastpart them. My bladder was not at its strongest, still isn't to this very day, never will be again, never will be again. Ruined for life. This is why you and I cross our legs every time we laugh at one another, and I just had to do what I had to do. It was either that or we in my car. So sometimes these things happen. And I think motherhood is one of those times. When you have a baby you realize how low you'll go. Sometimes you think that could never be me ye, and

That's fine, it's basic survival skins.

You don't wash your hair for three weeks straight like you really do, drop the.

Stairs dry shampoo. There's a soul for everything. Yeah, throwing up here.

Look, I think that this is great, and I think it's great that you use maxi pads because if you're a tampon girly, you would have been up the river. Oh oh, she wouldn't have been able to use them. I was, so she wouldn't have been able to use it, so she would have had nothing. So I think that this is really clever.

Yeah, it's actually not bad parenting at all. So by that measure, I have to take points off because it's just bare grills. It's survivors.

For the embarrassment that a friend discovered this without any context, that's quite funny. Yeah, and that's quite embarrassing.

Especially if they weren't a good friend.

Yeah yeah, I mean you're probably not leaving a baby with an acquaintance, so you could.

People leave them with strange babysitters all the time. I don't assume their closeness after their child.

So what are you scoring.

I can feel the embarrassment in my bones of having to try and justify to a friend why my child had that instead of an happy So I'm giving you a and a half maxipads out of ten.

I'm going to give you eight ten out of ten.

Don't don't.

Bring it home.

Last confession. So, after having twins, life was chaos with two older kids and now a very busy house of six oh thoughts and prayers.

God.

When the twins were about eighteen months, we had a moment of we've got this and decided to go on our first family trip to the beach. We gathered, we organized, we slapped on sunscreen, and packed everyone into the van and off to the beach we went. Almost immediately, one twin kept trying to throw himself into the surf with the determination of a nineteenth century tortured poet, trying to

I think this was sent in by one of my friends. I think I know this. Yeah, I do, I really do.

And it's not so anonymous after all, no.

Because if it is the same person. I remember when I went to the park with my youngest and the same age as her twins, and I was like, why is the park so hard? And then I literally saw her and her husband had to dart after a twin each for a full hour, and I thought, no, one know why you don't leave the house?

Yeah, oh my gosh, And bless them. They were so full of hope. They thought they'd gotten to the point where they could do it and have a nice family outing together.

And also, a year and a half is a long time to not go to the beach. Yeah, I would struggle with that.

I know you love the beach. I love the beach, But the beach with a kid is not as much fun. No sand in places it should not be, they try to eat it. It somehow gets everywhere. It's always a nightmare.

Even with tween age children, it's not as fun because well because they take risks and you've got to watch them the whole time still to make sure they don't drown. So going to the beach on your own is definitely a wind preferred.

Yes, yeah, recommended.

Good on you for trying it. At least now, if it goes any better than fifteen minutes, you'll be really impressed with yourself. But that is grim. That is grim. The pooor explosion is probably the low point. I think we can all again.

Imagine all the packing that would have gone into like a day out with that many children. Can I take one kid, I look like a moving house, like I will have my full boot packed with options.

That's insufferable. You don't need that many things.

Just don't know. You have no idea how much my little girl eats. You just need to be planned for all occasions. So I can imagine what a big deal. This would have been for them, and then to have to turn around and just give up after fifteen minutes is.

So hard and it would have been just so stressful with all the different people and moving parts. Yeah, and for that reason, just the disappointment, and also the cleaning up of the pooh. Yeah, at least you could have dunked them in the ocean.

But can you in full view of everyone else? You can't have the little floaters from far.

You'd have to do at that point crisis management.

Oh maybe for that reason, I feel like they have to be the highest scrowen.

And I'm going to ask my friend if it needs.

Her, please do report back next time.

I will.

Everyone's little hearts would have just been so disappointed to go to the beach and then have to turn around.

Oh, we've really ended on a low.

Sad, So what are you reading it?

I think it's going to have to be nine sand buckets out of ten.

Yeah, yeah, Look it's filled with hope but ended in tragedy. I'm giving it nine pool explosions.

Out of ten, empty cups, empty mine. Yeah, afty hearts.

Oh so sad.

And if it is my friend, they have since gone to the beach. I've gone with them.

Oh okay, well there you go. So there's hope happy.

Ending eighteen month old twins would be. I don't know why they bother.

So it feels like we probably have a clue winner. But that was only but because the other ones were so excellent. So let's go back through them recap. So we had Santa's canceled, which I actually think should have been called Santa. The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were canceled.

A triple homicide.

Yeah, triple death. All fictional character's gone. I feel like you're kind of brilliant. You just got it done. It's a harsh lesson, but it's a good lesson.

It's authentic, as Oprah would say, a teachable moment.

Yeah, and because we loved it so much, you actually got the worst points.

We're so sorry, But that means you're the best.

It means you're the best parent. So that's fine. Heavy flow. Look, using maxipad as a nappy, I'm there with you.

Jacy has weed into a baby's Nappy's basically done it myself.

That's love to you for that one. But I think our real winner was the shit show. That was the trip to the beach with the eighteen month old twins.

The failed beach. Yeah, they didn't even get to have a swim. No, build a little sand car, not a little.

Toe in the water, nothing. Congratulations, you're the worst best parent.

And for inflicting trauma on six people in one exercise, Yeah.

Looks it'll be one of those things you'll look back on and laugh eventually, but it'll take time. So if you've got a confession we'd love to hear from you, Please send us your secret shame. All the details are in the show notes.

We'll see next time.