Well, maybe she's one of those new mothers who's getting too much sleep at night...

My mother-in-law is very young -- her son is younger than my daughter. Second wife and all that. Anyway, I almost screamed when I saw her filling her eight-month-old baby's bottle with Coca-Cola. Not diet or decaf or anything. I've heard of giving babies a spoonful of cola syrup for an upset stomach, but this is ridiculous.

Hey, look! More denial!

I worked at a small independent bookstore for several years. We didn't get many people with kids, but once this woman came in with her daughter, a toddler. I don't know where people get the idea that there's some law of physics or mathematics stating "bookstore (or other public place) = free babysitter," but this woman obviously believed it. She sat down in the fiction section to browse and the second she picked up a book, it was like her kid wasn't even there any more so far as she was concerned. Or maybe she felt like she was at home in her own living room, reading while her child entertained herself. The bookstore was one of those places that prided itself on being comfortable and homey. I think the building actually used to be a house.

The kid wasn't a bad sort, I hasten to add. She was cute and perfectly sweet. She wasn't a screamer and she wasn't a destroyer, but she hadn't quite grasped that whole gravity thing -- she was maybe a year and a half old, at most -- and she really did seem to think that she was at home, or at least at somebody's house. Certainly her mother hadn't told her otherwise. So she went about her merry business, looking at all the interesting things around her, while her mother remained obliviously absorbed in a romance novel.

Books are made of paper and tend to tear, fold, and crumple pretty easily. And oddly enough, people walking into a bookstore that sells allegedly new books are put off by merchandise that looks like it did two or three rounds in a boxing ring. So after several minutes of bulging my eyes in a hinting and increasingly frantic manner at the mother, I began quietly following the little girl and doing what damage control I could. I picked up the books she'd knocked over or dropped, repaired displays, and steered her away as best I could from the cases of delicate items the bookstore also sold. The little girl was perfectly nice and didn't mind my occasional quiet guidance at all, which steamed my clams because if she'd behave that well with me, a total stranger, surely she would have been fine if Mommy -- you remember her, the one who was supposed to be guiding this cute little life -- had given her some appropriate direction.

This went on for a good half hour or more. I was the only one in the store, and so I was spending every second I could spare away from the cash register or customers who needed help trying to keep the store from looking like a small but determined earthquake had just hit it.

All of a sudden, the mom looked up. The little girl had just knocked something over with her elbow, and I guess that sound finally got her attention. At any rate, the mother looked over at the fallen books, looked at me, and said, "She didn't do that."

I was too surprised (and annoyed) to say the first thing that popped into my mind, which of course was "How the [bleep] would you know?" I just stared back at her and said something like, "Whatever you say."

Has anyone but me noticed that this is the kind of person who never buys anything? If I were going to turn a toddler-tornado loose on a place, I'd at least drop some dough.

(Insert your favorite variation on "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt" here.)

This one isn't funny, just kind of tragic for everyone involved. I knew a mother who had to walk with a walking stick, a hefty one. She had MS and so her health was a really big concern. She felt guilty because her illness must be a cause of stress to her six-year-old son, so she never disciplined him.

He was an absolute terror. None of the kids in our circle wanted to play with him because he would either bully them or use language so foul that even the really innocent ones knew something was wrong.

The really sad thing was that the mom saw her kid being left out and decided that his life was tragic -- he had an ill, disabled mother and he was shunned by the kids who ought to have been his friends. So then she'd be even "nicer" to him -- let him do whatever he wanted no matter how scary or inappropriate.

Not being an idiot, he soon learned that he could pretty much do anything he wanted. He didn't even bother hiding his behavior from her, because he didn't have to. When he got angry about something -- one time when she wouldn't buy him a third treat from the ice cream man, another when they had to go home from the park and he wanted to stay and play -- he would pick up her walking stick and swing it at her. This, of course, made the other kids that much more determined not to play with him. If he'd act that way with his mother, someone who loved him and whom (presumably) he loved, what would he do to them?

This mother was apparently so terrified at the idea of her son's really being in the wrong that she would do anything to avoid having to confront it. Once she followed a little girl around after the girl had said that this boy had called her some really bad names. Several other kids had heard him, and when he denied doing so, he used even worse language than he'd been accused of, so it looked pretty bad. So the mother kept following this girl around and just haranguing her with questions. She insisted that the little girl must have done something first to provoke her son into saying what he said. She literally wouldn't leave this kid alone. The girl just wanted to be able to play in peace, so after about fifteen minutes, she "confessed" -- yes, okay, maybe she said something that upset him. The mom came away feeling vindicated. See? There was nothing wrong with her son. He had only acted in self-defense.

More than once, when other mothers would try to talk to her about any of this, she would say, "No one's ever said anything about his behavior to me." Well, first of all, she was saying it to someone who was saying something about it; and since she had occasion to say that more than once, it obviously wasn't true. Second, there was good reason that people hadn't spoken to her much before. If it was something he was doing to her (or right in front of her -- he would swear like a sailor and she wouldn't turn a hair), what were we supposed to say? "Okay, just so you know, he just said three bad words and almost gave you a concussion with your own walking stick." And when it was something that he did to another kid, as soon as the kid would run up crying about what had happened, this mother would usually grab her kid's hand and just split -- leave as fast as she could.

Kind of like a Bermuda Triangle for Hellparents...

We were at a science museum and they had a set of exhibits about animation (as in making cartoons). In one area, there were cameras and animation tables so that kids could make their own short stop-motion animations.

A woman with two boys came up to the exhibit. The woman read the instructions and told her boys, "These don't do anything, you have to do all the work yourself."

Undeterred, the kids wanted to give it a try anyway, and they made a short animation. They showed their mom what they had made and her only comment was, "Was that really worth your time? Let's go find something that actually does something."

This was pretty bad. And at the same time this was going on, a kid at another station in the same exhibit was showing his mom an animation she'd made. Apparently the kid didn't get her hand completely out of the frame for one shot, because the mom's reaction to her effort was, "I saw your hand! I saw your hand!" How's that for positive reinforcement?

So tell me, is this exhibit a Hellparent magnet or what?

She's just trying to be supportive...

As a teenager I was a member of a 4H club group that put on magic shows. During one show, the brother of one of our group was sitting in the audience and yelled out how each trick was done as it was being performed. His mother, as a good parent who wished to instill a sense of propriety and manners in her child, sat next to him laughing.

Hellish, yes -- but in Los Angeles and Boston, we're only surprised when people DON'T drive like this.

When I was in high school, one of my friends had a little brother three or four years younger. His mother was a single parent and, as such, tried to overcompensate by being very indulgent. One way that she indulged her youngest son was to let him be involved in driving the family car. It was a stick shift, and when it was time to change gears she'd depress the clutch and let the boy work the gear stick. This came back to haunt her when one day, while they were driving, the boy apparently decided that he was experienced enough with the whole gear thing and tried to change gears without being asked. The resulting gear-grinding noise proved a surprise to all.

And if this weren't enough, the mother once let her son sit in her lap so that he could "drive" the car himself. He put his hands on the wheel and, when Mom took off her hands to let him steer, said "Look, I'm driving!" and started turning the wheel back and forth like he was driving a bumper car. Fortunately they weren't moving too fast and there were no other cars around, or this story would be tragic in the real and not just the pathetic sense.

Hey, Mr. Magician -- for your next trick, could you saw this Hellparent in half?

I was once watching a big-production magic show and the magician asked for a child from the audience to volunteer to come on stage. A father came running up to the front of the theater carrying a little boy who was crying and thrashing, obviously not wanting to volunteer (to put it mildly). The magician nicely pointed out that he'd rather not have any volunteers that were there against their will, and the father returned to his seat, still carrying the crying (but, at least, no longer struggling) child.

Oh, so now taking something without permission or payment is stealing? When did they make THAT rule?

On more than one occasion I've seen parents of young children in the supermarket feeding their child from the store shelves as they shop. A piece of fruit, a piece of candy from the bulk candy bin -- I once even saw a woman take a snack out of a box for her child and then get a "fresh" box off the shelf to put in her cart. I guess shoplifting is okay, so long as it's to keep your kid quiet while you shop.

I just HATE the way my kids tell the truth all the time!

In an online forum where vacations plans are discussed, a woman was looking for advice on how to handle her son's age. It seems that her son is now too old to get into theme parks for a child's price, so she'd like her son to lie about his age. The problem is that she's worried her son will forget to lie about his age when asked, and even if he does remember, she worries that her other son will spill the beans.

A number of people pointed out that if she just paid the extra money and didn't try and teach her children to lie to save $10, she could dispense with all the anxiety. Unfortunately, this was not the answer she was looking for.

Good to see a parent who's got his priorities straight.

In an R-rated movie, I overheard a little boy telling his father that he "really didn't like" the movie and wanted to go. His dad just shushed him and kept on watching the on-screen violence.