30 People Share Behaviors That Scream “Trashy Parents” In This Viral Thread

Being a parent isn’t always easy. Sometimes it can be a real challenge. There are some things that many people seem to agree are signs of trashy or bad parenting.

People are discussing these behaviors in this viral AskReddit thread. Here’s how people responded.

What screams trashy parents?

u/odeus120

#1

When their kids could literally set the world on fire and they’ll blame anyone else to avoid responsibility.

#2

Mothers who see their daughter as competition

#3

Kids running around a store trashing the place and not a parent in sight.

#4

Social media influencers whose entire content is their children. People who publically punish their kids online, and parents who give out way too many details about their children give them a lack of privacy. Child exploitation at its finest.

#5

Changing your kids’ diapers in a Walmart parking lot and throwing the diaper full of shit on the ground for someone else to deal with.

#6

Refusing to believe their kid can do wrong

#7

Cussing out the officials at a little league game. Telling your child to punch another player they tripped over.

#8

When I waited tables in college, I saw a mother fill her young toddler’s bottle with Coca-cola. I thought it was just horrible.

#9

Parents who use their kids to get likes on TikTok.

#10

Babies in the background of twerking videos. It’s just weird.

#11

I lost count of how many parent conferences I had that went like this:
Me: Your child’s grades and behavior are horrible.
Them: I don’t know what to do! I’ve tried everything!
Me: Like what?
Them: I took their PS5 away, and their XBOX360, but then they went crazy, so I gave it back to them.
Me: So you tried like nothing?

#12

Drugs and alcohol while pregnant.

#13

Kids destroying other people’s stuff/property and the parents are just standing there and laughing like it’s a form of amusement.

Went into an older movie store and there was a child bashing the glass with his ball and throwing the movies all over the floors.

The mother (presumedly) let her child continue to do that despite others’ protests including the manager’s. I don’t fault the child, doesn’t know any better. The mother should’ve been asked to leave the store with her son.

#14

Young children whose teeth are already black and rotting from lack of care.
Children in dirty/smelly clothes – not from a child playing outside as kids do, but legitimately filthy, unwashed, clothes.
Kids running wild in public with no attempts to reign them in.

#15

She passes out drunk on the front porch, doesn’t realize her son’s father has come from another state to rescue him and wakes up not knowing where one of her kids is.

#16

Smoking in the car with the kids in the back.

#17

Having a favorite child

#18

Parents that let their kids kick the everliving shit out of the seat in front, pretend not to see anything, and then get angry at you for asking them to stop their kid

#19

Forcing your children to have political candidates’ signs/apparel in the child’s room.

#20

Kids that smell like smoke because their parents smoke indoors.

It was my parents. Everybody hated when we came over because everything we’d touch would smell like cigarettes as well. Couldn’t convince my parents to smoke outside of the home because “it’s their house and they’ll do as they please”.

#21

Mom wearing Cookie Monster pajama pants walking out of a Shell station at 9:30 at night with two kids while throwing her black and mild cigar wrapper on the ground. The son has a chapped upper lip you could light a match off of it and the daughter looks like she spent her last evening trying to cut her own hair.

#22

Making your kids take care of their siblings instead of them having a life.

#23

When the kids are sick and contagious, but the parent(s) want a night out, and don’t tell their childcare provider their kids are sick.

#24

Garbage. Every. Where. In their yard, in their house. Just junk and crap with no purpose or reason. I watched out my window as their kids treat their things exactly the same way. Bikes are left in the street and toys are left out to rot on the sidewalk.

For example, the kids figured out how to get one of the eight lawn mowers moving and the first thing they did was pull a sled behind it as fast as it would go. It was June in Wisconsin and they still had sleds laying around. It’s never dull on my street but sometimes I think that would be nice.

#25

Child beauty pageants.

#26

Parents who emotionally blackmail their kids. Using guilt and obligation to control their children.

#27

Allowing your children to become obese is child abuse, simple as that. No reason a 12-year-old should be 180lbs.

#28

Sitting at a restaurant and seeing a little kid running around disturbing people… And their parents are across the restaurant

#29

Ignoring their kid’s faults by saying things like boys will be boys.

#30

One thing I see too often is a parent holding a young kid and smoking at the same time. FFS