Last week, Good Morning America opened up a flood gate when it aired a story about a San Francisco mom who gives her 8-year-old daughter Botox shots. Apparently, the mother buys the Botox online and administers the treatments herself to "help" with the little girl's wrinkle issues. Naturally, this is a beauty pageant mom and has convinced her daughter to believe that her forehead is ugly. Something is seriously wrong with this picture and it's not age lines.
Beauty pageants, reality television and sports tend to be top dogs when parents go off the deep end in the hopes that their kid will be numero uno, but what is lost in the process? In the case of the SF mom refining her kid's forehead, the DCPS is now involved and investigating the matter. In other cases, these parents have gone to jail. Here are the top five worst parental reasons to subject your child to random acts of manipulation.
1. For a Game
Do you remember the case of Corey Petero? A few years back this sports-crazed dad, who also happened to be a youth football coach, charged the field when his son was knocked down during a game. Not only did Petero fly off the handle, he also body-slammed a 13-year old kid from the opposing team. Petero was eventually sentenced with a misdemeanor and a whole lot of embarrassment.
2. For a Reality Show The world waited with baited breath to find out if Falcon Heene, now known as Balloon Boy, was really floating above the earth in a helium-filled balloon reminiscent of a UFO. Well, he wasn't. Later reports found that the kid was actually hiding in the basement. Why would young Falcon pretend to be inside a homemade balloon? When asked by Wolf Blitzer the innocent 6-year-old accidentally sold out his parents by saying it was "for the show." The reality show, that is, which his fame-obsessed parents had been pitching to various networks. In the end, his parents were found guilty of being dumb and charged $36,000 in restitution.
3. For Juvenile Crap
Lest we never forget the case of Lori Drew who helped create a fake Myspace account to harass one of her daughter's ex-friends, Megan Meier. Lori Drew, with her daughter's knowledge, corresponded over the social network with Meier as a fake teen boy, to find out what type of smack-talking Meier was saying about her daughter. After a few months of the flirtatious charade, the fake boy told Meier that the "world would be better without her." Only moments later Meier committed suicide. In the grand scheme of things is there anything that awful that Meier could have said to warrant such mean and heinous bullying from an adult? Doubtful.
4. For the fame There are tons of celebrity parents that are so awful they make you want to vomit on them. Amongst these parental messes, and one of the worst is Dina Lohan. Woman, what is wrong with you? Can you please take a step back and see what you have done (or maybe not done) to ruin young Lindsay's life? We certainly won't blame you for everything, but when you go out and party with your daughter until 2 a.m. the day before a deposition, we can't forgive you either.
5. For No Good Reason Abby Sunderland had a dream of being the youngest person to sail around the world. Just like when we were all 16, we wanted to do some crazy things and our parents, hopefully, said, "Oh, hell no." Not Sunderland's folks. When asked why they let their 16-year-old daughter take to the high seas solo their reply was reminiscent of "kids will be kids," going as far as comparing the perils of the boat mission to "teens die in car accidents everyday." Hello, faulty logic! Letting your child get into a car and letting your child sail the world in a boat alone in the middle of the winter are not the same thing. There was a documentary made about Abby's mission, but other than that, there doesn't appear to be any exploitative reasons her parent's allowed this to happen, just their own stupidity.
