When a mother took her teenage daughter to the doctor to get to the bottom of her troubling symptoms, she never expected he’d say the girl was pregnant. In fact, she refused to believe it, so the doctor fired back with a brilliant reply that left the soon-to-be grandmother screaming.
It’s completely normal to want to believe the best when it comes to our children. Unfortunately, it’s also completely normal for them to let us down, just like we did to our own parents when we were kids. Bad behavior is part of growing up, but some news is much harder than other news to accept.
As we all learn and should know from our own childhood experiences, children aren’t always as open and honest with their parents as we would like for them to be. Even though many of us have told our kids, “You can come to me with anything,” the fact of the matter is that our precious angels will keep secrets from us at some point, as one mother found out.
We hope that our kids will never smoke, drink, do drugs, or have unprotected sex behind our back, but sadly, the likelihood is that these things might happen even if we think we have taken all the precautions necessary to keep our little ones out of trouble as they enter their teen years. At some point, before they become adults, we will very likely have to face the fact that our child isn’t the little angel they pretend to be around us.
That’s exactly what happened in one story featuring a naive mother who found out that her daughter was about to make her a grandma. When the girl’s mother was in total denial, questioning the doctor’s assessment, he set her straight with a brilliant response that could not have been more perfect.
The woman, who we will call Mrs. Jones, took her 16-year-old daughter to the doctor when the girl began to have unusual and troublesome symptoms that were interfering with her daily activity. When the doctor asked, “What’s the problem?” Mrs. Jones was quick to explain, “It’s my daughter Mandy. She keeps getting these cravings, she’s putting on weight, and she’s sick most mornings.”
The doctor gave Mandy a thorough examination, including one important test, which rendered the results he had anticipated all along. So, he turned to Mrs. Jones and said, “Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your Mandy is pregnant.” To Mrs. Jones shock, he added, “About four months would be my guess.”
Immediately, Mrs. Jones’ head started to spin. How could this be? She was so careful with Mandy. The doctor had to be wrong, so Mrs. Jones wasted no time letting him know he made a big mistake. “Pregnant?! She can’t be, she has never ever been left alone with a man! Have you, Mandy?” Mrs. Jones barked at the doctor and her daughter.
Of course, Mandy quickly agreed with her mother’s assessment. “No mother! I’ve never even kissed a man!” the sweet, innocent girl declared. At this point, the doctor had to be pretty fed-up with the theatrics as he’s holding a positive pregnancy result in his hands and all the symptoms point to the test being absolutely correct. That’s when he came up with the perfect response that would shut little Mandy up and have her mom screaming at the girl, where her frustrations belonged, rather than at the good doctor.
So, putting his hands in his lab jacket, the doctor quietly walked over to the window of the exam room and stared outside without saying a word. He just stood quietly, watching what was happening outside the window and waited. After about five minutes, Mrs. Jones couldn’t take it anymore. “Is there something wrong out there doctor!?” she demanded, and it was just what he’d been waiting for.
As a smile crept across his face, he turned towards the woman and her pregnant daughter. Without hesitation, he replied, “No, not really,” allowing a brief pause before looking little Mandy dead in the eye and adding, “It’s just that the last time anything like this happened, a star appeared in the East and three wise men came over the hill. I’ll be darned if I’m going to miss it this time!”
It was at that point Mandy knew she had to fess up, and Mrs. Jones was forced to face the music as well. Her daughter was no Virgin Mary, and it was time to focus her frustrations where they belonged. It wasn’t the doctor or the test results that were lying. It was Mandy, and the proof would be arriving in a few short months.
Let this serve as a reminder to the rest of us. No matter how much we love our kids, they aren’t perfect. Sadly, all too often, when a parent is forced to make this realization, they take out their disappointment on the person who brought it to their attention, like the doctor who tells them their daughter is pregnant, the teacher who says their child was caught cheating, or even the cop who busted their kid with alcohol. It’s time to turn our attention back to our kids, and sometimes, that means negative attention when they’ve earned it.
