Halloween special: Your scariest parenting fails

0:00Before we start, a quick shout out to the nation's teachers and support staff. Because if you've ever tried getting one child into shoes on time... Yeah, imagine managing 30 of them before 8.45 in the morning. Absolute sense. Which is why today's episode is sponsored by Tesco, who are proudly supporting the National Thank A Teacher Day campaign this year. Celebrating the amazing work teachers do every day to support children and families. And taking part is so simple. By sending a free thank you e-card at thankateacher.co.uk, your school will be entered for a chance to win a thousand pound Tesco fruit and veg grant.

0:34Yep, up to a hundred schools will receive this funding through Tesco's free fruit and veg for schools program, helping school children get more fresh fruit and veg during the school day. Which is why we're asking our guest about the teacher who made the biggest impact on them. Along with the usual parenting chaos, of course. Of course. Coming up. The older I get, the more I realize that maybe my behavior is not quite normal. Maybe I'm a bit unhinged. Let's petrify our kids, give them loads of sugar and tell them to talk to strangers. Do you want a trick or a treat? Right, I'll egg you in. Honestly, it's fine on Halloween.

1:04Don't do it for the rest of the year, though. This woman passed me some toilet roll that she'd obviously just used. Oh, shut up. And passed it underneath. No. Would you use it? I feel like that was a friend test then. It was a friend test. Would you use it or not? I was going to pretend there's a spider on you. No, don't say that, Hannah. Don't, don't. I would literally jump out of my chair.

1:35Oh my god, it's Halloween. Welcome back to No Parental Guidance. We are so pumped for today's episode. The studio looks incredible. Huge thanks to Card Factory for decking out us in all the spooky vibes. Honestly, it's like we've got a mini haunted house here. It's brilliant. Just in case you're listening and can't see us, here's the mental picture, okay? Obviously, I look fit. Louise has got like Edward Scissorhands hands on, back combed hair, a card factory dress online that you purchased and then this amazing bone jacket. I mean your eyes look insane, so good. It's just how I, it's like I haven't slept for years.

2:14It's just basically how. It's a postpartum kind of vibe. Yeah it is, it's postpartum yeah. Hannah has gone on with full-on prosthetics, look at that nose and Moles. Look at it. She's gone from a very like hocus pocus, witches vibe. I mean, you still look really fit. Well, I was like looking at you thinking you still look really pretty. Like even when you've got like back combed hair and all that makeup. We've got pritstick on our eyebrows and everything. But we literally have. We have got super glue on our eyebrows. Now, before we get into all the Halloween fails this week, we've got plenty of them.

2:42Please, please, please do us a quick favor and hit subscribe if you haven't already. It literally takes a second, but helps us so much. Right, well before we get into our fails, I'm going to take these off because quite frankly, it's too much for our audio viewers. So off they go. Like Edward says it has his feet. Right, do you know what? I've been triggered already. It's reminded me of a massive parenting fail during Halloween. Right. I am seriously arachnophobic, right? And every Halloween, we've got them here. There were some on the chair. They've moved, they're here, they're next to me. it's oh god it's the spiders it's the fake spiders and when I was getting my makeup done this is makeup this is not just I've just woken up which I know it could sometimes does look like but when I was getting my makeup done that the makeup artist got one of those spiders and put it in my head I was like no you can't do that I am so arachnophobic have you always been like that yeah yeah always during Halloween there was a shop where we live where they decked out the entire ceiling of the shop with spider webs and then all of those spiders yeah in the ceiling yeah so the whole ceiling was covered in spite oh covered in spiders actually makes me feel a bit sick so my boys were young like young enough to not go in a shop by themselves yeah especially a sweet shop but I couldn't go in the shop genuinely I could not step in that shop and the boys were like we want to go in we want to go in you know you said we could go in pocket money la la la sweets sorry sorry i just keep looking at your nose whilst i'm talking to you i can't take you seriously and they kind of look tough and um so i was like you guys go in no but you know big boys now yeah here's some money in you go and um they were in there for a long time to a point where i was like i have to go in i have to like i don't know what they're doing they could be stealing that could be eating all the pick and mix sweets.

4:40Like I need to go in. And so it's just so stupid, but I had to get my daughter's blanket and wrap it over my head. And they like crawl, like literally crawl into the shop. So I'm squatting whilst pushing the pram and I'm literally just like, I can't look up. I cannot, I cannot look up. It's such a fear. And so I'm basically in the shops, walking around looking like et but i was honestly terrified and did they notice do you think that you were scared of the spiders or they just thought you wanted to walk on your knees around the shop i actually got hypnotized to get over my fear of spiders did you really yeah it didn't work i was just gonna say what a waste of money that was a waste of money i used to go up this guy and he was i thought you know you know you felt like one of your first boyfriends and you're like oh my god it's amazing and we went out one day and he was like and i was like are you all right he was like and he couldn't speak and he was absolutely petrified and then he went really high pitched and started squealing and I was like what are you scared of he's like it's a wasp oh god oh my god it's a wasp and it was so embarrassing because he was like quite attractive and quite you know butch muscular and it did turn you off immediately yeah we broke up yeah yeah I was done I was done immediately everyone was looking around and I was like I can't go out with somebody it's got a fear of wasps like no they're meant to be protecting me yeah yeah he's not gonna jump out protect me from anybody if he's scared of a wasp and it just flew off and he was like it's gonna sting me and I was like it would just be a little sting like you'd be fine anyway we broke up it's fine um talking of um fails and kids and Halloween what I think is so peculiar about Halloween is it's one day a year where we completely undo all that we've taught with parenting knock on people's doors strangers take sweets from them eat all the sugar in the world on a Monday night before school oh my god see I thought that was a spider and it's not see like it's embedded in me and we're live on match day as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing he's got it oh and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too what a finish there's no doubt about it it just tastes better match days deserve Pepsi eat all the sweets take money off people take money off people it's so different now like you could go out with your mates and we used to say the sky is blue the grass is green do you have out for halloween that's what we'd say was like a trick the neighbor the neighbors either liked us or they didn't but you wouldn't know if you could go to the house or not yeah you just knock but now it's like you have the pumpkins some people have like illuminated things on the entrance to the front door the path and stuff like the amount of sweets you can get like my mum used to say we're not going trick-or-treating Hannah it's like begging you don't do that Hannah you don't beg and it's like it's not begging everyone's doing it mum like some people are getting like a tenner yeah yes for a night's work it's fantastic you know what you can for that and I've seen like houses like some houses really go to town with them with Halloween I remember my uh my fail from Halloween this happened two years ago yes oh my friend every year has a Halloween party for all the kids and she lives like half an hour away from me she's like one she was bridesmaid at my wedding so she's like bestie and then she has this amazing party and every year we all dress up and make a real effort and the party is always on a Friday at four yeah that week of Halloween and um I she sent the invite out and I was like okay cool I sent her a picture of what I was gonna wear and sometimes we coordinate outfits I set off at half past three to get there early and we were 10 minutes along the journey and Bradley was like mommy mommy I need a poo I was like okay Bradley fantastic so I had to pull in a lay-by there was like 10 laborers there like builders and stuff at this lay-by so I got out dressed like a witch looking similar to what I do now at half three on a Friday and I was he needed this poo so I was having to hold his legs while he dropped his guts on the side like but I got some paper towels on the floor and kind of scooped it and put it into a bag for life got to the house walked in and it it was that moment where I looked around and I was like, did nobody think to tell me that we weren't dressed up?

8:54I'd painted my whole face white. I'd put glitter every, like I'd really pushed the boat out. And I got to this party, nobody was dressed up. Oh, for crying out loud. And do you know when you're like, I've just driven on the motorway and like people driving past were like beeping their horn, like, and it was like, yeah, obviously I'm dressed up while I was. And nobody was dressed up. So my friend went upstairs and she put some red lipstick on her lips. And she came back downstairs and she was like, I thought I'd dress up a little bit. And I was like, no, you don't look like ****. I do. It was so embarrassing.

9:23The kids were dressed up. All the other kids didn't dress up either. We look like a right bunch of ****. Do you decorate your house? I do. I do decorate my house. And I also, there's the conundrum of, do you go out and trick or treat or do you stay in and give out the sweets? Yeah. So we go out. but last year we had a few people turning up really late. We had teenagers, like proper like 14 year old teenagers knock on our door, not dressed up at all. I was like, I'm all run out. But I thought that's quite, you know, if I was a teenager. But you hadn't run out, Louise, because you had three cauldrons full of sweets.

10:04I've run out, none for you. And I do eat some of them myself as well. Right, should we get into the plate? Sorry, your nose is just brilliant. it's absolutely brilliant I'm actually pleased you haven't got the buck teeth because that would have sent me over the edge it would have been too much wouldn't it right should we get into our get into the parenting fails this week right I'm gonna kick it off okay we took our kids to what was advertised as a family-friendly haunted house apparently family-friendly ends at 7 p.m we got there at 7 10 within minutes a man with a chainsaw jumped out of fog and my four-year-old scream he's gonna cut our legs off oh god we had to carry her through the rest while she shouted i hate this family the whole way she's now terrified of halloween and i feel like the worst mom in the world oh that's so oh gosh when we went so our friends we've got some really good friends in canada and we go and stay with them like once a year and they go to town with halloween and in their basement they have all the Halloween stuff so they they also downstairs in the basement have like a piano a tv like a drum kit did you just touch my drum kit oh nice and um basically the kids were like playing downstairs we were upstairs having a few gin and tonics and my eldest came upstairs he was like mommy can I sit with you please I was like yeah of course you can are you all right I was like maybe he's just a bit jet-lagged are you a bit tired and he was like no mommy there's something downstairs in the basement and I was like Bradley stop being so dramatic like there won't be what do you mean something he's like this is a bit like a skeleton and I was like there won't be Bradley and for ages I was like just sit with me and he was like I just don't want to go down there and then Logan came upstairs I was like really scared mommy there's like ghosts down there and I thought maybe the girls have been trying to scare them yeah I wanted to be like stop being such a just go downstairs and leave us alone to drink our gin yeah so I went downstairs I was like I'll go and check it out literally they had like eight foot coffins with these skeletons that just pop out oh my gosh these witches are like but I was petrified then this chainsaw was coming out they had about 15 different things down there all of the Halloween merch and they dress the house like top to bottom for Halloween and really take it seriously for the rest of the trip none of us went down into the basement because I was I was so scared by it Have you ever had any ghost encounters?

12:30We've had a few spooky ones in my family. Really? Yeah. Yeah, we have. I don't know if I should say it on the podcast. Oh, God. See these, like, I don't. Like, it's one of those weird things, like, I really want to know this story. But then I know that I'll think about it for years after this and freak myself out. Because I'm so good at freaking myself out. And ours was, like, filmed on a, like, for a show in our house. What do you mean for a show? In my Nana's house on like the most haunted. Yeah. Oh my God. It's really, really bizarre, really strange. And whenever it's a mixed. Do you want to share it?

13:03I kind of feel like people are listening. And they're like, come on then, tell us. What happened? What happened? There was a little girl that was basically, apparently, if you believe this, you'll be like, oh, okay, that's true. But if you don't believe it, then fine. But there was a little girl in, was it 1901 or 1906 that apparently was killed on a horse and cart where my Nana's house was. And she was stuck. and my nana before she died used to say things were happening in the house and the dog used to sit up and bark and there was this little girl in the house and my nana used to tell us stuff and we were like okay okay and we had this like was it like a seance at the house it was all videoed and it's the most petrifying thing that I've always tried to cut out of my head after oh god I want to hear this it was yeah it was really weird really weird so some people believe in ghosts and but then other friends I've told they're like oh whatever yeah it's like on video and you can see it.

13:52It's really strange. What happens? What do you see? The girl? Well, it was like, no, we didn't see the girl, but this woman was like walking up and down the hall. It was just, yeah, it was really strange. And there was tapping and knocking throughout the night under the table. And we're all going, is that you, dad? Like, who's doing it? Because my whole family were there. Were you not scared? I was petrified. Yeah. Do you still have that house in your family? No, it was sold very quickly. I'm not surprised. Yeah. I was like, I don't want to go there ever again. See, and now I'm freaked out. Yeah.

14:19and there's a car spin your cup literally I'm so scared I was going to pretend there's a spider on you no don't say that Hannah don't I would literally jump out of my chair right this next one is wanted to do something wholesome so I made pumpkin spice hot chocolate for the kids while we carved pumpkins I was already quite flustered and there was a lot going on and in a rush I grabbed cayenne pepper instead of cinnamon didn't notice until one sip in and both kids were crying my son said it burnt his tongue's feelings oh my god that's so cute why is it spicy oh my god that's that is that's awful oh that is oh bless her because that actually yeah you're trying to do something really wholesome do you ever make soup from your pumpkins so i always want to yeah I always want to but there's something about uh carving a pumpkin yeah and taking the smell of it yeah because I love carving pumpkins I do like um golem and I spent hours carving pumpkins I love it yeah um I love doing it and um the smell of it is like after so if you put pumpkin soup in front of me I'm like I can't yeah I can't deal with it no for me it's almost like taking all the insides out of a pumpkin it's almost like taking all the giblets that I'm just like I always think I'm gonna you know dry the seeds out and make my own pumpkins for next year I've said that for about 20 years oh yeah well I mistake that I make as well I'm probably a bit of a parenting fail is I get a little bit too keen with the pumpkin carving and I will carve it way before Halloween and then by Halloween it's rotten it stinks and there's flies all over it which I know gives the whole Halloween effect, but then you get fruit flies in the house and it's just game over.

16:13So basically at the bottom of your driveway, there's just rotten pumpkins and no sweets. Don't go there guys. She's such a tight ****. Right. Where are we? Okay. Ghost story. She had a friend called Jodie that is only in her bedroom at bedtime and says night to her. One night I watched her on the baby cam. she suddenly sat up and said stop it I'm trying to go to sleep and pushed her hands out like she was pushing someone away I asked over the baby cam who are you talking to and she said Jodie I just got a shiver oh I need to know how old this baby is this child is because they do say that children under a certain age they have the sixth sense and they see things or something and Do you hear that?

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17:28I posted on my Instagram some asking people for spooky stories. Yeah. And it actually scared me how many people said similar stories to this about watching their baby on the camera, the baby monitor, and the baby's like talking to somebody and they're like, has my husband gone in the room? Like who's in there with them? Has like a sibling gone in the room who they're talking to? And they've been sat up looking at this, like having a conversation. and the amount of people that's happened to or kids that will say oh my friend upstairs have you ever had a pretend friend not that I can remember but it's like Bruce Willis vibes isn't it um what's that what's the icy dead people yeah six cents that's it yeah six cents yeah oh my no I I I don't remember me ever having that do you so no but once I was drying my hair when me and Andy got together like 17 years ago chatting uh I was singing me and Andy been talking then I was singing and he left the room and I carried on singing but he was convinced I was having a conversation with someone and I was like I wasn't and I joked and I was like oh it's my pretend friend Granville and he was like have you got a pretend friend and in that moment I was like I think if I say yes he would dump me because it was he thought it was really strange and I was like I've never had a pretend friend but a friend of mine at school used to go around with Granville and be like oh we're playing together and like would pretend to hold hands and that like that child obviously took comfort in that but then it's like was that was that pretend or was that like a ghost that you go around the school with I don't know anyway let's move on what's the next fail okay so next fail I always go all out with spooky Halloween costumes to scare the kids but this year I might have taken it too far I opened the door to a trick-or-treater and he was so terrified he fainted that's awful wait the kid fainted yeah so i always go all out with spooky halloween costume to scare the kid oh my gosh this person was wearing yeah they really need to tell us more detail what were you wearing what did you i want a picture to see what you look like probably look similar to how we look right now my kids saw me now my daughter would be petrified i think my kids would probably say mommy look just the same in the morning you look like that on Sunday morning mum didn't you when my mum went to this fancy dress party um I was like what are you gonna dress up as and my dad went as like some random character and my mum was like I'm gonna go as Lady Gaga and I was like Lady Gaga like what are you gonna wear and do you remember when she wore that meat costume yes so oh my mom and dad made this costume right this wasn't this was like 10 years ago she got a black bin bag wrapped it around herself and then my dad sewed back bacon all over it like wow that's commitment three or four packs of black just like back back and just randomly sewed it oh god and it was a really hot room that they were in and it started she just she went to this party with like stilettos on and a bit a black bin bag covered in bacon can you imagine just like you're by a dog it's like where's christine oh i don't know do you have a picture of that i do have a picture of that i need to we need and i can show you it's Actually hilarious.

20:42All right, next fail. We left a big bowl of sweets out with a cute little sign that said, please take one. Then we left for trickle treating. Came back to find the dog had eaten everything. Wrappers, lollipops, the lot. We spent the rest of the Halloween night at the emergency vet while my kids cried about their skittles. The dog is fine. My bank account is not. I can only imagine how much that would have cost. And the fact the dog would be shitting for England. after eating all that. Neither of us have dogs though, do we? No, so I was just about to say, I don't know if I've never had a dog. Do you have to brush a dog's teeth?

21:19I don't know. I mean, I presume you do. They're not self-cleaners. I don't know. I still don't know how to look after a kid. Yeah, there is that as well. I've got three of them. But I'm sure that was quite a pricey Halloween. All right, here we go. I opened the cupboard to grab the Halloween plates and found a bunch of toilet roll tubes with little faces drawn on them, all just staring. scared the out of me my kids said those are the stinkies they guard the party stuff if you open the door too fast they get mad i thought this was going to go down the road of someone's wiped it with their bottom and just put it back that's the sort of thing kids would do isn't it yeah have you ever um realized that the toilet paper is all gone and you've just got the tube and just thought I'm just going to use that um I have thought that before have you done it uh no but I've been I've had I always have a tissue because you know I get when I get excited I get a runny nose like a dog so I always have a tissue on me um but I remember once I was in a toilet in a classy establishment in Scarborough and the toilet roll was out and I was like oh and it's one of those like huge toilet roll dispensers yeah and I put my arm in I thought I could peel some cardboard and just have to like try and use that so I said excuse me knocked on the the wall of the toilet and I was like excuse me I was like is there any toilet roll in there would you mind passing it to me so I don't know who or what it was next door but this woman passed me some toilet roll that she'd obviously just used oh shut up and passed it underneath no so I grabbed it with my hands and looked and there was like a hair on it shut up oh my god i was like thank you and then i was like oh my god i think i sat there long enough that i just drip dried because i was like this is so disgusting that's disgusting i know it was like a bit gunji it wasn't great just a bit and there was hair on it yeah oh no no spider leg not great stop it honestly I get so easily spooked so now it's a thing but after that I always check that there's toilet roll in there before I wee really yeah always check because the thought of somebody in Scarborough passing me they used bog roll makes me feel physically sick well that is disgusting but I mean if you're at home so you haven't got any tissue on you and you've done a wee and you see the loo roll holder then and it's empty but the the roll is still there just the cardboard would you use it?

23:49I would, yeah. If that was all that was there, that'd be fine. Just checking. Yeah. We're on the same page. Fine. That's all I wanted to know. Good sleep is everything. That's why Oli's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Oli's sleep solutions for the whole family at oli.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. I feel like that was a friend test then. It was a friend test. Would you use it or not? Okay, so next fail.

24:27I spent three nights sewing a bat costume from scratch because my five-year-old swore that's what he wanted to be. Wings, ears, little fangs, the full Pinterest job. Morning of Halloween, he takes one look and says, Mummy, I meant Batman, not a real bat. Full meltdown. He refused to wear the bat costume. And in the end, the only thing I could get him out of the house in was his football kit. The other mums at school must have thought it was really weird. I dressed him as a footballer for Halloween and all that after spending days on the back costume. Oh my gosh. So that I really admire any female that is good at sewing or that gives a s*** enough that would actually make a costume from scratch.

25:09Do you know, so this is maybe it's kind of the ethos that I might bring to the podcast because those mums that do that stuff from scratch or that will bake stuff for the school or that will take the time to be organized to do stuff. I honestly, I really admire them because I can't sew. I can't do any of that stuff. And I don't have a sewing machine for any like bits, decorations. I would go online and just buy it. Card factory straight away. It's just easy. Yeah, easy. I mean, no, yeah, but the boys, I would be the one saying, oh, why don't we wear this? And why don't we wear that? And then they're like, yeah, whatever, fine.

25:45I'll, yeah, fine. And then I will go to Card Factory, get it online, done, job done, easy. So this year for Halloween, I've decided I'm going to go all out. I'm going to wear this. Decorate the front of the house. Might not have the nose on. I love the nose. But I'm going to decorate the house. Wait, can people see Hannah's wart on her nose? Because it's on that side. It's fabulous. I mean fabulous yeah Jesus Christ honest to God looking at myself like Jesus Christ um but yeah I'm gonna decorate my house I could just dress like this and then kids wouldn't come and disturb us but I think I might put something at the bottom of the drive and just say help yourself instead of them coming and knocking on the door and then they can be nosy in the house you know wake the baby up like I don't need that so I'm gonna put boundaries in place okay that's boundaries is good do you know that um some people dress up as my character Bernie for Halloween are you kidding do they yeah they do like for real what and come to your house yeah do they yeah is that weird like do you know the people that do it okay so that's a bit weird yeah that is weird but I also get people messaging me on Instagram with pictures of their kids and like we've gone as Bernie I'm like yeah that is quite frightening actually I'm like I live with this every day like to us we were getting ready and we're like this is really normal because of the content we put online yeah so we were quite happy to wear wigs and we're quite excited to look ridiculous stupid yeah but the older I get the more I realize that maybe my behavior is not quite normal maybe I'm a bit unhinged I don't know and then we met each other and it's like oh my god yeah yeah you do it too but what do your kids how do they react um honestly they're just like so what's today what you know yeah it's very strange I get really worried that my mother-in-law will look at anything online because it's not directly aimed at her but I have a mother-in-law character yeah um and some of the things I say are a bit close to the bone and I think if she watches it she's going to be like you little bitch like I know you're talking about me yeah I mean there there is that it's just I've got to be so careful because you just don't want it to like cause an argument like it's because I adore my mother-in-law she's so helpful literally I've to basically come over all week next week to help out with like child care.

28:04I can't be sitting there going my f***ing mother-in-law. She's a right s***. Can you watch the kids for a week?

28:11Thank you so much for all your Halloween fails. They were truly epic. And thanks again to Card Factory for sponsoring us for the whole month of October. We hope this has given you some inspiration to create your own Halloween magic with the kids this season without spiders maybe Louise. Oh or just how to avoid all the fails. now if you enjoyed this episode and would like to see more of this we would love it if you could subscribe to know parental guidance on youtube also please let us know in the comments if there are any topics you'd like to hear from us that we haven't covered any guests you'd like to see and of course keep sharing your parenting fails now we'll be back next week with a new guest episode featuring the one and only jemma bird aka money mum who will give you all the tips and tricks you need to save those pennies.

28:56So please subscribe so you don't miss it. Bye. Bye.

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