199submissions
Finished
Parents Are Sharing The Most Expensive Things Their Kids Ruined, And Some Of Them Will Seriously Scare You
It's no secret that having kids costs money, but sometimes the little rascals manage to clean us out faster than a mugger at a bank machine - and bereave us of the possessions we hold almost as dear as them. You might be a parent who remembers the gut-wrenching moment your kid flushed your diamond engagement ring down the toilet. You might have been the troublemaking child who was just playing around and somehow managed to burn the entire house down. At the end of the day, kids are just helplessly curious, and even when it causes thousand-dollar accidents, it's hard to stay mad at them for it.
The parents of Reddit were recently asked about the most expensive thing their kids have ever broken, and the responses they gave are pure gold. Scroll down to read them all, and if you have a similar story of your own, add it to our list at the end!
This post may include affiliate links.
When I was a kid, my mother lost her diamond wedding ring. She was devastated. A decade later, while cleaning things up for a garage sale, we found it jammed in the toilet of my Barbie house.
I once bought a kids jewelry box for my niece at a garage sale. While wrapping it I noticed a hidden drawer in the back. A diamond necklace and a gold ring. I took them back to the sale and the woman was so freaking grateful. Apparently they "lost" them years ago.
I used to do computer repair out of my home. I had a friend who was paying me $150 to repair a gaming desktop that, at the time, was worth about $2300. I had to replace the hard drive, then reinstall Windows, then all the drivers, and it took an entire day to get everything working from a backup.
It was set aside for pickup later in the week.
I had a day job at the time that was 3pm to midnight, and my wife worked 9-5, so we had a part time sitter that summer who took care of our 4 year old son from 2-6pm on weekdays. She was not the brightest woman, but we could afford her rates, and we weren't doing well off financially.
My wife called me one night and told me to sit down, because she had some bad news. We had a lot of sick relatives, and been through some deaths recently, so I thought, "who died now?" She told me that the kitchen table was strewn with computer parts. Our son had taken the computer apart with the power screwdriver and some pliers. Like, completely. Down to the chips, resistors, and capacitors. If it had a screw, he unscrewed it, and if he didn't, he pulled it off the board with pliers. He then sorted everything by color and size.
I nearly lost my s***. I was both angry as f*** that he did this, and -terrified- telling my friend that his $2300 gaming rig was ruined. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. My wife and I tried to plan where we were gonna get $2300. We didn't have $2300 in assets in the entire apartment. We couldn't sell our POS car, because we needed it for work, and maybe, MAYBE would get $1200 for it if we were lucky.
My son couldn't have done this in a small span of time. He had to have done it in the 4 hours he was with the babysitter. Was he alone for these 4 hours? What the everliving f***???
My wife asked her, and the babysitter said, "he wanted to work on the computer like daddy did. He said he was allowed to."
HE IS FOUR!!! YOU'RE THE F****** ADULT WITH HIM, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??? IF HE SAID HE WAS ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH KITCHEN KNIVES WOULD YOU HAVE LET HIM??? HE IS FOUR!!!
She was fired. She wasn't paid that week, either, because we needed money to pay my friend for a new gaming rig. My wife and I broke the piggy bank, and decided we could pay him back if we went without some medicines, didn't pay a few utilities, were late with rent, ate ramen, etc... we could pay my friend off in three months with a payment plan.
I remember calling my friend so nervous I was shaking. Then, thankfully, he didn't think it was a big deal. He said he was thinking of getting a new computer anyway. I didn't have to pay him anything. I was so relieved.
But that babysitter... damn... what a moron. "He said he was allow to!"
My vagina.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..................Sorry Mum...
My son never slept for longer than 3-4 hours a night until he was 5, so I was exhausted for years. One day when he was 2, I was sitting on the floor, zoned out a bit, while he was playing with my hair. I pretty much kept in a bun 24-7 back then because my hair was down to my waist and very thick and it just took too long to style. He was having a great time singing and playing with my hair but he eventually got fussy, so I took him to the park down the road. At the busy park, I kept noticing that people were staring at me and several of them looked concerned while others looked amused. I was so tired that I shrugged it off and took him on a quick errand to Walmart. Again, people kept staring at me! It really started to creep me out, so I took my son home. Later that afternoon, my hair was slipping out of the bun it had been in all day, so I reached up to tuck it back in and I found six assorted pairs of Mr. Potato Head eyes stuck into my hair!! I walked around in public for hours like that and had no idea!
My eye.
When she was six months old, she was sitting in my lap playing with some toy. She suddenly got really excited and flailed her arms up. Her fingernail dug deep into my eye.
Three surgeries later, I still can barely see out of that eye, and it's visibly screwed up too (not egregiously, but if you look me in the eye my pupil is clearly more oval than circle).
And needless to say, I won't be telling her about this until she's an adult at the earliest, and even then only if she asks.
The stereo in our minivan quit working. After a little troubleshooting, we found 25 pennies shoved in the CD slot.
20 years ago my friend's young son was making puzzles and he cut up his father's original Star Wars a New Hope 1977 poster. His father told me he had to shrug it off because his son didn't know any better. Best punishment served cold - the son is now a young Star Wars fan and he would do anything to own that poster he himself ruined.
There is no such thing as an original "Star Wars a New Hope 1977" poster. Those "original" Star Wars 1977 posters were simply labeled Star Wars. A New Hope wasn't added until 1981.
We had a 90g salt water tank with easily upwards of $3k worth of coral, fish... I went to work a night shift and my son unplugged everything for the night my husband didn't notice
Everything was dead in the morning, and the house smelled lovely.
The television. Apparently, running the scissors over the screen makes it look better.
My dog thought running his claws over it would be nice idea too :'D (For his excuse: that was 2 mins after i had him inside my home for the first time after rescuing him from Croatia. He'd never seen such a thing and attacked everything, which mirrored him. For the first weeks i had to turn all my mirrors around and slowly get him used to it. Long story short: he doesn't do it anymore!)
My dad ordered a brand new, beautiful cherry wood kitchen table set. On the day it was delivered, my sister walked up to it and bit the wood. Parents still have the table, table still has little kid bite marks.
My sister told my brother "want to see me throw a match in this trash can?". My brother ignored her. She did it anyway and burned down the house. My dad came home to find the house burning down, went inside to remove the oven's gas canister to prevent it from exploding and got severe burns on his hand. He also blamed the smoker neighbor for decades, because he though it was a cigarette that burned the whole house down. She was around 7 at the time, though, and took around 20 years to tell my dad the truth.
My grandpa was in the navy and when he took his youngest son (my uncle) onto a ship for a tour, my uncle wandered away for a little bit. They found him dropping Whoppers (the candy, not the burger) into whatever openings he could find. Supposedly, despite the crew working tirelessly to find them all, they'd still hear whoppers rolling around for years to come.
Would make for a great Navy newcomer story about the sailor who lost an eye, and sometimes you can still hear it rattling around lol
Our brand new flat screen TV. He was two and threw his toy truck at it...obliterated.
Never wanted to disown him more than in that moment...
Kudos....for the honesty....disown was probably NOT the word you used at the time...........
My neighbor worked in the diamond district of New York City. He'd given his wife a lot of diamond jewelry over the years. One day, she cleaned it all, and left it on a towel on the bathroom counter to dry. Their preschool-aged daughter decided to help mom wash her jewelry--in the toilet. ALL of it was flushed away.
My wife is a teacher. In her school each child is assigned an iPad for educational purposes. When the school year is over the iPads have to be wiped and reset to factory settings. Of course this has to be done after school is over. She was running behind getting her classroom prepped to be cleaned and still needed to reset them to factory settings. She brought her iPad cart home with 22 iPads in them. She laid them all down on the office floor and made an assembly line. She got to the last one and left to do something else. Came back and our daughter had played "the floor is lava" on top of 16 of them. The screens were trashed. Some of them would power on but the touch screen function was gone. She had to call her principal and explain. She got a royal ass chewing for it, but lo and behold the next year they were planning on switching to Google Classroom instead... All new Chromebooks for the kids.
I'm not a parent, but my younger sister somehow managed to ruin all the plumbing in one of the bathrooms of our house. The same sister also backed a golf cart into an AC unit that had to be completely replaced. It wasn't our AC unit or our golf cart. She's also managed to ruin the engines of 3 separate cars. My great grandfather used to say my mom could break a crowbar, and that saying has now been passed down to my sister.
I left the controller charging cable plugged into the front of my PS4. Son thought it looked like it would fit perfectly into the wall outlet.
He ran to tell me "Mom! I popped the house!!!"
Fried both my PS4, and our 55" TV.
Son was okay though. At least I could replace the electronics.
Good for you. First one I've read so far that was happy that their child was okay and safe and not just complaining about materialistic things that can be replaced, a life can't be replaced!
My sister and I destroyed a kitchen.
My mom was at work, and I think my dad was taking xanax or working nights or something, but he was dead to the world for a few hours. My sister and I (4 and 6) wanted to go swimming. I had a brilliant idea... we could turn the kitchen into a pool. We brought loads of sand into the house... We blocked off the heater vents with sand and built a berm at each doorway leading into it. Then we plugged up the sink with rags and turned it on. My dad didn't wake up until we had 3-5 inches of water in the kitchen.
We needed new flooring and sheetrock after this.
Wow. This takes talent. Also makes me happy that I don't have kids. 🌻
Not ruined exactly but when I was in my teens my boyfriend and I broke into his fathers wine cellar and pinched what we thought was the rattiest looking bottle of wine thinking he would never miss it, turned out to be an incredibly rare, old, expensive vintage that he had been saving since his grandfather gave it to him when he graduated, his grandfather got it from his father, so it had lots of sentimental value as well. I never got over that. We drank it from the bottle out in the woods, what a waste.
Right after I got my drivers licence I was backing the car out of the garage and ran over half of the push lawnmower. I didn't want to lose my newly acquired freedom, and this being January, I just turned the lawnmower around to show the "good side" and went about my life.
Cut to April. I'm doing my homework and my dad comes upstairs laughing
"Hey sweetie?"
"Yeah dad?"
"When did you run over the lawnmower."
"...January "
Que mad laughter from my dad. He gave me a pass on it for my craftiness.
My kid broke a 60in TV, Samsung tablet, 2 Galaxy phones (s5 and s6), a refrigerator, my wife's nose, and a toilet. This kid is taking up quite the tab.
When I was a kid I took a hammer and tried breaking open the television screen so that I could be with Harry Potter. Didn't really work out as I had imagined.
My dad, a realtor, once sold a house and a condo to a guy whose daughter had burned down their old house. The house was for the family, the condo was for the daughter. I asked my dad how it had happened and he said the guy just told him, "She's always been like that."
Not a parent but I was on a cruise ship and they have art auctions with free champagne so lots of people just go for the drinks. Anyways this feral family came in all loud and let their kids run free, only one of their kids had crayons and drew on a $15,000 painting.
Hope they had to pay for it. This kind of parents is really the worst. No common sense of where kids should not be taken if they can't behave....
A diamond earing.... gifted by my mother on my wedding day. Diamonds swim in the big potty guys!!
Not exactly ruined. I was on a Skype call introducing my dad to his new born granddaughter and she throws up all over the new MacBook Pro.
I cleaned it up and kept it off for a few days. I thought it was fried for sure but it turned on. Backlight was patchy and smelled funny for some time. Renamed it to Mac n Cheese. Surprisingly still works 7 years later.
Not a parent, but scratched all the window tinting off my parents' vehicle with a nail because it was dirty.
So this was me as a kid, but relevant. I destroyed my whole house. I was ~10 years old, and sleepwalked a good bit. One night I turned on the bath tub and went back to sleep. Nobody in my family woke up until morning, and by that point the water was collapsing the downstairs ceilings, coming out of the chandelier, and pooling in the basement. Thank God for homeowner's insurance.
My friend's younger brother was a sleep walker too. One night he peed in the stereo another night he had walked into the hallway closet and peed in one of his father's rubber boots. You understand how his dad found out about it in the morning...
I was washing my van one day 3 years ago and my two year old decided to help wash the other side.....with rocks. Scratched right down to the primer.
My daughter ruined my phone when she was about 2 months old. She threw up on me and it splattered hard enough to hit the phone just right while it was charging and it fried the charging port.
What a non-physical way to break a phone! Wow, only a two month old!
I went f****** nuts trying to get a Wii when they first came out, around Thanksgiving. I was going to take a few days off and try to quit smoking, using Zelda as my crutch.
My 16 month-old son thought it would be a good place to stick alphabet magnets.
I still smoke.
When my son was 3, he rubbed a whole stick of butter over the back of the cloth couch.
I cleaned it, but it always had a large stain. 16 years later I sent it with him when he got his first apartment.
My son received his driving learners permit a few summers ago. He was going to drivers education classes and I was also teaching him how to drive but it didn't help because in the span of 2 months he:
Drove into the driveway and continued driving right through my closed garage door
Backed one of my cars out of the garage right into my other car.
It's been about 4 years now and I still love him, but not as much.
My roommate in college told me that as a kid, she wanted to ice skate in summer. She took her parents' album collection out of their sleeves, spread them all over the living room floor, put on her ice skates, and destroyed the entire collection while having a blast slipping and sliding all over their records.
My son is now 16 years old, he is autistic. This happened when he was 10. I had always wanted an Iphone, I FINALLY got one! My son found Siri and of course began talking to her. I let him take my phone to his room to talk to Siri...What could possibly go wrong??? A half an hour later I needed to make a call, went to get my phone. My son was just exiting his room...looking...scared. I said, "Whats wrong honey?!" No answer. I went to open his door and he put HIS hand on his door knob and looked at me petrified. I thought, OMG, WHAT did he do?! He had NEVER broken ANYTHING in his life! I entered the room and saw my entire Iphone, torn apart, into the smallest pieces it could be taken down to. He had done it with his BARE HANDS!! It should have been impossible!! I checked his hands. Not ONE scratch! I asked, "WHAT happened?!" He said, "Siri was rude."
When my daughter was 5 (now almost 18) she took my MacBook off of my lap, closed it, gingerly placed it on the ground, hugged me... And then stomped on it.
My daughter pushed my Mac off my bed with her feet, the screen broke and it was just a week before my exams... plus on an earlier MacBook I had when she was just a year and a half she pinched off the keyboard buttons with her tiny little fingers, haha....
Not a parent but as a child I accidently burned down our trailer. I was curious and accidently set the bed on fire and the fire spread crazy fast. My mother was asleep but the neighbor managed to bust the door open and help me and my brother out and then woke up my mother and helped her out. I was pretty tore up about it for years but it all worked out in the end. We got a new place and got furniture donated. My mother told me years later that I actually did her a favor.
My brother ripped earrings out of both my mother's ears when he was a baby. He did one, then the other a few days later. I guess the cosmetic surgery to fix it was expensive and insurance didn't cover it. Don't wear big earrings when you're holding a baby, ladies.
I had just come home from receiving my special order astigmatism contacts – a year supply, probably worth around $800. My three year old flushed them all down the toilet.
Watching netflix as i was doing the dishes. Had to poop. 3 year old daughter drags kitchen chair up to sink, decides to help do dishes while im on the toilet. Goodbye $1200 laptop that is now soaked in about a gallon of water.
I'm still surpised we've had no portable electronic devices go into a sink, bathtub, toilet, pool, etc.
My Alienware 17 laptop was the victim of a good ol washing from my 4 year old. Had a wedding to dj that day and she wanted my laptop to look good as new.
My cousin's son destroyed her boob job. Like 3 or 4 days after she got it her 3 year old jumped on her chest and opened up the left incision in a gnarly way. Left serious scarring.
When I was about 4 or 5 I destroyed our upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. I had this little blue bath toy whale, and I had told my mom before that I wanted it to go to the ocean, so one night we were going out to dinner with my aunt and uncle. I go to the bathroom before leaving and put the sink stopper on and my little whale in the sink. When we come home we can hear running water the upstairs bathroom floor which was the downstairs bathroom ceiling had collapsed and there was a waterfall coming from upstairs.
My little sister wrote TOMMY PICKLES on the side of my mom's van when she was about 6. She tried to blame it on me, but I was 20 years old and away at college.
my sister once scratched her name into my dresser (an antique family heirloom) and tried to blame me even though she was 7 or 8 and I was 16.
My two year old destroyed a $1000 TV. It was set up on a coffee table temporarily during football season. I went into another room and heard a loud crash. I came out to see the two year old on the coffee table and the TV on the floor. I asked him what happened and he says "I push it, it go boom".
He also had the habit of getting his hands on things he knew he shouldn't have. Then when you ask for it back he would run away. When you chase after him and get close he would throw the item. Several phones were destroyed this way.
I'm sure he has ruined over $2000 worth of stuff.
When I was about 3 or 4 back in 1997, my dad left the house for an afternoon and my mom was busy downstairs. Well my dad had set up a massive, and I mean covering an entire room massive, model train set. Everything was intricately laid out, and the track went on forever. When my dad got back home, I had disassembled it all. I'm not talking pulling the tracks apart, I broke apart every little thing I possibly could. The whole track was in thousands of pieces.
It wasn't the most expensive thing in the world, but god damn did he love that model train set.
A microwave - I fried its brain - back in the late 1970's. My parents had saved up for their first fancy new J.C. Penny-branded microwave. I want to recall that it was close to $400, which in 1970's money is a heck of a lot of cash to spend on a small appliance. The delivery person had just set it up on a table and left. Apparently, microwave delivery was a thing back then. All of its accessories were still laid out. At that time, it came with a meat temperature probe because people thought it was a good idea to actually cook real food in a microwave. The probe had a quarter-inch mono plug on one end (think of an electric guitar cord), a wire, and a long five-inch pointy meat-jabby thing on the other end. Being a small child of about five, I opened the door, saw the potential to insert tab A into slot B and went about it. Well, it turns out the meat-jabby part of the probe should not be inserted into the port in the microwave because the whole thing quickly went poof and subsequently was dead. There is some debate if I was holding onto the metal part of the probe when this happened because I could have been dead too. Good times.
Three years ago my two boys decided to surprise me for Father's Day by washing my car. Unfortunately they did not consult with me before doing this because it was a surprise and instead of using car wash soap they used boat rubbing compound and green Scotch-Brite scrubbers to wash my black Cadillac CRX. It did several thousand dollars worth of damage. And even though I understood that it wasn't done intentionally, every time I saw all of those scratches all over the car I got angry. I ended up trading in the car quickly and took a loss. We will laugh about it. Someday.
My wife and her brother tore a giant hole behind the dresser because they were trying to find Narnia.
My daughter and her 2 cousins decided to play gas station and filled everyone's cars up with the hose. They had gotten 6, mine, my mothers, my sister's, and 3 of our neighbors before we saw them.
My kids were fighting (1 year and 3 years at the time) I had the 1 year old in my lap and when she flailed her fingernail went right in my eye. The pain... oh god, the pain. The worst part was that the way my cornea was torn wasn't complete, it left a flap there, so everytime I blinked it would lift the flap up and pull on it.
Went to the local ER and they couldn't do much for me and referred me to a special hospital in Boston (about 2 hours away) the following morning.
There I was told to "wait and see" because they weren't sure if surgery was necessary (thankfully it wasn't). But yeah, that pain, not being able to open my eye or see for a week or two afterwards, I'll never forget it.
Luckily my situation wasn't as bad as yours, but I know that pain. I hope your vision gets better!
My Son watched me windex the windows one day while cleaning. When I put the spray bottle down he picked it up and soaked two flat screen tv's down.
It got sprayed so much some seeped in behind the screen and ran down the inside.
They still work, but have funny vertical lines that are permanently distorted .
My 18 month old shoved my Surface off a table and it shattered on the floor. You know how cats like to knock things off tables just for the hell of it? Just like that. He looked so damn proud of himself, too.
So, not most expensive, but very expensive at the time.
My child was five and his little brother was just born. My husband had lost his job some months before. I'd had a stocked pantry so we were rationing for meals with the money we had left. My child opened a five gallon bucket full of sugar and ruined the whole bucket, mixing cleaners in it. (Five gallon bucket holds almost 20lbs.) He did this before I knew he was awake in the morning.
He thought he was playing sandbox. They did it at preschool.
I was so angry. That sugar meant a lot dignity in a way. I had flour and sugar and so pancakes, cakes, cookies, bread. Food that made you feel more human, ya know? There wasn't money to replace it.
We qualified for food stamps a couple weeks later. Our money was getting to the wire. I sat down and I cried at the letter. 300 a month was a lifesaver. We were only on food stamps for a few months when my husband was offered a job. We had to have inlaws co-sign a loan for enough money to move. That job has been very good for us. I'm grateful for it every day.
Took my sugar for my coffee out of the same bucket this morning. So did the kid.
What is wrong with you people!? Shame on you all. It must have been incredibly difficult to lose that sugar not just financially but emotionally too. I'm glad the husband got another job and that they're back on their feet.
I asked my dad:
"When you were 4 you threw a treat for the dog into the garden. It landed in an extremely old, extremely valuable flowerpot. The dog ran straight into the flowerpot, and knocked it off its platform. You also gave the dog a concussion and she crapped herself in shock all over the expensive rug that was outside for cleaning purposes."
Thankfully that was so much bad luck that I'm guessing everyone in our region was able to win the lottery for a decade afterwards.
Valuable flowerpots, that are actually kept in the garden no less, is not something you hear every day.
This one wasn't me, but happened to my friend way back in high school. We needed to get into the attic for something. Attic was in garage. Parents weren't home and his sisters car was under the attic. He turned her car on, accidentally put it in neutral, reved the engine and panicked. Hit the gearshift into drive quickly. The car totaled his dads motorcycle that was parked in front of the car. The car also went through the wall straight into the kitchen. Ended up being tons to repair and replace.
My dad brought a van home on a one day test drive. My 3 year old brother grabbed a rock and started trying to wrote his name in the paint, so dad bought a van that day. It ended up lasting until it got rear ended so not an all bad outcome.
Give kids the chalk. It is colorful, easier to write and easier to remove...
One son destroyed a video camera when I left it on top of a speaker with the cord connected to the TV and he pulled it down. (my fault)
My daughter flushed my college ring down a toilet.
My other son tried out my hammer on the hood of my car
Put a nail in the floppy drive of my computer. This back when drives were expensive (early 80s). I think it cost me $250 dollars back then.
Not a parent, I'm the sister of this kid. My younger brother (he's 11 years younger than me), When he was 2, he shoved an entire jam sandwich into a PlayStation 3. When we went to get it repaired, they found a key, 12p in change, the jam sandwich and a cheese string wrapper. He also threw a metal plane at our brand new 50" TV. It had a small hole in it for the 7 years it lasted us.
I once threw a hotwheels fire truck at my parents flatscreen tv because the Turk has a spider on it.
I did this exact thing to my mom's Datsun when I was between 4 and 6 years old. The car was about 7 or 8 years old at the time. I had learned how to write my name and she always said it was my side of the car. So I wrote my name on the door with a rock. I showed her and she got upset but didn't wig out. That car was sold about 14 years later, name intact.
When I was about 3? My parents were watching TV or something in the living room while I was playing in their bedroom. Suddenly, my mom started smelling something really nice and went to check on me.
Unfortunately the smell was because of me. I had decided that her very expensive perfumes and moisturizers smelled really nice and that if I combined them they would probably smell even better. So I did....in the bathtub
It's been 18 years and she is still a bit mad about that.
Reminds me of the time I accidentally spilled half of my mom's brand new perfume and refilled it with tap water. I was sure she would never notice. She did...
Mine threw my iPhone in the the toilet and I didn't notice for about 20 mins so it was done for. Got a new one and 3 weeks later she threw that one in the dog water bowl also didn't notice for a while either. Yep also done for. Now she isn't allowed to touch any phones in the house and I keep it up away where she can't get it.
When I was a kid I thought I would pull a "hilarious April fool's prank" and hide all of our cups. I took the plastic cups and hid them in a small overhead chandelier covering the light bulbs. The next day I had forgot about them, dad turned on the lights and the cups slowly melted all over destroying the chandelier.
Tldr: kids are bad at everything.
I knocked over my mother's massive pine China hutch, when I was about 12. It destroyed all the China and everything else in it path. Then there was the time we used the neighbors new sports car as a slide for a few hours, with our sandy shoes on. We were about six. It required a complete paint job and some body work to repair. Man, I miss the 80's.
I asked my mom the question and then my little brother yelled from the other room, "their lives."
My parents have several paintings from medieval Japan. I assume they are very expensive. Or at least very rare. I don't remember doing this but they told me that when I was five I added to one of them with some crayon. Sure enough there is a little crayon stick figure in the middle of one of the paintings.
What a proof to what is most important that they had not had it cleaned.
Mr 4 turned gas off at mains of great grandparents house. No heating during winter for a week until they worked it out.
Same Mr 4, jumped in car put it into gear, rolled down driveway crashing into great aunties garage door while visiting.
Same Mr 4, let himself out of his car seat (while i opened our front gates) put car into gear, it rolled forward trapping me between car and gate, broke my wrist.
Same Mr 4, set off emergency evacuation buttons in the hospital while I was getting my broken wrist plastered!!!
I am a teacher's aid in a kindergarten class, and I could swear that we have your Mr 4's twin among our pupils. Just last week, he "escaped" the classroom at least 25 times (he obviously finds it funny to see all these adults running after him). Could you come pick him up, please, before we all end up on sick leave? Thank you!
My dad told me not to play baseball in the backyard, I did, smashed the windshield on his new S-Class.
A Delta airplane window. He was 3 and decided to shove the emergency instructions under the shade. He managed to warp the shade into a half staff position. We were the only row that couldn't close the shade during our 3 hour tarmac wait in the 100 degree heat.....
How can a parent sitting next to that kid not realise what it's doing?
My dad went all out for his first grandchild and bought a really expensive crib, in the neighbourhood of $2000.
As soon as my son was old enough to stand he chewed all the paint off the side rails fo the crib around the full perimeter. It's not easy to touch up; some sort of special child friendly paint.
We started keeping a tab on all of his damages so we can hand him a bill at his wedding.
Wasn't really my brother that did the ruining, but it was his attitude that lead to it. My mum had bought him, after much nagging, a $600 bike, we weren't flush with too much cash then so it was paid off over time. After he got it he went from sweet to a massive asshole treating mum like shit, the usual. So she smashed it to pieces with a hammer right in front of him. Never seen him cry like that before or since. It was satisfying to see his attitude checked, but i wish she'd just taken it back to the shop instead.
This obviously didn't ruin my dog, but I covered my dog in vaseline from head to toe and said I was "decorating him for christmas". My mom said it took DAYS to wash out the vaseline.
When I was 7 my mom got me a birthday cake.Times had been difficult for all 3(mom,dad and me. .my litle sister who was 3 year old didnt know and care about much).They were working hard and I also felt they never really cared too much about me.
Anyways She surprises me with a cake. .I am happy.very happy.....she keeps it on the bed in front of me...my sister is next to her....next thing you know, BAMMM...she(sister ) slams her hand right in the centre of the f***ing cake and I hadn't even looked at it properly. .The icing and toppings got messed up.
Still remember like it happened yesterday. I wanted to cry.I still remember the utter sadness in my heart but didn't want to upset mom. So I sucked it up and continued. ..
Needless to say I hated her that day.
It wasn't an expensive cake but it was something precious to me ..something I had got after a long time. The memory is still there and it still makes me mad..
Sorry this happened to you. Kids that age are a******s, but that was horribly mean of her.
I had a brother who put his soda on top of the tv, he annoyed me so I threw a pillow at him. He decided he should duck, so the pillow hit the glass of soda and spilled over the tv. I knew I was screwed when I saw smoke coming out of the tv. I delayed the inevitable by hiding the remote. I didn't get in trouble for ruining the tv though, instead I got in trouble for lying about it.
My sister destroyed not one, but two blenders by leaving a spoon in them before turning them on. The explosions were impressive.
Middle child was barely a toddler when he ripped the legs off a pair of $300 sunglasses that my newly serious boyfriend (now spouse) had forgotten that he'd set in a case in the backseat of his truck prior to giving it to me to drive while he was working out of town. Whoopsie. Kid found misplaced/forgotten case, opened it and proceeded to play with sunglasses until they died.
Oldest child once fed lettuce to the DVD player. Not particularly expensive, but it was an amusing wtf.
At the age of three I took a wiffle ball bat to a 42 gallon fish tank. I got a three year old powered whack on it and it basically exploded. Ruined the tank and rug.
Also, a quarter of the tank was setup for babies so when my mom scooped them all up to save them, she put them in one small tank with the adults. The adults ate the babies.
When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I went to the hardware store with my dad to pick up some paint that was supposed to be for my sister's room. It was my job to hold it tight and steady on the way home since the lid wasn't secured. Well, I ended up spilling that paint ALL over the interior of the car. The front seats, the back seat, the center console, the dashboard. Everything. Almost went deaf from how loud my father yelled at me.
When I was about 12 I somehow managed to break my nans £1000 stairlift while riding it.
My daughter just dropped my MacBook off the couch and it fell just right and is 100% busted. It looks like the bottom exploded. Hopefully we can get what's on our hard drive off and save all of our pictures and whatnot.
When my son was 2 or 3, he got into the habit of throwing random things away. He threw away my night guard and it was realized too late. $500 gone. Years later, my dog child found my new one and chewed it up. Another $500 later and I'm super careful to lock it away in a drawer.
My daughter had just turned 5 and her bed is near her window. In the dead of winter, she wondered what would happen if she kicked the window with her heels while laying in bed. Big surprise, it spiderwebbed and cracked horribly, with chunks of glass falling out. She's lucky she wasn't cut. That was a very expensive experiment.
Our TV has permanent scratches on the screen from my eldest having messed with it. We haven't replaced it though.
My 2y/o has ruined a PS3, a pair of $200 Ray Bans (and the replacement pair, but those we could bend back to workable shape :/) two pairs of prescription glasses, numerous cups, glasses and plates, books, DVDs, toys, scratched up a new iPad body. My phone sports a cracked case and screen protector, but at least I can buy a new case and apply a new protector, and the phone is fine, but if not for those protective measures, it'd be toast. Also, several pairs of mini blinds, and has partially pulled out a couple curtain tie backs from the wall.
There's probably more I've blocked from my mind. It's a good thing they're cute.
When I was younger my father saved all his money and bought his first luxury car which was a Brand new Cadillac with leather seats. About into a week of owning it my bother, mom and myself were riding in the car with my dad. My dad needed to stop and run into the gas station. My mom and myself were in the back seat while my older brother was in the front seat.
My brother had the found a box cutter in the front seat glove compartment and proceeded to try and cut through mail envelopes on the seats. Not surprisingly he was also making vertical cuts into my dads brand new leather seats.
Not a parent but child, I dropped a hot frying pan not once but twice on a very expensive hardwood floor whilst tossing pancakes unsupervised (I was an ass and didn't wait for her). Our kitchen floor looked like a f****** field crop circle extravaganza. Poor mum was devastated. I burnt myself in the process chasing it around the kitchen so I got what I deserved.
My little sister ruined our grandmother's hip by running her over with a tricycle.
My kid accidentally burned down a historic covered bridge. It was pretty much priceless so theres that.
A basement. A whole basement. He unplugged the sump pump because he needed the outlet.
I lost the key fob to my parents' brand new Chevy Impala when I was 10. It's been years and they still bring it up weekly. Also, no one has found it yet.
Just last week my newly turned one year old decided to give me a head bonk. He bumps foreheads instead of giving kisses. It's actually really adorable unless you're not expecting it and don't see it coming. Well he caught my frameless glasses at just the right angle and split the lens where the hole is drilled for the ear piece to attach. I couldn't go without them for a couple of days while they were repaired so I super glued the lens so I had a somewhat functional ear piece while I waited for a brand new pair to come in.
My kid broke my TV last week, and I'm currently searching for my Fitbit that he's hidden. He took it from the charger while I had the balls to cook him breakfast.
When my brother and I were about 6 and 8 (nearly 20 years ago) my dad had taken us to a fire station where he had some friends working. The fire station was on a busy street, backed up against a golf course. The firemen had a small putting green on the stations property that my dad has let us play on while he was talking. Now all I remember seeing if golf at that age was people going for these insanely long drives, so that's what my brother and I started doing, hitting the balls as hard as we could. 5 mins later my dad comes out with his fireman friend, and sees this beautiful putting green with a couple dozen divots in their lawn.
Why do parents so often leave kids alone with an activity with zero instruction? My own parents did that with me and it led to destruction more than once.
My chemistry teacher's son drove into a building. His car slipped on ice or something. It wrecked the brick wall completely, costing him $10k to repair.
My social life, bank account...the answer you are looking for is a $1000 flat screen. He was unhappy with his younger brother TV choice so he threw a large plane at it. Makes sense...
My daughter, aged about 3 I believe. She was well aware of the fact that she was only allowed Cola as an occasional treat but of course being 3 she felt if we didn't see her stealing it it was cool. So we took to placing it in the top cabinets.
One fateful day I heard a fizzing sound and running liquid then my daughter bawling her eyes out. I found her standing on the counter, with a 2 litre bottle of coke slowly emptying itself... onto her Grandmother's brand new laptop. She was panicking because it was heavy and leaking and didn't know what to do next. Looking back it was hilarious, but it wasn't very funny at the time.
Laptop dried out, and had a very sticky keyboard. Somehow it was salvageable and I ended up getting it up and running after replacing the keyboard ($20 part).
When my daughter was just under 2, we lived in a studio apartment and I had a $700 laptop as I was in grad school. It was by far the most expensive thing I owned at the time. The apartment being what it was, I had run cable, very securely, or so I thought, up a wall and through the only doorway to the kitchen to connect my computer to the Internet as this was pre-wifi. My kid, who has never misbehaved or broken anything really, accidentally knocked over her drawing board in the which set off a Goldberg series of events culminating with the cable snapping down and knocking my soda straight into my laptop's open keyboard. I was devastated, especially when the repair place told me it was a goner. I refused to believe them though and ordered a new keyboard and replaced it myself for a grand total of $40. Thankfully it worked and I used that thing for six more years.
My sister once ate the reel inside our VHS copy of Pocahontas. That was really upsetting.
I jumped on the roof of my mothers dodge neon like a trampoline cause I seen it on the Simpsons.
And they try saying cartoon don't really have imitateable acts. *Goes to order an ACME catapult.*
A pandora bracelet with about $1500 worth of charms on it.
When my wife and I married, one of her friends suggested it to me as an easy way to keep up with anniversary gifts (I'm a horrible gift buyer). Every year I would buy her a few charms, maybe a couple for Christmas, it was a great idea.
I had our bathroom sink clog solid one day so I dumped in some draino. It wasn't moving so I let it sit for 10 minutes. In that time the little asshole threw the bracelet he saw on the counter into the sink. It ate away the silver. Five years of charm collecting down the literal drain.
On the bright side, she doesn't have to worry about it getting full and needing to choose which ones to swap out for an extra 5 years.
My wife's sanity.
She is an amazing woman, strong as stone. But OMG, the incessant destruction, whining, and sheer velocity, of our toddler has reduced this amazon to a quivering mass of overload and stress on many days.
The smashed electronics, keys sent down drains, and all the flushed items can be replaced, but once you have had your spirit broken, and you have seen yourself literally reduced to a weeping mass on the kitchen floor, while said toddler runs around you in giggling circles... that is something that cannot be mended.
Me? I'm chock full of brain damage, which places me more on the supply side of household insanity, but you can't break what's already broken right? So, I got that going for me.
Toddlers need to be taught what no means & that there are consequences. I believe in spanking. Not child abuse. It is amazing how a swift swat on the butt can adjust an attitude. Telling them no constantly with no time out etc. only tells them mums not going to do anything about it.
My daughter at the time was 2 years old. Came down the slide and her foot kicked my wife's engagement ring and the main diamond setting broke off in the playground. $12,000 1.85ct diamond somewhere in that playground. No insurance on it. I spent my life's savings to buy that ring. Took me another 3 years of secretly saving to replace it.
Wow, 12k on a ring and you didn't get insurance??? What were you thinking? I'd want insurance on a $100 ring.
When I was babysitting this little boy named Kiren and his sister, he thought it would be fun to throw all of his toys at things. And when I tried to stop him, he decided to throw a toy tractor at my face. It hit right above my eye, shattering my glasses and leaving me with a huge scar above my eye socket
and so the next week you let the kid "work" on a 2300 dollar computer the father was repairing ...
My kids are proving very expensive: the eldest had a bike for sand racing when he was 9, kept in his grandma's garage. She lives at the end of a private (ie offroad) lane and my husband let him ride it up and down. A car pulled out of a space just as he sped off. He swerved and hit a neighbour's brand new car. Thousands to repair. He recently got his road licence and two months in came off his brand new bike. Another £600. He also punched a hole in our tv. Child two flooded the bathroom. Child three had a thing for keys: lost the only key to a car we wanted to sell (over half car's value to replace it), then lost the only key to my car. Then lost the only key to a holiday house within minutes of us arriving. Child four has so far been good....
You need to get copies of keys made. Child four is just biding their time
When I was maybe 7 my brother about 6. My dad was in construction. He had a set of new cabinets in our laundry room to be installed in someones kitchen. My brother drew all over them with a compass. When my father came home, my brother told him it was me. I was sent to my room for 3 days with no dinner, but my mom snuck me food. My brother told my dad it was him because he felt so bad for me.
First, why did a 6 yo have unsupervised access to what is essentially a sharp spike weapon? Second, how is starving a child for 3 days a suitable punishment even if your mom did sneak food (which is lame in the first place as I would tell off my husband and not allow him to deprive our child of a necessity of life)? And lastly, what punishment did your brother receive and what reparations were made for unjustly punishing you?
Not expensive at the time, but my 68 year old father currently laments over money he's out now due to his actions as a kid. He was a somewhat spoiled only child. He had a HUGE baseball card collection and actually still has a big portion of it. Apparently rookie cards weren't particularly valuable in his child mind so he would often use those first to clothespin to the spokes of his bicycle wheels to make a cool motor sound. Not sure why he didn't use regular playing cards. My grandparents always had several decks on hand and could have spared one.
It was the early 80's and we had just gotten our first microwave. My mom had learned how easy it is to make a baked potato in them. She thought that it was easy enough for little 7 year old me to do too. Except she gave me zero instruction other than how long it might take to cook. She neglected to tell me to do it in increments and poke the potato in between to see if it was done yet. I think I put it in for the maximum time and went to watch cartoons. The potato caught on fire and completely melted the inside of the microwave. You would have thought she'd learned her lesson after she didn't give enough instruction for me to boil eggs the first time and I ruined a kettle when I let them boil so long they boiled dry. Thank goodness my cooking skills have improved since then.
When my brother and I were small, 3 and 2 respectively, my family was kind of poor at the time. My mom had one nice thing she treasured. It was a glass scales of justice from Princess House. My brother and I had gotten small stuffed animals and decided to play indoor catch in the living room right in from of the floor model TV that the scales were on top of. I'm 41 and she still asks if I remember breaking them. I was 2. I only remember my mom constantly reminding me of the first bad thing I did as a child, not the actual act itself.
When I was in high school I accidentally kind of set the kitchen on fire. My friend and I were home alone and decided to make pot stickers. We had the oil heating (too high) and before I knew it the pot burst into flames which immediately grew to overshadow me. The flames were licking the microwave which was above the stove and trying to climb higher towards the ceiling.
My idiotic teenage brain told me to grab the pot and put it in the sink. Of course the movement sloshed the burning oil over onto the floor, the rug, and of course onto myself. I received first, second, and severe third degree burns on my left hand and wrist.
My even more idiotic teenage friend went to turn the water on but I screamed at her not to. I couldn't think of what to do, but I at least knew not to put water on an oil fire. My mind was drawing a blank as I watched the flames soar out of my control and as the smoke detector pierced my ears and mind. As I tried to wave the smoke away from the detector with a towel, I told my friend to call 911.
Once we knew help was on the way, I managed to get the cat in my parents' car and the dog safe in the back of the house. My friend and I went to the front yard to await our rescuers.
The firefighters came in with a fire extinguisher and with one "PSHT" the fire was out. They applied some numbing burn gel on my hand, and my friend and I were allowed to sit in the truck. They put one of those big fans in our front doorway to move the smoke out. They stayed with us until my parents arrived home in frantic fear to see a fire truck in front of their house and no kids around (this was before texting was common).
Overall, the fire itself didn't do as much damage as the smoke. Honestly, the kitchen got off easier than my hand did.
Not a parent but a friend of my mom had a son and when he was 3 he launched a toy into a 65 in TV. Shit.
My kid blew the motor on a Ford Contour. I guess he thought the temp gauge was nothing to worry about.
When my sister was probably not even two years old, she knocked over & broke my dads 12 string Bass Guitar, he still doesn't let her live that down.
My son turned a one year old car into a submarine. We get flooding here every time it rains so locals know to stay out of puddles. Except my son, I guess. I've asked him many times what his comfort level driving through water is. Mine is 2 or 3 inches. He somehow managed to flood the car to the middle of the steering wheel.
I bought my daughter a DS when she too young for it. She lost the stylus almost immediately. One day she says "look daddy I found the pen!" It was a small screwdriver and she had completely destroyed the bottom screen with it.
Years ago, my sister broke about $2000 of my father's fishing rods - gifts from a client and friend - over the course of about a week.
Drove my mom's car into a ditch when I was eight. Apart from thousands of dollars in odds and (broken) ends, I think that tops the list for me.
I don't know the price but when I was a kid (7 years old) my mom had a camera that she liked a lot, it was from another country and she always took it everywhere. Then I just found out that taking pics was pretty fun and started to run around the house with the camera. Slipped, fell right on top of the camera, and my mom couldn't even turn it on. Never tried photography again after that.
Maybe not the most expensive but when we were in the process of selling our house my younger sister who was 6 at the time did not want to move so she went around the house and cut one slat in all of the window blinds. My parents had to replace all them. Her and a friend also signed their names in Sharpie on our bedroom ceiling.
Do you guys remember the old original flat screens? They were huge and expensive. Well my uncle bought one and was the first in the family to get one. My little cousin hit it with a baseball bat to get the people out.
I have family friends that flew to South Africa from Singapore for a luxurious family holiday on their way to a ludicrously expensive family honeymoon/wedding in Mauritius. Both remarrying with kids from previous marriages, both sides kids had serious vendetta's against their parent's soon to be spouse and were brats about it. They combined forces to ruin the entire trip, I was there to witness the South Africa part of it. I've never seen anyone capable of making so much tension with such ease that every moment seems unbearably uncomfortable and unpleasant.
So though not a traditional expensive object, but an excessively experience experience ( around $50 000 worth) ruined.
How selfish. Did they not realize that they were also hurting their own parent on their wedding day? SMH.
When she was about 7 my daughter got up in the middle of the night because she "felt funny". The kid has/had hardly been sick a day in her life so she had no idea she was nauseous. She didn't want to bother us, so she sat down with the lap top to play games and distract herself. Ended up vomiting all over a 17" Macbook Pro. She proceeded to set it down on the leather couch, change her pajamas, and go back to bed (since she felt better). The Macbook had been gifted to us because the disk drive didn't work and it had become useless to the prior owner. It was our sole computer and we were not in financial shape to replace it at the time, so it was a painful loss.
I once woke up in the middle of the night, went into my Mom's room to tell her I didn't feel good. I then puked on the bedroom floor. She then told me "NOT IN HERE! NOT IN HERE!." I then puked in the hallway, the bathroom floor, and the top of the toilet seat before getting dry heaves.
A friend of mine started dating this girl, she had 2 kids from a prior relationship... both maybe 7-8 years old. Anyways he brings the group over to mine and the kids are running about the place. We had just moved so the place was pretty spartan and a lot of boxes were left out.
Long story short, the kids got into my comic books and absolutely loving all things marvel proceeded to unbag, read and generally damage about £1500 worth. Peak of the damage done was getting fucking chocolate on a first appearance of Ms Marvel and cracking the plastic and damaging the cover of a slabbed NYX #3. The rest was knocking a multitude of comics down from mint by manhandling them.
My little cousin found a 400 year old piece of art in the storage shed and ruined it by doodling on it.
Why was a 400 year old piece of art in a storage shed in the first place and why did an unsupervised child have a writing instrument in the storage shed.
I had a $3000 TV. 60" 3D LED LCD, a good few years back. When I got divorced, I got to take it, and it was probably the most expensive thing I owned.
My 4 year old daughter one day decided that it needed to be watered like a flower. Poured a big cup of water directly onto the screen. To this day I'm not sure what compelled her to do it, but she tells me that she wanted to make it grow bigger.
Not my kid but a girl in my year in high school got a gently used Audi A5 convertible with all the options for her 17th birthday. She cried hysterically and immediately slammed it into a pole because it wasn't a gray Nissan Altima like all her friends got.
She destroyed an Audi A5 because it wasn't an Altima? I'm sorry... how much paint did her mom huff when she was carrying her?
My sister had a brand new Coach purse. My then one year old daughter decided it would look better if it was filled with Big Red soda.
I don't personally understand the appeal of spending that kind of money on a slab of leather anyway...
My kid inserted coins into electronic slots constantly. Ruined the car stereo, DVD players, music system to name a few.
When I was young, I was a curious fellow. Our family car had an automatic sunroof and my tiny little mind was curious if I could hold the cover of the sunroof and have the window open above it. I was wrong. The sunroof decided to never open again.
When I was two I rubbed a quarter pounder of butter into my parents off white designer rug. I was an expensive kid to have around.
Our neighbors bought brand new living room furniture. All white. Their 8 year old got a ketchup packet from McDonald's. He opened it and placed it on the arm of the sofa, facing in. Then he brought his fist down as hard as he could.
I'd like to say they laugh about it now, but it's been years, and no one really talks about it.
Why would you even TRY to have white furniture when there are children in the house??? X'D
When I was a kid, my parents took me out somewhere and I climbed on a water fountain and it broke off the wall. Don't even want to think about what that cost...
Permanent marker all over our brand new quartz countertop....... brand new....
My older sister once ruined all of Thanksgiving dinner by shitting on the table. She was born early November and for like 2 weeks didn't shit. Doc said it was fine and that it all would come out eventually. Well it did while she was in a rocker on the table with the rest of Thanksgiving dinner. I wasn't even alive for this event, but I still make fun of her for it.
So she pooped so much, it came out of the diaper and the rocker and got all over the food.. glad I didn't have to clean it up! My 2 year old brother did that on brand new carpet. It was put in while we were out of town. First night back, unloading the car, he pooped and it came out of the back of his diaper.
I broke my mum's really nice hand mirror (that had belonged to her grandmother) because I was trying to look at what my vagina looked like. I wasn't that old, maybe 10-12 and I had to make up a bogas excuse because I was too embarrassed to give her the real reason. She still doesn't know and I feel so bad about it.
My son, around 2 at the time used my phone as a spoon to eat ice cream. I had to use speaker and yell into my phone for a week whenever I had a call. Eventually it stopped wanting to charge. Melted ice cream does things to phones.
When I was around seven years old I was playing with a bouncy ball and it hit an old tiffany figurine that was above the fireplace, knocking it over and splitting it in half. It was worth around 5000 dollars apparently .
My little brother is basically Bam Bam from The Flinstones. He's always been as strong as an ox-- and about as graceful.
He had a habit of kicking his car door open as a kid. He'd open it a bit and just fling it wide open with a massive donkey kick.
One day, my step mom pulled into the garage a bit too close to my dad's Jaguar. My brother rocket-boots his door open so hard that it jams into the back door of the Jag and f****** sticks. My dad and I have to rock my step mom's SUV to unstick it.
When it finally comes unstuck, it leaves an 8-inch ragged gash in the door of the Jag. My dad was about as crestfallen as I've ever seen him.
My daughter stood on our dinning room table and spun the chandelier until it came out of the ceiling.
I'm not a parent but my younger sisters ruined my mac eyeshadows. ALL OF THEM. I was so mad still have to get the money back. It was over £100 pounds worth that I had collected over the years.😢😭😢
This is for myself.
When I was younger, my parents would take my best friend and I to the swimming pool in the evening. Mum and Dad would have Indian takeout for two in the dining room while we two would have spaghetti Bolognese while watching a movie in the living room.
We started playing a make-believe game, and a cushion got thrown at some point. It hit one of the vases on the mantelpiece - one of a matching pair - and it fell onto the stone hearth of the fireplace - which was not in use -. It hit the sharp corner and glanced off, so it only got a small ragged hole in the back rather than shattering into a million ceramic shards.
We both got a massive chewing out and to this day, it still has the hole in the back.
My dad's company car. When I was around 14 or so, my dad took me to an abandoned parking lot to have my first driving lesson. It was completely empty except for a solid mound of asphalt 2-3 ft high at one end where I had to turn. What harm could I cause, right?
Well, I suck at telling left from right, so when he told me to go to the right of the mound, I panicked and instead managed to get the car stuck on top of the mound. It seemed alright initially, but he noticed it was a bit odd to drive later and took it in. Turns out I'd messed up the frame and totaled it. It was an upgraded Lincoln.
No way - that's not how you totally mess up the frame! Driving up on the asphalt mound might get the car stuck, but would likely do very little damage to the sheet metal frame! Sounds like YOU got framed for something HE did to the car before you got to it...
One of my young nieces was holding my new born nephew and another one of them was playing with an old cabbage patch doll. I turned away for a few minutes, there were other people there and when I turned back I saw my niece, who was holding my new born nephew to the throw what I thought was my nephew to the ground hard. I shouted out NOOOO!!!! My family looked at me like I was crazy. Then I realized they had switched while I was out of the room. So my niece shaved about 10 years off my life. My family still bust my balls about it.
Bust your balls? Shame on them! You didn't know about the switch. You had every right to go all "momma bear!
Not the parent in this case. I was 7 and my dad had just bought a brand new Harley bike. He had been saving up for years to get this bike. I wanted to sit on it so I tried to climb on. In the process, I tipped it over and it rolled down the hill we lived on before getting ran over by a garbage truck. I still don't get to live that one down.
All these parents fail to set boundaries. My father had guns around (not loaded) and bullets. He was a lifetime member of NRA. We three never touched any of it because we knew at an early age how powrful they were.
My grandson totaled four cars before he turned seventeen...luckily he's still okay.
That should be on the grandson's dime to replace the car. I doubt a 16-year old had enough money to purchase FOUR cars within a year! Wouldn't let the kid be driving for a long time after the first one, even if he DID have the money. That's ridiculous and even putting his life at risk.
When I was 2 and my brother 3 my granddad forgot to lock his car and we lived on a very steep hill. We played "grandpa and grandma" with my brother as grandpa at the wheel. He startet touching and moving everything and I can still remember me arguing with him about that (see:it was not my fault :-P...)
He managed to make the car roll down the road, breaking through a garden and ending with the car on head (tyres up to the sky) on the street below. We were both only slightly injured, but the car was completely damaged. Plus: the woman being in that garden had a heart-attack some weeks before and got so shocked of this car rolling without someone to see in the car, that she had to go to bed for days.
At least we made it up to the local newspaper at toddler's age...
A few weeks ago, my family stopped to have lunch, and though we never let our kid have soda, we let her have a root beer that day. We left and she took her drink to go. We had to run an errand, and she put her drink in the cup holder in the center console in the front that lifts for an additional seat in the front (truck). I'll never understand how it happened, but she got back in the truck from the front seat and somehow managed to catapult the drink up, hitting the windshield and headliner and drenching the entire dashboard. Every button was instantly ruined. To make matters worse, the radio began shorting out, switching stations, volume going up and down, then it finally settled on some terrible song blasting full volume and wouldn't change. Not even the buttons on the steering wheel would do anything. Air conditioning, radio, everything, done. We went to autozone and I grabbed shop towels and cleaner and headed to the car wash. After about 20 minutes, everything began working normally!!! However, the buttons on the dash still don't work, but at least the ones on the steering wheel do.
I'm just thankful it works!
When i was very little(i had just learned to walk), I was carrying around a piece of wire from one of those $2 fishing nets, and my mum came up behind me and crouched down to pick me up, at that same moment i happened to fall backwards(cause i couldn't walk properly) i swung my arm up and accidentally stabbed her in the eye.
My dad used to Polish up his black shoes every morning.Just to help him out, one morning I (a toddler)decided to do the same.
Couldn't find the black Polish so Used the White liquid one. It seeped into the shoes through the mesh and holes and everything. They were destroyed. Parents had a good laugh....they still do.
When I was 7 my mom got me a birthday cake.Times had been difficult for all 3(mom,dad and me. .my litle sister who was 3 year old didnt know and care about much).They were working hard and I also felt they never really cared too much about me.
Anyways She surprises me with a cake. .I am happy.very happy.....she keeps it on the bed in front of me...my sister is next to her....next thing you know, BAMMM...she(sister ) slams her hand right in the centre of the f***ing cake and I hadn't even looked at it properly. .The icing and toppings got messed up.
Still remember like it happened yesterday. I wanted to cry.I still remember the utter sadness in my heart but didn't want to upset mom. So I sucked it up and continued. ..
Needless to say I hated her that day.
It wasn't an expensive cake but it was something precious to me ..something I had got after a long time. The memory is still there and it still makes me mad..
My daughter was two at the time, I was on the phone to my mum telling her our gorgeous and very,very expensive new sofas had been delivered. I ended the call, turned round and my daughter said "look mummy, its you " she had drawn a picture of a face in black marker pen on the back of the sofa
I called my mum back in tears and she said, oh, that's kids for you "
Why/how does this kind of thing keep happening to people? Do people not realize that if you can't stick to washable markers and crayon within child reach then nothing should be within the reach of children? I have a 5yo and 1 yo and never had artwork anywhere but the drawing paper provided. Your mom is wrong. That's not kids for you in the majority of families.
When I was a kid, I used a garden ornament to scratch a massive love heart into the bonnet of my family's Honda Accord. It didn't go down well at first but the car got handed down through the family twice, so it couldn't have been that bad.
1 thing I have 2 boys 4 1/2 years apart I think they have a contest to see who cost me the most money, 1st was a big screen TV repeatedly pushing the button on & off. I digital camera I don't think it lasted 1 hour before pushing the chip in backwards, laptop computer science project (eco system ) tipped over on it, drywall damage, a toaster, and the list goes on and on oh did I mention the car at ages 6 & 2.
It was the early 80's and we had just gotten our first microwave. My mom had learned how easy it is to make a baked potato in them. She thought that it was easy enough for little 7 year old me to do too. Except she gave me zero instruction other than how long it might take to cook. She neglected to tell me to do it in increments and poke the potato in between to see if it was done yet. I think I put it in for the maximum time and went to watch cartoons. The potato caught on fire and completely melted the inside of the microwave. You would have thought she'd learned her lesson after she didn't give enough instruction for me to boil eggs the first time and I ruined a kettle when I let them boil so long they boiled dry. Thank goodness my cooking skills have improved since then.
I didn't double post. Honest. This happened without my doing.
When my husband was 4 years old, he painted his dad's new car with turpentine he found in a paint can in the garage. His dad had left the paint brush soaking in the can of turpentine. That was 70 years ago and people in the family still talk about it.
My MacBook, ADSL modem, PS3 system and 50-inches LG TV, all of them in a matter of seconds. Three days ago my son and daughter insisted on keep playing GTA5 and surfing the web during a thunderstorm. Then a lightning suddenly hit our house, discharging in the telephone system.
My only solace is that this won't happen again, since lightnings never struck two times in the same place (at least, they say so).
Actually that old adage about lightning strikes is Bs, it is scientifically proven that lightning is more likely to strike in the same spot next time, because it will remember its path from before. There's a new thing out to prevent this kind of damage, it's called a surge protector.
My mother saved up to have cream shag pile carpet laid in her bedroom (don't judge - it was the 70s). One day while Mum was at work, my five year old sister decided she wanted to paint her fingernails, and went into our mother's room in search of nail polish.
She found a fetching shade of fire engine red...but the lid was stuck, and she couldn't open the bottle. So what would any enterprising five year old do? Try to loosen the lid, of course. With a hammer.
Next minute... there she was with shattered glass, and red polish seeping into the carpet. She tried to clean up the mess, only every attempt to wipe up the polish only spread it further.
Her reasoning then went, "If I can't wipe it up, then I'll cut it out."
So she took to the offending stain with a pair of scissors. And ended up with a big, bright red, glaringly obvious bald patch in Mum's brand new shag pile. Which she then covered up with a pile of clothes and stashed the cut strands under the bed, in the hopes that Mum wouldn't notice until my sister had grown up and left home.
(Guess what...she noticed...)
As a child, about 6yrs old, I absent mindedly picked at a paint chip in mom's red Nissan car... At some point, I realised that I might get into trouble, so crudely wrote my borther's name with a stone in the paintwork. My plan was ALMOST flawless. My only mistake? My brother of 3yrs old could not write his name yet.
When I was about 4 or 5, my family and I were new to this country from the UK. My mom found us an apartment, but didn't understand that the contract she signed was for the outgoing superintendent's apartment, so they were the new superintendents of a 10 building, 300 unit complex. When my parents took over, the building's interior painting was being re-done. The painter's were disposing of their used cans, stir sticks, rags, brushes and chemicals by leaving the empty or near empty containers outside of the garbage and maintenance sheds on the property. There was guy that lived in our building who was constantly parking his car in front of the sheds, even though he had received many verbal and written warnings from the property owners. The city had issued a warning citation about the paint and chemical cans being left behind with residential garbage. Anyway, myself and 4 or 5 friends found ourselves with nothing to do when we came across, paint, paint brushes and liquid to stir in the paint. We painted the whole side of the car that wasn't supposed to be parked there. Turns out the car was 1958 Challenger with a custom paint job and rims. Paint job and rims were worth more than the car to buy it new. Car owner was furious and tried to make my dad, the superintendent pay for all his damages. Not sure exactly what my dad said but it was something like you were warned not to park there and to bugger off. Fast forward a week or so, Dad comes home from work and we're all outside watching the show-some teenagers smoking behind the sheds had accidently started a fire. Dad was smiling pretty big when he saw that the firefighters had smashed the windows of the challenger to run their hoses through to get water to the fire because he was still parked where he shouldn't be. Dad still had his smile on when the fire chief came to talk to him about the car parked in the fire lane and the illegally disposed of paint and chemical containers that had made the small fire very dangerous to fight. Dad calmly went to his desk and pulled out copies of the written warnings that both the car owner and the owner of the painting company had received. That night we were all woken up to the sound of sirens, the challenger was burning. Years later dad told me that the painting company had be fined and sued out of existence for the improper disposable of the paint and sued for having a hand in the fire. The fella who owned the challenger went to jail for 6 months for insurance fraud, turns out he had torched his own car and then claimed it was destroyed in the fire that destroyed the garbage and maintenance sheds.
My nephew decided to move into a dorm instead of the house his parents still owned but couldn't sell, and was told, "OK, but be sure you turn off the water when you move out." ( Parents in another state).
He didn't. Pipes froze. Pipes burst. A month later $30,000 of damage discovered. Insurance refused to pay, since it "was preventable".
Good luck selling that unsellable house NOW!
We needed a new double sink vanity top for the bathroom, as the old one was deteriorating and impossible to get totally clean. Had to special order it to fit the existing cabinet, then the cabinet came apart when they were removing the top, so we had to get a new cabinet!
One week after we got it installed, my stepdaughter permanently stained it with hair dye she was using to turn her hair from one shade of brown to another. After I had requested that she NOT use hairdye in our bathroom due to ruining a bunch of towels!
My stepdaughter dyes her hair blue. Fun fact: if you leave hair all over the bathroom (as teenage girls do) and it sits in a puddle, the dye leaches out and stains the tiles. I now have light swirly patterns on my tiles, in a house that is less than 3 years old. Also the grout and tile edges in the shower are turning blue from leached hair dye when she washes her hair
When I was in the second grade I would take the change off of my dad's dresser so I could get an ice cream at lunch. Turns out that change he was saving cuz it was all old a d worth more . I still feel horrible and to this day I look at every coin to and give them to my Dad. He tells me not to and it's all good.
I found screwed up money in the kitchen bin. My 4 year old looked up and said 'I did that, I always look in daddy's wallet and throw the old ones away.
When I was about six, I had just started tap. I had the brilliant idea to tap dance on the hardwood floor. I put on my tap shoes, went in the kitchen, and started tapping. I did a bunch of steps and my mom came in and yelled at me to stop. $200 dollar floor covered in scratches. Luckily, we don't live there anymore.
Yes, I have another story. When I was still six, I had an American Girl Doll. I put on her ice skating shoes, and had her skate across the hardwood floor. There is some very faint scratch marks there. Not good.
When I was a kid I had a best friend. When she and I were eight years old her parents had bought, for the first time ever, a piece of art for their house. It was a 1 meter high stone tablet with some kind of a picturesque scene carved out in it. They were so proud, it had cost what was to them a fortune, they had been saving money for years to buy it.
So yeah, they invited me and an my mother to come and see it. It was not hanging on the wall yet, but instead they had temporarily put on the floor in the hallway, near the stairs.
When my mother and my friends' parents went into the living room, my friend and I stayed in the hallway. We decided it would be fun to jump from the higher treads of the stairs. So I went halfway up the stairs and jumped down. I smashed right into the piece of art. It shattered completely.
To be honest, I don't know whether my parents were insured, or if they repaid those people. It all happened over twenty years ago and I still don't have the guts to ask my mother how she solved the situation.
To end on a happy note: Annika (that's the name of aforementioned friend) is still one of my best buddies. :)
Not a parent, but when I was ten, my 4 1/2 year old brother was angry at me (forgot why), so he cut a small hole in my brand new bathers. I actually wanted him dead.
My 5 year old daughter caught a crappie and put it in our salt water tank. Unknown to us. the next morning we woke up and all of the tropical fish were gone .
At least you had one fish left - the crappie. My son had taken a Carassius from the river and it lived with our decorative fish for three years. No babies ever survived as it was fast in eating them. It became so large and strong, very wild as whenever human appeared it jumped and hit itself in the cover of the aquarium, so he returned it back to the river. Now he have baby fishes.
Back when my nephew was 2 years old we were watching Tombstone. During the gunfight at the OK corral scene we heard "Charrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrge!!!" and he came swinging at the TV with his toy guitar. The TV lost, and it was one of those expensive rear projection ones from the 90s.
He must've thought he was El Kabong ... did he say, "ka-bong!" when he swung his guitar?
Not a parent. However I was recently told this by my mother..
Possibly around over 20 years ago she was dating a guy (not biological father) One day my sister and I were bored, so I suppose we went to find something to play with. And oh boy, did we.
Apparently we found his Star Wars Collectables. His Star Wars collectables that had never been open.. His Star Wars collectables that his father gave to him when he was younger.. Welp. Apparently not only did we crack in to those bad boys - we broke them. And we lost some.
I can't imagine how much they would've meant to him. Or how much he could've eventually sold them for.. When my mum told me, I kind of felt as though I owed him a deeply apologetic letter.
My 2 year old broke my in-laws’ giant TV. Threw a toy at it while we were watching the super bowl and it just went black.
My older sister was obsessed with anything shiny when she was 3, so naturally she threw my mom's engagement ring in the trash. They never found it.
A little late, but my brother once destroyed a very expensive blender ($200+). I made smoothies, but being a lazy teenager, put the leftovers directly into the freezer... still in the blender. Fast forward to the next day when my brother, the KING of lazy teenagers, takes the blender out of the freezer, puts that thing directly on the base, and presses the button to blend. Two seconds is all it took to completely strip the entire mechanics of the base and container. His reaction? He takes strawberry flavored marshmallows and f***** sticks the components back together. He put that s*** back in the freezer, hoping no one would notice before he left for good, and shipped off to basic training two days later. My dad was so p*****.
I found my two year old jumping on my laptop the other day shouting 'hop hop hop!' So currently it is that.
When my sister was about 5 or 6 she decided to help dad by washing his mint 1975 corvette convertible for him. Sweet gesture if she hadn't used 80 grit sand paper.
When I was a toddler, I found my dad's watch and wanted to hand it to him. He said he didn't want it. He found it later in the trash :)
The 3 million dollar bill insurance covered for our sons back surgery because he refused to wear his scoliosis brace.
True it could of gone both ways, but he didn't help matters. Just the co-pays drove me into bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy I can handle. It is the sheer amount of years he shaved off all of his family members lives. His dad and I ( after a bitter breakup) got to help the nurses preform CPR on him while they were trying to find a crash cart cause come to find out the poor kid is allergic to anesthesia.
After coding twice he finally stabilized. It took 2 days of touch and go though before he was out of the woods.
I took a picture of his sister sitting beside his bed and you can literly see her soul draining from her eyes. He reminds her of that now when she is mad at him lol. In true sibling fashion she also reminds him she was close enough to pull the plug. At least we can bike about it now?
After 5 years of PTSD counseling i think we all are finally over it.
Thank God it turned out ok.
My grand daughter who I was never really close to anyway, because she reminds me of her mother whom I despise, was spending the night. I normally have her sleep in the guest bedroom but this night I was very tired and fell asleep on the couch while she was still up. She's 7. At 11:30PM she woke me up to inform me she had just puked all over the entire living room. Destroying $1,000.00 worth of furnishings and a $850.00 gaming laptop I had just bought my grandson for xmas!!!! She also puked all over his Samsung phone. Thank God it was in a waterproof case. It was the only thing I was able to save from the awful smell and ground in food. I wanted to kill her and just started shrieking so loudly my landlord came upstairs to see what was going on I yelled at him too(big mistake). Anyhow, I called her Dad at Midnight to come pick her up and told him NEVER to bring her to my house ever again. I feel bad about it now but I feel like she did it to be spiteful, she's old enough to know better.
When I was 5 i filled up the fuel tank in my dirt bike with sand because I ran out of gas.
Not the parent but the son of said parent.
Maybe not most expensive but probably most valued at the tine...
My dad loved the old gran turismo games for the ps1 he had beaten every single race, had every car and all the licenses.....
I loved crash team racing and forgot to switch out the memory cards.... BYE BYEEEE
I still feel bad about it, and he still remembers.
My friend bought a used pair of Wilson Watt Puppy stereo speakers for $20,000 (yes, 20 grand). His young son took a pair of scissors to one of the bass drivers and grill. The repair cost my friend $3000 to restore it.
When I was two or Three I put the spare house key of my parents friends at the time in the cassette player of my parents car and ruined the car radio.
My cousin's brother once hit my cousin's head with a bolo knife. She got about 12 stitches from that incident.
My mother, who is an adult that spills or drops something everyday, spilled soda on her laptop twice. That's another reason, besides browsing history, for her to never touch my laptop
I was 13 and downloaded everything my small grubby child-teen hands could click on on limewire.
I'm sorry mom.
My parents tell me to this day I ruined their marriage and it cost my dad hundreds of thousands.
Wow. That must be a nice and stable relationship you have with them. I feel like I should give you a hug and tell you, "it's not your fault" over and over like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting
Opps, I accidentally put this in the wrong place above. ---- One of the things I loved and enjoyed so much was one of Bill Cosby's Live albums, where he talks about the grandparents visiting their frazzled child, and the old man says with a Huge Smile, "Having problems Son?!" :D There are two things to take away from this. First, "Kids are a grandparent's way of getting even with their children". And Secondly, "Revenge always tastes best when it is served cold." As a grandparent, I know this oh so well. ;D
Opps, I accidentally put this in the wrong place above. ---- One of the things I loved and enjoyed so much was one of Bill Cosby's Live albums, where he talks about the grandparents visiting their frazzled child, and the old man says with a Huge Smile, "Having problems Son?!" :D There are two things to take away from this. First, "Kids are a grandparent's way of getting even with their children". And Secondly, "Revenge always tastes best when it is served cold." As a grandparent, I know this oh so well. ;D