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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!
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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 assholes, 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.
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.
