Any parent can tell you that raising kids is no easy task, and if you don't have kids of your own, you're about to find out why. The parents of Reddit came together to share absolutely horrifying stories about some of the most expensive thing their kids have ever destroyed.
If you're a parent, hopefully these stories show you that you're not alone. Heck, maybe you'll even be grateful your kids haven't ruined anything this serious. If you're on the fence about having kids yourself, some of these stories might help you make up your mind, if you know what I mean.
Fasten your seatbelts and grab your sippy cups. You're in for a wild ride!
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 When Rides Go Wrong
When I was about 12, I somehow managed to break my nan's £1,000 stairlift while riding it.
#24 Spoon Smoothies
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."
#23 The Wrong Way To Get A Sharper Image
The television. Apparently, running the scissors over the screen makes it look better.
Psychlopaedia.com
#22 Changing The Song: You're Doin' It Wrong
The stereo in our minivan quit working. After a little troubleshooting, we found 25 pennies shoved in the CD slot.
#21 The Mac Book Attack
Not exactly ruined. I was on a Skype call introducing my dad to his newborn granddaughter and she threw 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. The backlight was patchy and smelled funny for some time. I renamed it "Mac 'n Cheese." Surprisingly, it still works 7 years later.
#20 Hereditary Havoc
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. 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.
#19 When The Force Fails You
Twenty 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.
#18 Klepto Barbie Strikes Again
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.
#17 The Extra Exfoliating Car Wash
I was washing my van one day 3 years ago, and my 2-year-old decided to help wash the other side... with rocks. Scratched right down to the primer.
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#16 Eye See What You Did There
My eye.
When she was six months old, she was sitting on 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 round).
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.
#15 How To Dodge A Hit And Run
I must post this for my dad. Right after I got my drivers license, 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, so 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."
Cue mad laughter from my dad. He gave me a pass on it for my craftiness.
#14 Find The Fitbit: The New Favorite Pastime Of Children Everywhere
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 temerity to cook him breakfast.
#13 Baby Handling 101
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.
#12 The Not-So-Helpful Helping Hand
I was watching Netflix while doing the dishes when I had to use the bathroom. I excused myself, and my 3-year-old daughter dragged a kitchen chair up to sink and decided to help do dishes while I was on the toilet. Goodbye $1,200 laptop that is now soaked in about a gallon of water.
#11 Something About This Story Sounds A Bit Fishy
We had a 90-gallon salt water tank with easily upwards of $3,000 worth of coral and fish. I went to work a night shift and my son unplugged everything for the night, and my husband didn't notice.
Everything was dead in the morning, and the house smelled lovely.
#10 The Wheels On The Train Go Crunch, Crunch, Crunch
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.
#9 World's Most Expensive Game Pieces
Sixteen iPads. How did our child ruin 16 iPads, you ask? Well, let me tell you. 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 it. 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 all 16 of them. The screens were trashed. Some of them would power on, but the touchscreen function was gone. She had to call her principal and explain. She got royally chewed out for it, but lo and behold, the next year they were planning on switching to Google Classroom instead. All new Chromebooks for the kids.
#8 When Windex Strikes Back
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 flatscreen TVs 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.
YouTube/Jack Tichenor
#7 A Whale Of A Tale
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. 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 from the upstairs bathroom floor. The downstairs bathroom ceiling had collapsed and there was a waterfall coming from upstairs.
#6 Not So Smooth Sailing
My grandpa was in the Navy and when he took his youngest son (my uncle) onto a ship for a tour, he 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.
#5 When You Wreck The Car Without Even Leaving The Garage
This one wasn't me, but happened to my friend way back in high school. We needed to get into the attic for something (the attic was in the garage). His parents weren't home, and his sister's car was under the attic. He turned her car on, accidentally put it in neutral, revved the engine, and panicked. He hit the gearshift into drive quickly. The car totaled his dad's motorcycle that was parked in front of the car. The car also went through the wall straight into the kitchen. It ended up being tons to repair and replace.
#4 A Gaming Computer's Final Game Over
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 $2,300. 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 3 p.m. to midnight, and my wife worked 9 to 5, so we had a part-time sitter that summer who took care of our 4-year-old son from 2-6 p.m. on weekdays. She was not the brightest woman, but we could afford her rates, and we weren't doing well 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.
Pinterest
#3 Son Vs. Sunglasses
Our 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. The kid found the misplaced/forgotten case, opened it, and proceeded to play with the sunglasses until they died.
#2 Epic 80's Fails
I knocked over my mother's massive pine China hutch when I was about 12. It destroyed all the China and everything else in its path. Then there was the time we used the neighbor's new sports car as a slide for a few hours (with our sandy shoes on). We were about 6. It required a complete paint job and some body work to repair. Man, I miss the 80's.
#1 Not The New TV
A few years ago at BestBuy they were giving away a new Nintendo Wii with the purchase of a TV. It sounded like a win for both me and my son who was constantly pestering me for the console. Done. We get them both.
I get home, set up the console, and my son accidentally throws the Wii remote directly into the middle of the new television screen while playing a tennis game.
Boom... $1500 down the drain.
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