Every parent wants to believe their kid is a perfect little angel—even if that means defending some truly devilish behavior. But when Mom and Dad turn a blind eye to temper tantrums, the rest of the world is left cleaning up the mess that rampaging kids leave in their wake. As these Redditors quickly learned, sometimes, bratty kids are nothing compared to their horrible parents.
1. Cake Day
It was my birthday, and the house was full — family, friends, laughter, chaos. Among them was my distant cousin and her nine-year-old son, Jake — a kid who looked like he’d never met a carb he didn’t like.
We’d just finished pizza and were getting ready for the main event: the cake. Except, when we walked back into the kitchen, there wasn’t a cake anymore. There was Jake — frosting on his hands, crumbs on his shirt, and chocolate smeared all over his face like a crime scene confession.
Before I could even process it, his mom swooped in with the usual excuses.
“It’s not his fault!” she said.
“Why was the cake even out?”
That’s when I snapped. “Get out. NOW.”
She puffed up and said — and I quote — “It’s not only your birthday. It’s all of ours too.”
My mom, the saint she is, stepped in before I could explode and calmly told her to leave. We ended up cutting into the backup cake — the sad, frosting-free one.
Jake’s mom didn’t get cake. She also won’t be getting any Christmas presents.
2. Nephews Of Mass Destruction
My ex-girlfriend from high school had the two worst nephews I’ve ever encountered — like, spawn-of-chaos level bad. Both had BB guns, because apparently giving tiny demons firearms was the family hobby.
One day, the older one — maybe eight — got mad about something small, like a sandwich cut wrong or breathing the same air as his brother. So he grabbed his BB gun and shot out the side windows of his mom’s car. Not an accident. Full-on target practice.
So, naturally, his mom took the gun away. Problem solved, right? Nope. The kid just grabbed his four-year-old brother’s BB gun and shot out the house windows instead. And when she went to take that one, she hesitated. “It wouldn’t be fair to his brother,” she said.
Then came the line that still gives me chills. As she tried to send him to his room, the kid looked her dead in the eye and said, “I’ll kill you, you cow.”
You’d think that would be the wake-up call. Instead, she started crying about how she’d “made him hate me,” dropped the punishment entirely, and handed him a bowl of ice cream.
I swear, that kid’s probably running a small militia by now.
3. Trouble In The Yard
When I taught preschool (ages 24–30 months), I had one kid who could best be described as juicy: loud, sticky, and perpetually unpleasant. Not an easy combo when you’re two.
Our outdoor play area was covered in soft mulch to cushion the constant falls. I was bending down to retie a shoelace when I heard a scream, one of those primal, stop-your-heart shrieks. I looked up just in time to see Mr. Juicy pulling his hand back from a little girl’s face. He’d stabbed her in the eye. With mulch.
No provocation, no tantrum, just pure toddler curiosity. “Oh, a stick! I’ll put it here,” said his brain.
We rushed the girl off to the ER with her parents. Then came the fun part: the parent conference. It turned out this child had been allowed, even encouraged, to bite, hit, scratch, tackle, and punch his family members. His father and two older brothers (11 and 13) thought it was hilarious. Their defense was that “he’s not big enough to hurt anyone, and he has so much fun.”
I just stared at them, wondering how people that stupid manage to feed themselves. They were raising a future sociopath and treating it like America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Listen, geniuses, your toddler might not be a physical threat to your teenage sons, but he’s perfectly capable of taking out the eye of another toddler. And unless someone teaches him that random violence isn’t “cute,” he’s only going to get bigger, not better.
4. Hands To Yourself
I was on a bus heading into Manhattan when a little five-year-old behind me started tugging on my hair. Not once or twice, but constantly. I turned around and politely asked his mother to get him to stop. She did absolutely nothing.
So the next time his grubby little hand reached out, I grabbed it and threatened to feed it to a hobo. He froze. Then, just like that, the hair-pulling stopped. The rest of the ride was blissfully quiet, and I finally got to enjoy my trip without yanking a feral child off my head.
5. It’s All Fun And Games Until…
We were all playing in the backyard one afternoon, just a pack of cousins running around, when one of them, let’s call him Sam, picked up a full-sized branch and smacked our cousin Alice right in the face with it.
It wasn’t some harmless kid scuffle either. The blow split her skin so badly that blood soaked her shirt, and she had to get stitches all over her face. It looked like something out of a horror movie.
The worst part was that Sam’s mother, one of my aunts, didn’t even get up to check on Alice, even though she was supposed to be the adult supervising us. When Alice’s mom confronted her, she just shrugged and said, “Boys will be boys.”
Poor Alice still carries the scars today, both the visible ones and the kind you can’t see.
6. Excuses, Excuses
My aunt and her three kids were usually “accidentally” left out of family gatherings, because she had absolutely no control over them. If they ever did show up, my sister and I would hide our favorite toys, since those kids would almost certainly smash them just to see if they would break.
During one of my dad’s birthday parties, we set up a big buffet table in the garden with all kinds of nice food so people could relax, eat, and chat. Within minutes, my cousins went over and took one or two bites out of nearly everything on the table.
My mother was so furious she had to be restrained. It fell to my dad to tell my aunt and her little monsters to leave. She just laughed it off, saying “they’re just kids,” as if that somehow excused it.
It was so disgraceful, and it confirmed why no one ever wanted them invited in the first place.
7. Vroom, Vroom!
A teenage boy and his friends were racing through my neighborhood when he took a corner too tight and snapped the fire hydrant clean off my lawn. A geyser of water shot 30 feet into the air. I heard the crash, ran outside, and saw him trying to flee.
As he backed up, he tore up my lawn before speeding off down the street. His getaway didn’t last long—his car stalled at the end of the block, and one of my neighbors held him there while his friends scattered.
Then his father showed up and insisted to my face that his son “wasn’t racing” and “didn’t try to run away.” Apparently, the boy had just “taken a turn too tight” and was “trying to get away from the water.” Sure. Meanwhile, the whole neighborhood was flooding because of his little joyride.
8. The Karate Kid
We’d visit my sister’s godparents in the suburbs and their kids, plus the extended family, would pick on me relentlessly. I told their parents and mine, and they all shrugged, saying they were “just playing around.”
Once they tied me to a tree and hit me with sticks. Another time they set their German Shepherd on me, the one they trained as a guard dog. After that my parents signed me up for hapkido in the fall, and we started visiting less.
That summer we were back every week and I hated it, so I stuck close to my parents and kept to myself, playing my Gameboy or reading. One day I brought my Magic cards to build a deck, and I learned that lesson the hard way. They grabbed my cards while I was in the bathroom, ripped half the cards and set fire to the rest. I was furious. One of the kids sneered, “What are you gonna do about it?”
He started shoving me. After the third shove I’d had enough. As he raised his hand, I swung faster and hit him in the throat then kicked him in the stomach. A couple of cousins tried to mob me, but one solid hit and they started crying.
Their parents ran over and, instead of checking on what happened, they started yelling at me for “starting a fight.” I pointed at the ash pile that used to be my cards, but they kept screaming. Then they turned to my parents and demanded to know what they were going to do. My parents got mad at me, and we left while the others continued apologizing.
Once we were in the car my mom said, “Thank God you finally taught those little jerks a lesson,” and we drove straight to the store so they could buy me some new cards.
9. Absolution
My ex–sister-in-law once defended her thirteen-year-old son after he punched a two-year-old in the face. Her excuse? “He’s got anger control issues, it’s not his fault!”
Sure, he had issues—but when the two-year-old’s mother got upset, my ex–sister-in-law acted like she was the crazy one for being angry that her toddler had just been assaulted. It was unreal.
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10. TV Tantrum
One afternoon, I was trying to help my cousin hook up his game cables to the TV. I was untangling the wires while he pulled the set back to reach the ports. Then he slipped and dropped the TV right on my head.
It hurt like hell, and I started crying. But before I could even say anything, my cousin began bawling—crying louder than me so he wouldn’t get in trouble. His grandmother, my aunt, came running in, took one look, and started shushing me.
“Stop whining,” she said, while comforting him and promising to take him out for ice cream. I sat there with a throbbing head, wondering how getting crushed by a television had somehow made me the bad guy.
11. Her Way Or The Highway
When I was in fourth grade, there was a girl who bullied everyone into giving her their stuff or playing with her at recess. She was never kind and never took no for an answer. Since both of our mothers were teachers at the school, I sometimes felt pressured to hang out with her even though she was awful to me and my friends.
One day, I’d finally had enough. I told her to take a hike in the best way a fourth grader could. I said we couldn’t play together anymore until she felt like being nice, and that I wanted to be left alone.
Not two hours later, I was pulled out of class by her mother and the evil little brat herself. Her mom stood over me for twenty straight minutes, scolding me for being “unkind” and picking on her daughter, while the girl stood behind her smirking the whole time.
12. Bullseye!
My friend, my brother, his friend, and I were spending the day at our summerhouse. My friend and I were on the trampoline, laughing and having a great time, when my brother’s friend decided to pick up a rock, load it into his “slingshot,” and shoot it straight into her left eye.
She started crying immediately, so we ran to my dad, who was chatting with the boy’s mother. We explained what happened while my brother and his friend stood nearby, still playing with the slingshot like nothing had happened.
His mother barely reacted. She told us it wasn’t her son’s fault, that it was an accident, and that we were the ones “in the way” of his slingshot. Then she turned to him and asked if he did it—still half defending him—and he said, “Yeah, I shot her in the eye.”
There was a long, silent pause before she said, “He’s just joking.”
He wasn’t. And now he’s a criminal.
13. Playground Punks
We were at the playground with my daughter and my ex’s three-year-old, and a pack of older kids, maybe seven or eight, were tearing around with zero regard for anyone else. It was a cool day and there were a bunch of little ones playing, so it was obvious they needed to slow down.
They nearly mowed my little one down, so I said, “Hey, watch out for the little kids.” At first my voice was calm and they kept running. After they almost knocked over another toddler, I raised my voice: “HEY, YOU TWO, WATCH OUT FOR THE LITTLE KIDS, YOU’RE GOING TO HURT SOMEONE.”
The kid stopped, looked at me, then walked over to his dad and pointed at me. The dad waddled over, face going red and muttering before he even reached us. He started yelling at me in this thick southern drawl about how I had no right telling his son what to do. His kid kept egging him on, shouting things like, “You tell him, dad,” and then dropped a nasty slur that I won’t repeat.
I told the kid in a firm voice, “You watch your mouth, little boy. You are in a public place and nobody wants to hear that trash.” The dad immediately shoved me in the chest and bellowed, “What did you just say to my boy?”
I decided enough was enough. I told my daughter we were leaving, and the dad cursed at us as we started to walk off. Then his little jerk trips my little one. That was the last straw.
I bum-rushed the dad, planted my hands on his flabby chest, and shoved him so hard he stumbled back. He fell into his kid and they both went sprawling, the dad landing on the plastic border of the mulch area with a squeal that told me it hurt. His kid was scraped up, my daughter was fine, and other parents were already pulling out their phones.
I said to the kid, “That’s why we watch where we’re going when little kids are around—didn’t feel good getting run over, did it?” I looked at the dad wobbling and moaning, but I wasn’t going to risk things getting worse. I scooped up the little one and we left before anyone could make it nastier.
14. Hiding In Plain Sight
When I taught high school, I was grading tests from the previous period while a class was still taking their exam. As the bell rang, a kid walked up to my desk, turned his paper in, then snatched the answer key off my desk and ran out the door.
I couldn’t bolt after him—I still had to finish collecting tests—so I called the dean. They caught him hiding it in his locker. His mother came in for a conference with me and the dean and flat-out denied it. She said, “He tells me he didn’t do it, and I believe him. He never lies to me.” Let’s just say her faith explained a few things about that kid.
Another time, I’d just given the first quiz of the year in my Chem class, a lab safety quiz. I graded it, handed the papers back so we could go over answers and the students could copy correct responses onto a separate sheet, then collected everything again. That way, if someone later ignored a safety rule and hurt themselves, I could point to the quiz and corrections and show I had taught the procedures.
One girl had used whiteout to change her score at the top, then written a different grade in a different color pen without even trying to fake my handwriting. Her dad was a cop and he came in to deny, deny, deny. We put the test down on the table and my boss scraped the whiteout off right in front of him, revealing the original grade underneath. He insisted I was trying to frame the girl.
Between the kid who stole the answer key and the grown-ups who defended obvious lies, I learned early that teaching sometimes means dealing with drama way beyond the classroom.
15. Stranger Danger
I walked into a shop where a little kid was running around like a tornado. I stood in line to ask the staff a question when the boy suddenly ran up and kicked me as hard as he could.
His mother’s response? “It is because you are a stranger.”
Right—because that makes it okay. He’s a stranger to me, but I didn’t kick him back in the face, did I?
Freepik,freepik
16. The Voice Coach
I was in Walmart a few weeks ago picking up a frozen pizza for dinner when a kid, maybe six or seven, started screaming his head off for a candy bar. It was nonstop wailing, echoing down the checkout lanes.
Then this old man in a wheelchair behind me shouted, “You’re singing out of pitch—sing it right or shut up!”
The entire line went silent for a second, and I swear it was my greatest moment in Walmart.
17. The Shame Circle
When I was in fourth grade, I was at a friend’s sleepover birthday party. The night before, all of us girls were outside on the trampoline, and I and the birthday girl, Michelle, were in the center playing some game. I won.
I turned to get off and let someone else on, and she smacked me as hard as she could on the back of the head. My immediate reaction was to smack her back on the arm, not nearly as hard, but still. The damage was done.
I was a skinny, awkward kid and she was massive. Of course she started sobbing and ran inside to tell her mother. Her mom rushed out and asked me to come in. She took me into her bedroom and told me I was a selfish little witch and that I should never touch her child again. She said so many things that were completely out of line. I told her I was sorry and that I had been reacting to Michelle hitting me, but she would not believe it.
Then she marched me back into the living room and made every girl at the party sit in a big circle. She announced, “I think we all need to talk about how mean Samantha is to everyone, and how she needs to change,” and proceeded to publicly shame me and humiliate me in front of 12 of my friends for almost two hours while Michelle sat there smug.
She forced me to apologize to Michelle and then to everyone else for my “behavior.” Then she made the whole circle go around and say what they could learn about manners from watching how awful I was. I still think about it, and even though it would be pointless, I sometimes imagine going to that house and giving that girl a verbal smackdown, telling her exactly how useless and cruel she was.
18. A Hands-On Approach
My wife’s older sister doesn’t believe in disciplining her kids—none whatsoever. They can do whatever they want, and she just lets it happen.
One evening we were having dinner when her three-year-old daughter stood on her mom’s chair between her legs. Without warning, she leaned over the table and planted both hands straight into the salad bowl just as I was reaching for some. Then she froze there, bent at a perfect right angle, hands buried in lettuce.
The whole table went silent. My wife looked at her sister, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t move. Finally, my wife got up and walked outside to keep from losing it. I followed a moment later.
What a waste of a beautiful salad that was.
19. The Standoff
I worked as a private investigator for a few years, and I carry my piece everywhere. One night my cousin showed up with her 13-year-old son. The kid got into my room after breaking the lock, loaded my gun and tried to walk out with it. Wrong move, punk.
I’m a detective, I can tell when someone’s acting dodgy. I asked him what he thought he was doing. My cousin stopped and planted herself in the doorway, which bought me a second. The little jerk drew on me, so I drew on him, with a much bigger gun. He froze and dropped the piece.
His mother lost it: “How can you point that at him? He wasn’t going to shoot! You shouldn’t have guns!” She doesn’t visit me anymore because apparently “I am a dangerous man who shoots at children.”
Whatever. He tried to steal my gun. He got caught. End of story.
20. Surprise Chairs Match
One of my brothers was joking around with my friend’s older brother, probably teasing him that some punk band he liked wasn’t that good. Instead of just saying “screw you” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about,” the older brother grabbed an ottoman and hurled it at my brother’s head, WWF style.
Our parents were sitting together at the dinner table when it happened. Instead of checking if my brother was okay—or if he might have a concussion—his parents marched over and said, “Why did you provoke him?”
Then they tried to justify it to my parents, saying my brother had “brought it on himself.” That didn’t go over well. My dad kicked them out of the house on the spot.
Freepik,master1305
21. Movie Date
I was at a movie theater with some friends, sitting about four or five rows from the front. It was a rated-R movie, so we were already surprised when two little kids—maybe four and seven—came running down the aisle.
They started playing and running back and forth at the front of the theater while the movie was going. Sure enough, the younger one tripped and started crying. Everyone waited for the parent to react, but she just sat there, not even looking up.
After a few minutes of awkward crying echoing through the theater, my friend finally got up and went to comfort the kid. The mother never left her seat. Not once.
22. A New Coat Of Paint
When I was about ten, I was given a gorgeous dollhouse—beautiful and huge, with real glass windows, wooden trim, and little hinged doors. It was my pride and joy.
One day, my eight-year-old cousin found a toothbrush in the spare room where I kept my toys and the dollhouse. He decided it would be fun to grind green Play-Doh into the dollhouse’s white wood siding using the toothbrush.
When I walked in and saw the damage, I was speechless. I started yelling, furious, and my uncle came in. Instead of scolding his son, he told me it was my fault—because apparently, leaving a toothbrush nearby meant I was asking for it.
23. Game On
My second cousin is a little jerk. He’s seven years old and his mother, my first cousin, has zero control over him. One afternoon he was tossing his Wii games in their cases around my aunt’s house like they were grenades.
I told him to stop. He threw one and it hit his other cousin in the face. She started crying, so I went over to her and told the brat to quit. He flung another case in my direction and then bolted when I stood up to go after him.
I’m not proud of what I did next, but I had to stop him. I picked up a game case and ninja-starred it right into the back of his knee. He dropped like a sack, his knee buckled, and he went face-first into the door jamb.
His mom came running and started accusing us of hurting him. I told her he tripped, and the cousin he’d hit backed me up.
24. Retail Rumble
I was working retail one afternoon when a kid, maybe six or seven, walked in with his enormous mother. The store was busy, associates running around trying to keep up, and this little menace started grabbing items off the shelves, glancing at them, and hurling them over his shoulder like he was in a game show.
I walked over and asked, as politely as I could, if they “needed any help finding something today.” The kid just grunted and kept throwing things. I went to get my manager before I lost it, explaining that if we didn’t stop him, I’d be the one stuck cleaning up the disaster.
When my manager approached, the woman started screaming about her rights, yelling, “It’s my right and his right as citizens of this country to do what we please!”
We had to threaten to call security before they finally stormed out. Some people really shouldn’t leave their houses unsupervised.
Flickr, U.S. Department of Agriculture
25. Growing Pains
When I was in junior high, I was a quiet, awkward kid. I’d always been chubby and shy, with maybe two real friends, and most of the class picked on me nonstop.
Then puberty hit like a lightning bolt. I shot up nearly a foot and a half, slimmed down, and suddenly had curves—a decent butt and a pretty nice chest—all without gaining any weight. That’s when one guy I’d known for years decided to start spreading rumors that my chest grew because I was “easy.”
He mocked me constantly, making crude comments and laughing with his friends. I tried to ignore it, but one day he tried to lift my skirt in the hallway, and that was it. I went straight to the teacher and the guidance counselor. He got a slap on the wrist.
His mom was called in for a meeting with mine. She sat there, perfectly calm, and said, “It’s just boys being boys. He shouldn’t be punished. And from what I’ve heard from my son, everyone’s seen it all anyway.”
Unbelievable. The kind of woman who raises a kid like that—and then defends him—is exactly why some boys grow up thinking cruelty is funny.
26. Boys Will Be Boys
It was 1994, and I was four or five when there was a little sociopath in my class who seemed to exist solely to torment me. He’d smack me in the face, scream at me, threaten me every day, tear up my projects, and put gum in my hair.
The teachers, counselors, and even our parents brushed it off, saying it was just “his shy way of showing affection.” You know—the classic “boys will be boys” excuse. I was furious, but what could I do? I just sat there and took it.
Then one morning, as I walked by his desk, he was sharpening a pencil in one of those old hand-cranked sharpeners. As I passed, he yanked it out and stabbed me right in the lower back, driving the pencil a good inch under my skin. The tip broke off and lodged inside me.
I couldn’t sit down without making it worse. My mom rushed me to the hospital, where they surgically removed the pencil shard without anesthesia because we didn’t have insurance. When I came back to school, everyone still said it was just because he “liked me.”
A week later, we all sat down for a talk about this supposed “mutual problem,” and the teacher asked him point-blank if he liked me. He said, “No, I hate her.”
Apparently, that had never been clear before.
27. Anger Management
My sister Ramona is extremely protective of her nine-year-old son, Jayce, even though the kid is shady as they come. My other sister, Shannan, has a five-year-old named Martin. One afternoon, the two of them were playing DS together when Martin beat Jayce on a Mario Kart level.
Jayce didn’t take it well. He grabbed a decorative sword off the wall and smacked Martin in the head with it. Martin started crying, blood everywhere—it was a bad scene.
When Shannan came to pick up her son, Ramona said, “Well, you shouldn’t have brought Martin over if you didn’t want him to bleed.”
We suggested maybe taking the sword down and that Jayce might need help. Ramona refused to hear it and cut off contact with the whole family instead.
28. Rotten Rich Kid
There was this kid in my neighborhood who was about seventeen when I was eleven. His family was loaded—they lived in a mansion, and he drove either a Porsche or a Lamborghini depending on the day.
He was a complete jerk. He’d blast music loud enough to rattle windows, tear down our little street at 80 miles an hour, and nearly hit me on my bike—more than once. He even ran my mom off the road four different times.
When she finally confronted him, he sneered, “Get the heck away from me, you’re not my mother,” rolled up his window, and sped off. When my dad heard about it, he was furious. So the three of us drove down to their house to tell his parents what was going on.
You’d think they’d thank us for caring enough to warn them before their son hurt someone—or himself—but no. The mom looked uncomfortable but stayed quiet, and then the father stormed out and told us to get off his property and mind our own business. He even threatened to have us arrested and said, “There’s nothing wrong with my son.”
We left, shaking our heads. Ten minutes later, police officers showed up at our front door. The father had called them, claiming we’d threatened him and his son. My dad explained what actually happened, and the officers let him off with a warning.
The lengths some parents will go to defend their “perfect little angels” never cease to amaze me.
29. Dinnertime Deception
About six years ago, my dad’s side of the family had a reunion up in Maine. We went out for lunch at a place called Governors. My cousin, who was fourteen and weighed around 350 pounds at the time, would eat about three-quarters of his food, then complain that it was undercooked and demand a new plate.
He pulled that stunt about ten times. My dad and grandfather tried to make him stop, but my aunt started yelling that her son “deserved only the best.” Eventually, they gave up, and we all sat there mortified while he shoveled down plate after plate.
When it was finally over, my dad let my sister and me grab some ice cream before we left. The adults paid the bill and we went on our way. Later, we found out my aunt had been talking behind our backs, telling everyone that my sister and I were spoiled because our dad bought us ice cream.
Really? The woman whose kid conned a restaurant out of ten meals thought we were spoiled. We haven’t spoken to them since that day. Last I heard, my cousin’s around 400 pounds, quit his job after one day because it was “too much work,” and is still spoiled rotten.
It’s a shame, really—if his mother had just learned to say no, things might have turned out differently.
30. The Golden Child
I used to be best friends with a girl who had a four-year-old son, and he was hands-down the most spoiled kid I’ve ever met. He had zero manners, demanded junk food constantly, hit his parents, and told them to screw off whenever he didn’t get his way.
He’d have screaming fits almost daily, and they literally moved into a bigger house just to fit all of his toys and belongings. Despite having more toys than a small daycare, all he ever wanted to do was play Call of Duty: Black Ops—just like his dad.
His mom would tell him no once or twice, then always cave. I never saw her discipline him, not even a little. Whenever anyone commented on his behavior, she’d shrug and say, “Oh, he’s like that because my partner’s parents spoil him. He’s not like that all the time.”
Now the kid’s almost six and has been to Walt Disney World every single year for two weeks straight since he was seven months old. Some people’s idea of “not spoiled” really makes you wonder.
31. Family Ties
About six years ago my dad’s side of the family had a messy reunion story that keeps getting worse. The family had once been in the army, the patriarch died after retiring while working on an oil field, and they walked away with a massive settlement plus his pension and life insurance.
Think Palins without ambition: gluttonous, petty, and forever squabbling over every last dollar. Around Christmas last year the grandson who had been caring for the matriarch after her strokes finally took control of the estate. He had been a steady kid, juggling college and caring for the family. He asked for help, and instead of helping, the rest of the clan obsessed over “when she’s going to die so we can get more money.” So he cut them all off.
That’s when things went nuclear. After about six months of rehab, she rewrote her will and made it permanent when she learned what her children had been up to. She has five children, and yes: they are all suing her.
Her daughters have never had a real job. The brothers ran business after business into the ground and now owe money to the IRS, the State of Alaska, and various banks. The grandson who stepped up is now shouldering the fallout, and starting next month my fiancée and I will be taking in two of the older kids as they head off to their first semester of college. Their parents are selling the house to survive, living out of an RV, and the mom is looking for her first job at 55.
Lovely details I was warned about: one of the kids, a girl, is morbidly obese and her mother told me not to expect any cheese, meat, or prepared food to still be in the fridge after a day. The son is the type who will take your wallet in a second to buy Korean MMO currency, so I was explicitly warned to never let him have access to my wallet.
This is going to be interesting, maybe regretful, but they are family. I just hope the circus doesn’t implode on us before the semester ends.
32. Trouble On The Horizon
I have an eight-year-old nephew who we are apparently not allowed to say no to: only praise, only positivity. When the kid does something wrong, his grandma—my sister and his legal guardian—does the sign for “I love you” and that’s it. It’s honestly getting terrifying.
He is no longer allowed to be alone with other kids or animals because he has hurt them so badly in the past, even almost offing his little brother once. He hits whoever he wants, including the balls of random strangers, and will spit, kick, and throw anything he can get his hands on if he doesn’t get his way.
He’s been in trouble at school a lot, suspended for up to three days multiple times. The only thing that has kept him from being expelled is my sister agreeing to counseling, which so far has done nothing.
My sister insists he’s having seizures and can’t help himself. After no less than eight scans and three years with the best neurologist St. Louis has, there are no seizures. I’m terrified of what comes next if she keeps ignoring it.
I know it sounds dramatic, but right now I see a very dangerous situation and very little adult accountability. If my sister doesn’t get serious about boundaries and professional help that actually works, I’m honestly worried about where this ends.
33. The Cookie Monster
One day I forgot my lunch and had to work a 10-hour shift. Luckily one of my managers is amazing and bought me a few cookies so I’d have something to tide me over until my boyfriend could bring my lunch.
At the counter we have a lower side ledge where I set my cookies while I helped customers. A man and his morbidly obese kid walked in, so I put the cookies there and went to get the father’s coffee. When I turned back, the kid was climbing on the counter and took one of my cookies. I was stunned.
The father’s entire response was, “He has a learning disability.” I was so shocked I blurted out, “HAVING AN IDIOT FOR A PARENT ISN’T A DISABILITY!” My manager insisted the man pay for a replacement cookie, but he doubled down: “No, my son has a learning disability. This is discrimination!”
I left shaking with anger, still hungry, and thinking about how some people use excuses to avoid basic responsibility.
Freepik,freepik
34. Batter Up!
My friend was home one afternoon when he spotted a couple of twelve- or thirteen-year-old kids walking down the street and smashing mailboxes with a baseball bat. He stepped out onto his porch and yelled at them while they were still two houses away.
The kids shouted back, “Screw you!” and took off running when he started walking toward them. About thirty minutes later, there was a knock at his door. The authorities were there—because the boys had gone to report that he threatened them.
Their mother was outside, screaming and pointing at him, yelling that he should be locked up because “it’s not his right to discipline my child.” My friend calmly showed the officers the damaged mailboxes and explained that he’d only yelled at the kids to stop.
The officers thanked him, told the mother what really happened, and she still stood there screeching for them to arrest him.
35. Rugrats Running Wild
My sister’s kids are unbearable—mostly because she and her husband are, too. Around the holidays, I actually call ahead to ask which one they’ll be at our parents’ house for, just so I can plan to come home for the other one.
I could tell a hundred stories, but here are a few highlights. Once, my sister and her family borrowed my car while they were visiting. Her kids ripped the fabric lining off the inside of one of the doors and then got a ticket for parking in a red zone. Of course, they didn’t mention either problem when they brought the car back.
I noticed the torn door pretty quickly and was annoyed that no one had said a word or offered to fix it—but I let it go. Then a few weeks later, I got a notice in the mail for an unpaid ticket. That’s when I realized what had happened. When I called my sister, she said they hadn’t told me because they planned to fight the ticket. Apparently, it was “unfair” since their kids “weren’t good in the car” and it was “too hard” to walk a few blocks to where they were legally allowed to park.
I told her to pay it and that she and her kids were never allowed near my car again. They never paid it. After the second warning, I finally paid it myself to avoid more fees—or a warrant.
Another time, they were coming to visit, and since I didn’t want them wrecking my house, I suggested meeting at a restaurant. Bad idea. One of her kids sat next to me and put me in a headlock so I couldn’t eat, jabbed me in the eye with a straw and the corner of a menu, demanded my attention every time I tried to speak to my brother-in-law, and even tried to shove meat into my mouth after I told her I’m vegetarian. Her parents just sat there and said nothing.
Meanwhile, the other kid spent the whole meal chasing the waitress around the restaurant, talking her ear off every time she came near, even after being told, “The nice lady has to work.” The waitress was an absolute saint—patient, polite, and clearly over it.
When my sister and the kids went to the bathroom, my brother-in-law turned to me and said, “It’s so weird they acted like that today. People always say our kids are so well-behaved.” I looked him dead in the eye and said, “No one says that.”
To his credit, he looked genuinely ashamed. I apologized to the restaurant staff and dropped twenty bucks in their tip jar before leaving.
If it seems like I don’t stand up to my sister’s kids, it’s because there’s no point—they don’t listen to anyone, and it’s not my job to discipline them. I just tip well, keep my distance, and make sure to spend as little time around them as possible.
36. Suburban Sniper
My daughter was a freshman in high school when she got shot with a BB gun while walking home from school. It clipped the back of her calf, broke the skin, and left a nasty bruise. I called the school, and they brought in the authorities.
The next day, officers were patrolling the neighborhood when my daughter heard the BB gun fire again. She ran to grab the officer around the corner, who started going door to door. Neighbors pointed him toward the house where the kids were doing it. He even found their little “stakeout spot,” BBs scattered all over the ground, with a perfect line of sight to the road where my daughter had been hit.
When the officer knocked, the boys’ mother came to the door and immediately lost it. She admitted her kids owned a BB gun but swore up and down that her “boys would never do something like that.” She refused to let the officers talk to them, and that was that.
In the end, the little jerks got away with it. I’m just thankful my daughter only got hit in the leg—and not in the face.
37. They Got It From Their Momma
Oh God, this reminds me of my aunt’s kids. My aunt has always had her own issues, and as a result, she treats her children like they’re absolutely perfect. She moved to New York years ago, but every few years she’d come back to Seattle for a visit—and those visits were always chaos.
Whenever she came home, she’d dump her kids on my grandmother, who’s an amputee in a wheelchair, or on my parents, while she went out partying to relive her glory days like it was still 1989. The kids were little tornadoes. They ate all our trail mix and flung it around the house, spilled juice all over the hardwood floors, and hit and punched my baby brother.
Her daughter would scream and cry nonstop whenever my aunt left, so no one got to sleep until three or four in the morning. My aunt thought it was “cute” that her daughter threw tantrums—it meant she loved her, apparently. She never apologized for the chaos, never lifted a finger to clean, just left and expected everyone else to deal with it.
The real kicker came one afternoon when my six-year-old brother and her five-year-old son were playing with some old lotto tickets my dad had thrown away. Her son snatched my brother’s tickets and shoved him. When my brother asked for them back, the kid beat him up.
My aunt came out of her room, and her son lied through his teeth, saying my brother had stolen from him and pushed him first. My aunt immediately started yelling at my little brother, calling him a liar and a thief, and swearing at him. My mom heard the commotion, stormed downstairs, and told her flat out that those tickets belonged to my dad—and that if she or her kids ever touched my brother again, they’d never be welcome in our house.
A few years later, my aunt outdid herself. She actually tried to buy weed from my uncle in front of me and my little brother. I asked if she’d ever do something like that in front of her own kids, and she said no. So I said, “Then why the heck do you think it’s okay to do it in front of your brother’s children?”
She begged me not to tell my mom, but I was furious. The second I got home, I told my parents everything. Needless to say, she’s no longer welcome in our house.
38. Go Easy On Him
I grew up with a guy who never heard the word “no.” His father walked out when he was about two, and in our tiny southern town, that kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. People whispered about it but acted like it didn’t exist, so everyone felt sorry for him.
Because of that sympathy, he got whatever he wanted. The nicest clothes, the best toys, no curfew, no consequences. His mom sacrificed everything for him, always making excuses. If something didn’t go his way, he’d throw a fit. And not just a little one—he was strong, and he could put people on the ground when he lost his temper.
By high school, the trouble started. Fights, stealing, drinking—you name it. The authorities would haul him home and let him off every single time. By graduation, he was selling dope in plain sight, driving stolen cars, and carrying stolen weapons. He somehow slipped out of every charge until the day he decided to clean out a neighbor’s house and sell everything in it.
They finally caught him and sentenced him to a year, six months with good behavior. He got out in two. A week later, he was arrested again—driving drunk with a pocket full of dope and a stolen gun in the car. He served less than a year and went right back to it.
His whole life has been one long lesson that rules don’t apply to him. His mom and family always bailed him out, even though they didn’t have the money to spare. Meanwhile, his sister begged them to help her get clean, but they were too busy saving him again.
Now she’s out there hustling pills to survive, driving that same rusted-out VW with holes in the floor she had in high school. There was never money for her college fund, and she couldn’t get loans because her mom made just a little too much on paper.
He got everything handed to him—and she got handed the bill for it.
39. The Ugly Truth
I went to a private school, and in twelfth grade there was this classmate who took being an idiot to Olympic levels. He was always making these obscene, violent jokes about one of our teachers who happened to be pregnant. He’d say things like he “hoped it dies,” laughing about it, all because she kept giving him the detentions he absolutely deserved.
He’d do it just out of her earshot, close enough for everyone else to hear. People reported it, but the school wouldn’t touch him—too afraid of his family, too afraid of the drama. Eventually, the teacher had enough. She dragged him to the Dean and the Disciplinary Board on charges of verbal threats. If found guilty, he’d be expelled and could lose all his college acceptances.
That’s when his dad swooped in with a high-priced lawyer who clearly hadn’t done his homework. He didn’t talk to any witnesses or bother to find out how bad it really was. During the hearing, as people testified—students, parents, even teachers—the kid and the lawyer started to sweat. The truth was ugly, and everyone saw it.
His father dumped a fortune into trying to save him, insisting his son was misunderstood, even while half the school came forward to say otherwise. It was one of those moments where you see a parent defend their kid to the bitter end, even when it’s obvious the kid’s a lost cause.
In the end, he got expelled and dropped by three colleges. No one was surprised. I haven’t heard from him since, but if I had to guess, he’s probably found himself on the wrong side of the law by now.
40. First Come, Fist Serve
I work at the Housing Office at my university, which means I spend most of my day getting yelled at by students and their parents. Our process is simple: students already living on campus get first dibs on reserving their same room for the next year. All communication goes through their official university email, the one they’re required to use.
Two days before the semester started, I got a call from an extremely angry mom demanding to know why her son’s room had been “given away.” I pulled up our database and checked his record. Sure enough, he’d received five emails—one each month—starting from the day room selection opened, with clear instructions on how to renew his housing or choose a new room.
When I told her that, she exploded. “How can you expect him to be checking emails? He’s so busy trying to keep up with classes and work!” Keep in mind, we’re talking about a college student here, not a second grader.
By this point, we were almost completely full, since it was right before the start of the semester. She wanted me to kick another student out of their assigned housing—someone who’d followed every rule and deadline—so her son, the guy who couldn’t be bothered to open his inbox, could move in instead.
I swear, some parents act like their kids are too precious to handle basic adult tasks. If checking email is too much to ask for a college student, maybe campus housing isn’t the biggest problem in their life.
41. Seeing Is Believing
I make eyeglasses, and one of my favorite stories comes from an optometrist I know. A mother brought her young daughter in, insisting she needed glasses. During the exam, the doctor could tell right away that the girl was faking it—she was overacting like she could barely see the chart at all.
After a few minutes, he stepped out and quietly told the mom, “Sometimes little girls want glasses because their friends have them. That’s probably what’s going on here.” The mother instantly bristled, offended that he’d dare suggest her precious daughter was lying.
So the doctor decided to prove his point. He grabbed a pair of display frames with clear demo lenses, went back into the room, and asked the girl to try reading the chart again—with the “glasses” on this time.
And just like that, she started reading the letters perfectly. Her vision was fine. The doctor didn’t even have to say a word—the look on the mom’s face said it all.
42. Oblivious
A mother once let her kid play in the stream of wood chips coming out of an active woodchipper. The guy operating it—who was cutting down trees nearby—told the kid to get back, because, you know, flying wood, nails, and rocks aren’t exactly child-safe.
Instead of thanking him for saving her kid from possible death or dismemberment, the mom started screaming at him for “yelling at her child.” She never even looked up from her phone.
There were nails, stones, and chunks of bark flying everywhere, but somehow, in her mind, the guy doing his actual job was the problem—not the parent who thought a woodchipper made for a fun playground attraction.
Flickr, USFWS Mountain-Prairie
43. Daddy Knows Best
My sister was worried that her seven-year-old son was falling behind the other kids and thought about holding him back a year. My brother-in-law found the whole thing hilarious. He started mocking his own kid right there in front of everyone, cracking jokes and laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world.
After a few minutes of ridicule, his son started crying his eyes out and reaching for a hug. Watching that broke me. Here was this little boy already feeling insecure, and his father—his supposed role model—was acting like a schoolyard bully.
It wasn’t just mean, it was cruel. I remember thinking I’d never seen anyone work harder to crush their own kid’s confidence in one afternoon.
44. Speak To Me Nicely
I was in a department store one afternoon when a couple came in with their three kids. The oldest boy, maybe eight, grabbed a hairbrush off the shelf and whacked his sister with it, hard enough to make her cry. The mom looked over and said, “Alex, don’t do that, that isn’t nice.”
Alex glared right back at her and said, “Screw you!” His sister was still crying, but the mom ignored her and said gently, “Come on, Alex, don’t say that.” That’s when Alex hit his mom with the hairbrush.
Instead of stopping him, she bent down and said, “Alex, that really isn’t nice.” He then smacked her across the face and shouted, “Screw you!” again.
The mom just sighed and said, “Alex, that wasn’t necessary,” before going back to browsing the shelves. The dad stood there watching like he was waiting for a bus—then eventually just walked away, leaving her to it.
I’ve never seen parenting so passive it bordered on performance art.
45. A Lesson In Manners
I was on the bus one morning when a woman told her little boy, maybe six years old, to ask a girl—around eleven—to move out of the way. But instead of just saying that, she leaned down and said, “Tell that fat cow to move.”
I froze. My son was sitting next to me on our way to school, and I knew I should’ve just kept quiet, but I couldn’t. The words were out before I could stop myself. I told her that if she wanted to raise a decent human being, maybe she shouldn’t teach him to talk like a bully.
She glared at me, but I didn’t care. The girl just sat there staring at the floor, humiliated, and the boy looked confused, like he wasn’t sure why he’d been told to be cruel. Maybe I didn’t handle it perfectly, but watching a grown woman teach her kid to be hateful? I wasn’t about to let that slide.
Freepik, Drazen Zigic
46. Smackdown!
A few weeks ago, I stopped by this fancy ice cream shop in LA—the kind with marble counters and flavors like lavender honey and sea salt caramel. A couple walked in with three boys, all between eight and ten. At first, they were just loud and hyper, nothing unusual. Then things went downhill fast.
They started full-on wrestling on the floor in the middle of the crowded shop. Rolling, yelling, kicking each other—it looked like a miniature cage match. The parents were right there, barely five feet away, pretending they didn’t see a thing.
The poor girl behind the counter tried to be polite, asking them to get up, but of course they ignored her. I actually had to step over these feral children just to get to the bathroom. Meanwhile, someone’s dog sat quietly under a table, better behaved than all three of them combined.
Parenting isn’t a title—it’s a job. You actually have to do it.
47. Potty Time
My parents have these friends who had a kid later in life, and they treat him like a tiny emperor. The kid is a menace—he curses, screams, kicks, bites, breaks things, and somehow never faces a single consequence.
One evening we were all at their house for a backyard barbecue. Everyone was chatting, eating, and trying to pretend the kid wasn’t tearing around like a tornado. Then, out of nowhere, he drops his pants right there on the porch steps and starts to do his business.
His mom finally notices and yells, “Bryce, god darn it, go further out for that!” So, the kid stops mid-squat, waddles across the yard with his pants still around his ankles, and finishes right on the lawn.
When my mom tried to say something—politely, mind you—the kid’s mom bristled and snapped, “What do you expect from him? He’s only five!”
Yeah, well, I expected him to use an actual bathroom. Or at least not treat the backyard barbecue like a public restroom.
48. A Really Bad Apple
I was at the grocery store one afternoon when I saw a little girl, maybe five years old, climb onto the apple display like it was a jungle gym. She started picking up apples from the bottom row, taking one bite out of each, then carefully turning them around so the bite marks faced the back.
I just stood there, staring in disbelief, waiting for her parents to intervene. After a few seconds, her mom finally noticed me watching. She gasped and said, “Mija, no!”—and then turned right back around and let her keep going.
By the time they walked away, that whole display looked like a crime scene. I’m still not sure what was worse: the kid’s behavior or the fact that her mom’s version of parenting was one half-hearted gasp and a shrug.
Freepik,pvproductions
49. The Runaway
Years ago, my wife and I were eating at a nice restaurant when a family with three kids sat nearby. Within minutes, the kids were screaming, running laps around the tables, and bumping into servers while their parents sipped wine and pretended not to notice.
We finally asked to see the manager. When he came over, we explained that the kids were ruining everyone’s meal. He walked over to their table and politely asked the parents to keep them under control. The dad’s response? “Go screw yourself.”
The manager didn’t even blink. He told them to pay their bill and leave. That’s when the arguing started. As the shouting escalated, one of the kids realized nobody was watching him and bolted out the door.
What happened next looked like a scene out of a disaster movie. Within minutes, there were about 15 officers and firefighters searching the area, joined by most of the restaurant staff and even a few customers. My wife and I just sat there quietly, finishing our meal while chaos unfolded outside.
The kid was found after half an hour. The parents were hysterical, blaming everyone except themselves. A news crew even showed up, and the mom made a complete fool of herself on live TV, ranting that the restaurant was at fault. My wife got interviewed too and, very calmly, made them look like the clowns they were while praising the restaurant.
We never went back after that—too many bad memories—but I’ll admit, the free meal we got that night tasted extra sweet.
50. The Joys Of Nature
I have a campsite deep in the middle of nowhere—thirty minutes down a gravel road, another twenty on dirt. It’s peaceful, quiet, the kind of place where you can hear the wind moving through the trees. I invited a few friends up one weekend, and one of them brought his girlfriend and her four-year-old son. The kid was having the time of his life—running through the field, splashing in the creek, chasing bugs.
Then he suddenly runs up to us, beaming, and says, “I HAVE GRAPES!” That set off every alarm bell in my head. I grabbed his hand, pried it open, and found a handful of bright, smashed-up poisonous berries. My heart dropped. I walked him to the creek to wash his hands and asked if he’d eaten any.
He got quiet, clearly scared he was in trouble. So I said, “You’re not in trouble, buddy. I just want to make sure you don’t get sick. If you ate too many, we’d have to take you to the hospital to keep you from throwing up.” But the poor kid just clammed up even more.
By the time we reached the creek and I was rinsing off his hands, his mom came storming over, screaming, “How dare you touch my child! What are you doing to him? Why are there tears on his face—what did you do!?”
I stayed calm and explained what had happened. She wasn’t having it. She kept shrieking like I’d dunked him in the water for fun, until I finally told her that if she couldn’t calm down, she needed to leave. This was supposed to be a place of peace, not chaos.
It took twenty minutes and my cousin talking her down before she finally stopped. She spent the rest of the day glued to her kid’s side, refusing to talk to me or eat any of the food I grilled. Petty doesn’t even begin to cover it—but at least her son didn’t end up in the ER.
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