1. Wait, seriously?

My ex girlfriend (from way back in high school) had the worst nephews I’ve ever seen. They both had BB guns. One time the older one (8, I think) got mad over something (I don’t remember what, maybe chores) so he shot out the side windows in his mom’s car. She took his BB gun away as punishment so he grabbed his 4-year-old brother’s BB gun and shot some windows in the house. She wouldn’t take that one away because “it wouldn’t be fair to his brother, he didn’t do anything!” but she did try to send him to his room. Then he said “I’ll kill you, you bitch!” and she felt so bad for “making him hate me” that she just gave up on punishment and gave him ice cream.

2. Families like that need to be re-educated

When I was a preschool teacher (ages 24-30 months), I had a rather unpleasant and “juicy” child. He was not terribly likeable and that is pretty tragic when you are only two.

Anyway, our outside play area was covered in soft mulch to protect them if they fell (and they fall all the time). I bent down to retie a child’s shoe and almost instantly heard yelling. I looked over just in time to see him pulling his hand away from a little girl’s face. He stabbed her in the eye with a piece of mulch. Totally unprovoked and he was not acting out. He just looked at the stick and thought, “oh, I’ll put that here.”

So, we sent the girl to the ER with her parents and had a conference with his parents.

Apparently, they allowed this child to bite, hit, scratch, tackle, punch and otherwise attack his other family members. In fact they encouraged it and congratulated and applauded him. His father and two older brothers (11 and 13) thought is was fantastic. Their defense was “he isn’t big enough to hurt anyone and he has so much fun.” They thought teaching him to be a psycho was cute and funny.

Listen, assholes, your toddler may not be large enough to be a threat to your teenagers, but he is more than capable of putting out the eye of another toddler. And, he will grow in size but not in self-control if you don’t start teaching him that random violence is socially unacceptable.

3. Candy store sounds like the worst place to work

I work in my dads candy store and I have millions of stories.

Kids walk in and destroy everything and the parents never ever stop them. My job is 99% stopping kids from breaking shit. I had a kid spill a 10 lb jar of jelly beans that cost $35 (gourmet stuff) and the mom asked me if I could clean it up before someone slips. I told her that I couldn’t let this one go and had to charge her. She got pissed and stormed out of the building saying that he was just a kid. He was fucking 12 or 13, give me a break.

I had a kid break a $50 5lb chocolate bar and the parents just ran.

I had a kid tip over an entire shelf of stuff and the mom thought it was “cute” and then she changed attitude and told me it should have been bolted to the ground and she will sue. She then called the cops who kicked her out for me.

Also, the adults are as irresponsible. They often open up 1lb bags of candy to taste it before buying it and then they put it back. I have to throw the thing away because it’s contaminated. Just ask me for a sample and I will be more than happy to go out back and get you some to try. I don’ care about a small handful of candy, I care about a large bag.

And I’m not cheap. I don’t care if a kid knocks over stuff, drops things, or break a lollipop. They’re just kids, but I think its a little much when they break very large and expensive things after I ask their parents and their kids to be careful.

4. Do it again now, I dare you

I was sitting on a bus to go into Manhattan and this lil’ 5-y-o kept tugging on my hair. I asked the mother to please get him to stop in a very polite manner. What does she do?

Absolutely nothing.

What do I do?

I grabbed his grubby lil’ hand the next time he tried to reach for it and threatened to feed it to a hobo. He immediately stopped and the ride was a lot more pleasant.

5. She would’ve gotten stitches…on her goddamn eyeballs

This one time all us cousins were playing in the backyard having fun, when one cousin (I’ll call Sam) decided to grab a full sized branch and smack another cousin (I’ll call Alice) in the face with it. Not only did it cut her to the point blood soaked her shirt, but she ended up having to get stitches all over her face. His mother (one of my aunts) didn’t even bother getting up to see if Alice was okay even though she was the one watching us. And when she was confronted by Alice’s mother, she merely replied “Boys will be boys.” Poor Alice carries the scars to this day.

6. GTFO of this party

It was my birthday and my friends and family were over, which included my distant cousin and her 9-year-old overweight son. We just got done with the pizza and were about to go eat the cake when we walk in on the 9 year old (who i’ll call Jake). Jake had eaten all the cake and had frosting on his hands and around his mouth. Of course right then Jake’s mom comes in and says stuff like “It’s not his fault” and “why is the cake out anyway?”. Right then I told her “Get out, NOW.” and she said that she wouldn’t because AND I QUOTE, “It’s not ONLY your birthday MechaArif, it’s all of ours too.” after that my mom stepped in and told her she needed to leave. Luckily we had a second cake and ate that instead. Unluckily for me it had no frosting.

7. She was LIVID

My aunt and her three kids were usually “accidentally” not told about family gatherings, because she had zero control over the brats. If they ever came to visit, me and my sister would hide our favourite toys, because they’d probably break them. They were the kind of kids who’d start smashing a toy against a wall “just to see if it would break”. Of course it fucking will! During one of my Dad’s birthday celebrations, we’d set out a big buffet table with all kinds of nice food, so people could eat, drink and socialise in our garden. My cousins went over and took one or two bites out of damn near everything on the table. My mother was absolutely livid, she had to be restrained by her brother while my Dad told my aunt and her kids to leave. All the while she’s laughing it off, saying “they’re just kids” and all the rest. Disgraceful.

8. Father said that to get out of a fine

Teen boy and his friends were racing in my neighborhood, took a turn too tight and broke off the fire hydrant in my lawn. Water was shooting 30 feet into the air. I heard the whole thing and ran out there only to chase after the kid as he backed up, ripping up my lawn in the process and tried to run off. His car died at the end of the street and one of the neighbors held him while his friends scattered.

Father insisted to my face, even though I saw his son run off and told him that, that he wasn’t racing and didn’t try to run away. He just took a turn too tight and wanted to get away from the water. All this while our neighborhood is getting flooded.

9. “Ex sister-in-law”

My ex-sister-in-law defended her 13 year old son after he punched a 2 year-old by saying “He’s got anger control issues, it’s not his fault!” Granted, she’s right that he has issues, but when the 2 year-old’s mom got angry she acted like the other mom was crazy.

10. Too close for THAT?

My parents have these friends who had a kid late in life, and they let that kid run fucking rampant. He curses, screams, kicks, bites, breaks shit, etc. One evening, we were all sitting out in their backyard at a BBQ, and this kid drops trou on the porch steps and starts to take shit. His mom yelled, “BRYCE, GOD DAMMIT, GO FURTHER OUT FOR THAT,” so the kid stops mid-shit, waddles further out into the yard with his pants around his ankles still, and finishes. When my mom tried to say something about it, the kid’s mom got up in arms and said, “What the hell are you expecting from him? He’s only 5.”

11. Schools don’t listen to reason

When I was in fourth grade, a mean girl would always bully people into giving her their things, playing with her at recess, etc. She was never kind, and would never take no for an answer. Both of our mothers were teachers there, so at times, I felt obligated to hang out with her, despite that she was mean to my friends and me too. One day I decided I’d had enough, and told her to take a fucking hike, the best way a fourth grader knew how. I told her we couldn’t play together anymore until she felt like being nice, but until then I wanted to be left alone. Not two hours later, I’m being pulled out of class by her mother, another teacher and the bully bitch. Her mother stood over me for the next 20 minutes, scolding me for being unkind and bullying her daughter. All the while, the little bitch stood in the background snickering at me.

12. Parents need to stop making up excuses for their criminal children

My friend, my brother and his friend, and I were once at our summer house. So my friend and I were jumping on our trampoline and having a blast, and my brother’s friend comes along and picks up a rock, puts it in his slingshot and shoots it right at her left eye. So she is crying and we both go to my dad, who is talking to my brother’s friend’s mother We tell her (His mother) what happened, and my brother and his friend are right beside us, still playing with the slingshot, and his mother tells us how it wasn’t his fault, that it was an accident and that we were in the way of his slingshot, that it was our fault. She then proceeds to ask her son if he did it, while still kind of defending him, and he says the most priceless thing I’ve ever heard. “Yeah, I shot her in the eye.” His mom is all quiet for a few seconds, and then proceeds to tell us that he’s joking. He’s now a criminal.

13. Scumbag mother

Back when I taught high school, I was grading tests from the previous period while a class was taking the test. As the bell rang, I had a kid walk up to my desk, turn his test in, then snatch the answer key off my desk right in front of me and run out the door. I couldn’t run after him (still had to finish collecting tests, etc.), but called the Dean immediately and they caught the kid while he was hiding it in his locker. The mother came in for a parent conference with me and the Dean and denied the whole thing. “He tells me he didn’t do it, and I believe him. He never lies to me.” Let’s just say her attitude explained a few things about the kid.

14. Do it right!

I was in a Walmart buying a frozen pizza for dinner a few weeks ago, and there was this kid (about 6 or 7) in front of me screaming because he wanted a candy bar. This old man in a wheelchair behind me yelled “You’re singing out of pitch, sing it right or shut up!”. My greatest moment in Walmart.

15. Are you fucking serious

When I was in 4th grade, I was at a friend’s sleepover birthday party. The night before all of us girls were outside playing on the trampoline, and me and the birthday girl (let’s call her Michelle) were in the center playing some kind of game, and I had won. I turned my back to get off and let someone else on, and she slapped as hard as she could in the back of the head. As an immediate reaction, I slapped her back on the arm. But definitely not half as hard as she had slapped me.

I was a skinny little awkward wimp, and she was massive. She started sobbing of course, and ran inside to tell her mother. Her mom ran out and asked me to come inside. Her mom took me into her bedroom and told me I was a selfish little bitch and that I should never touch her child again. The memory is definitely fuzzy, but she said so many things to me that were completely out of line. I told her that I was sorry, but I was reacting to how Michelle had slapped me, too. Somehow she refused to believe it. She brought me back into the living room and sat down EVERY SINGLE GIRL at the party in a big circle. She sits us all down and says:
“I think we all need to talk about how mean she is to everyone and how she needs to change.”

She then proceeded to publicly shame me and humiliate me in front of 12 of my friends for almost 2 hours and Michelle just sat there smugly. She then made me apologize to Michelle and then EVERYONE for my behavior. Then, she made everyone go around the circle and say what they could learn about manners from seeing how awful I was.

I think back on it now, and even though it would be pointless, I still want to go to that girls house and lay down the verbal smack down and tell her what a useless pig she is.

16. The salad…

My wife’s older sister doesn’t believe in disciplining her kids. I shit you not. No discipline at all. They can do whatever they want. One time we were having dinner and the 3 year old daughter is standing on her mom’s chair between her legs. She leans over the table and plants both hands into the salad bowl just as I was going for some. She then just stays in that position with her back bent at 90 degrees. There was a long silence. My wife looked at her sister who did nothing and then walked outside to keep from exploding at her. I excused myself too.

What a waste of a beautiful salad that was.

17. He actually drew on him

I worked as a private investigator for a few years, I carry my gun all the time. One night my cousin comes to visit me with her 13-year-old son. More backstory — People within my family always consider me to be nice, strict, and fair. I am also ex-military. So, this little fucker gets into my room (broke the lock) loads my gun (Walther P. 5) and tries to leave with it. I AM A FUCKING DETECTIVE! I can tell you are acting funny. I ask him what is wrong. My cousin knows me well, she stops and stands in front of the door. This shit stick draws on me. I draw on him (S&W .44 Model 629). It’s a much bigger gun. he drops the gun. His mother went ape shit. “How can you point a gun at him?!?!?! He wasn’t going to shoot! You shouldn’t have guns!” She doesn’t visit me anymore because “I am a dangerous man that shoots at children.”

18. This makes me so angry

My Uncle and his family live with my grandmother. His wife has an iPad that she lets her son use. (He is four.) My grandmother also has an iPad but keeps it in her room mostly. Recently my cousin has been acting quite spoiled. The worst situation was when my uncle had friends over and my cousin went into my grandmother’s room and took her iPad while she was sleeping, took it outside an damaged it quite a bit. My grandmother was obviously not very happy and she told my cousin that he was not allowed to use her iPad again. My useless aunt got pissed and started shouting at my grandmother and telling her that he was just a baby and that she needed to stop picking on him. My cousin has also been known to hit her and break her things. My grandmother just takes it now. The worst part is that his parents don’t correct him.

19. CALL THEM OUT

I’m the father of two young kids, and I will yell at any poorly behaved child in my area. If the parents aren’t going to tell their kid it’s wrong to hit or throw sand, I will.

I’ve found that if the parents get pissy at you, you don’t say a thing. You just give them a disgusted look and they wilt, just like their spoiled shit children do. The parents and the kid both know they’re doing wrong, but not enough people call them on it.

20. He took a Wii Game to the knee

My second cousin is a little son of a bitch. He’s about 7 years old and his mother (my first cousin) has no control over him because of her lack of anything. One day he’s throwing his Wii games that were in the cases around my Aunt’s house. I tell him to stop. He throws one and it his another cousin in the face. She starts crying so I go over to her and told the little shit to stop throwing stuff. He flings another one in my direction and when I get up to go after him, he takes off. I picked up a game case and ninja starred it right into the back of his knee. I guess I threw it hard enough at his frail 7 year old body that it made knee buckle which in turn made him fall and slam face first into the door jam. His mom comes running accusing us of hurting him. I told her he tripped. My cousin whom he hit backed me up.

21. The nerve of these children

I was working retail one day and this kid of about 6-9 years old comes in with his whale of a mother. It was a pretty busy day and we had associates everywhere trying to get work done.

Well this kid comes in and starts picking up things off the shelves, looking and them briefly, and then proceeds to throw them over his shoulder and move on.
I then have to approach them and ask them if they “need any help finding something today”

The boy just grunts and keeps moving on throwing things off the shelves, at his point I go grab my M.O.D and tell them to get him out of the store because it’s going to be my ass that has to clean that up. When he goes and approaches the woman she starts yelling “THIS IS MY FUCKING RIGHT AND HIS FUCKING RIGHT AS CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY TO DO WHAT WE PLEASE”

We had to threaten to call security to get them to leave, some people.

22. It was perfect

Former explorer scout here (UK).

I keep in contact with my old unit leaders, sometimes I get roped in to help with stuff.

One time I was helping shepherd a load of the really young ‘beaver scouts’ (heh) around a maritime museum. There was this young kid (maybe 6?) called Lucas that was being a little shit to everyone and everything, running about, screaming, kicking random people, etc.

Scout leaders weren’t allowed to physically touch any of the kids, but I wasn’t formally a leader. So with the overwhelming encouragement of my peers I caught the little fuck and shut his head in a set of medieval stocks. He wasn’t strong enough to lift the top half, and he was a little shit of exactly the right size to be able to stand on tiptoe uncomfortably and cry his eyes out. For 10 minutes.

I got kicked out by a museum staff member, who sympathised, but said he had to.

God damn, manhandling the tiny little screaming hyperactive fuck into those wooden stocks felt liberating. Then I went and bought an ice-cream.
Shit was cash, yo.

23. Wasn’t it obvious?

It’s 1994. When I was four or five there was a sociopath in my class who bullied me and only me. He’d slap me in the face, scream at me, and threaten me daily. He cut and tore up my projects and put gum in my hair. The teachers, counsellors, and our parents all thought this was just his shy way of showing affection since, y’know, boys will be boys and he obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing. I was furious but there was nothing I could do. I took the abuse.

Then one morning I walk by him as he’s got a pencil in the hand-cranked sharpener. As soon as I pass, he yanks out the pencil and stabs me right in the lower back, driving the thing a good inch under my skin. The pencil tip breaks off and is lodged in my body. I can’t sit down because it drives the thing further in. I’m taken to a hospital by my mother, and I have the pencil shard surgically removed without anaesthesia because we don’t have insurance.

When I return, everyone still thinks it’s because this kid likes me and there’s no reason to get mad. A week after this incident we’re all seated together to talk about this “problem” that is apparently mutual, and the boy is asked point-blank if he likes me.

“No, I hate her.”

It was apparently unclear.

24. Video games rule! Okay, not in this case

My cousin is about nine as well. He refuses to eat anything healthy, frequently eating things like cap’n crunch with chocolate milk and a Dr. Pepper for breakfast, and spends ALL OF HIS TIME playing video games, never reading or playing outside.

Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with playing video games, especially when you’re having a chill day with the family out in the middle of nowhere in Texas and there’s nothing better to do, but he will leave the room for hours on end then come back and sob because we started watching a movie and turned his game off. He also wakes up at the crack of dawn and starts playing his games with the sound all the way up without any situational awareness.

His parents just let him run around and be a screaming crying menace, all the while expecting the rest of the family to accommodate his outrageous behavior and even help get him under control when they decide it’s time to parent. It doesn’t help that they justify his behavior by blaming it on his ADHD, which he is heavily medicated for but hasn’t gotten any better. They also defend his aversion to anything remotely healthy.

Bad parenting is the worst, amirite?