Raising children can be a hassle. With loads of responsibilities, parents don't want to deal with any problems concerning their child. However, not all children are angels. In this piece, parents share the moment they realized they were raising a monster. These stories are shocking. Keep in mind, all stories were edited for clarity.
Turned In And Sobered Up
“My son has had quite the history with addiction. He stole so much property, broke every family rule, and mocked me in the process. He stole my pain pills when I had my knee replaced, he stole two nice bicycles (for my knee rehab) and sold them, stole hundreds of DVDs, albums, money, coin collection, stole several of my wife’s medications and replaced one with a pill that looked similar, which in combination with her other med would be deadly (gratefully my wife has an eye for detail and noticed before swallowing it.).
I finally realized that loving him with all my heart and not wanting bad things to happen to him were NOT going to change him and not save him. I knew he was either going to die from an overdose, from living on the streets, or get killed (he got beaten bloody with a weapon on three occasions and robbed about eight times that we could count).
Turning him in ripped my heart out and the other kids hate me for it but in the four months he has been in jail, he has sobered up and thanked me. He fully expected to OD soon. I made my decision not when he stole from me but when I looked at the kids in the neighborhood he was selling to and realized he was hurting our community and killing himself. I would rather he have a criminal record to overcome and at least have a chance than try to ignore his behavior and have to bury my son because I did nothing. IT WAS gut wrenching …ask me in 6 months and I can tell you if it was right or not.”
A Rough Childhood Causes Outbreaks
“I’m not done raising her, so I still hold onto hope that we can turn things around.
My middle child is 10. She becomes completely uncontrollable when things are not going her way. She tells me she hopes I die. She has told me that she is going to go to school and tell them I beat her, so she can go to foster care. Her older sister struggles with depression and cuts herself. She often tells her she hopes she kills herself. She hopes she cuts too far one time. She will go outside and scream at the top of her lungs. She has hit me, spit in my face. Breaks things, destroys the house.
My ex-husband was extremely abusive towards me. They saw him beat and take advantage of me. It was very, very bad. Once we were divorced he was court ordered visitation. It wasn’t so bad at first, he mostly just dumped them off on his family members. But as they got older, his substance abuse and untreated mental issues got worse. He turned his abuse towards them. He never hurt them physically but the mental abuse was there. They haven’t seen him in over two years. I told the judge I would go to jail before I’d allow them near him again.
They both had a pretty rough childhood. I am a recovering toxic drinker so my own issues played into it. I was never abusive, but I was definitely not there for them like I should have been. I was more of a friend than a parent. I’m sober now. We are all in therapy. I really hope that by doing these things that we can make things right.
I haven’t given up, I still have hope. But it’s really hard sometimes.”
Swing Batter Swing
“I watched my younger son walk out on the porch, pick up a plastic wiffle bat, look at it, look at his older brother sitting on the porch steps, look back at the bat, and then haul back and crack his brother’s head like Babe Ruth popping one out of the park.
I could watch his thought process in five seconds time: Bat… Brother… Bat… Hit. No hesitation.”
Psychotic Tendencies
“When I was a teenager, my friend’s little brother had a ton of psychotic tendencies. A couple of examples I remember is him putting their dog in a cooler and suffocating it because ‘it was being annoying.’
He once ran into my friend’s room, handed me a knife, went to the kitchen, and sliced his own arm, and proceeded to tell his parents that I cut him. What is even weirder is that even when they saw me holding a knife they didn’t believe him for a second.
About three years ago he shot his dad, so I’d say he is a monster.”
Seeking Destruction
“My youngest, let’s call him Gregory, is now 4. His big brother, let’s call him Al, is turning 7 soon. From the time Gregory could move under his own power, he would actively seek out whatever Al was playing with and destroy it. He was a tiny meat missile that fired itself, without fail, every time he spotted a valid target.
Al’s building a city with Mega Blocks? Greg is there to destroy. Al’s racing hot wheels on his tracks? Greg is there to destroy. Al is making dirt mounds in the yard with his construction toys? You get the idea. The kid was set on ruining everything his brother was interested in.
Al, a very sweet kid who’s on the spectrum, usually just looked to my wife and I every time, with this defeated, but accepting, look on his face. It was like something out of a comic strip or TV show. Al christened him ‘Destruction Gregory.’
I was an only child, so I usually had no idea how to deal with it, so I mostly deferred to my wife, who is the oldest of four kids. I guess she’s done ok in that regard, thankfully, because now that he’s older, he’s stopped being super destructive, albeit still a bit of a cheeky prankster.
I dread when ‘Destruction Gregory’ reaches the teen years.”
Exiled From The Family
“My sister is raising two monsters — my niece and nephew. The whole family knows, even their parents know but neither one of them wants to be a parent and discipline or give consequences for their monsters actions. My nephew yelled at my sister at Subway when she asked him to pick out his chips. He screamed, ‘Shut up, you hag, I want to choke you!’ He then proceeded to kick the customer nearest him in the back of the leg. My sister just laughed it off with a defeated, embarrassed look on her face.
At my daughter’s third birthday party my niece (8 years old at the time) realized she was wearing the jean’s she doesn’t like, screamed over the birthday song at her parents told them to fix it immediately. Well, they couldn’t, they had no change of clothes. She flipped out, grabbed the birthday cake and threw it on the ground then ripped her pants off, threw a present on the ground and stomped all over it. No apology. No consequences. My sister offered to pay to replace the gift. I told her I’d rather she pay to send her kids to therapy she called me the c-word and said I didn’t love my niece and nephew.
They’re in their teens now and still throw fits if you don’t do what they want or let them win. When my brother had his son, my monster nephew started beating him up around when he was just a little boy. My nephew gave the little boy a black eye. Only time he got his butt kicked and after that it stopped. And the only people my monster niece and nephew are genuinely scared of and behave around are my African-American sister-in-law and my Mexican brother-in-law. They’ve never done anything to them, they’re just not white.
Anyway, we have secret family get together without inviting them because they always ruin them. We honestly don’t like living like this but, we also don’t like spending X amount of hours listening to them whine, complain, scream, and demand things while breaking and destroying our property and you can’t say anything to them and their parents won’t say anything. Its upsetting. I dread their future.”
Eight Years Is Too Long
“My ex-girlfriend’s 8-year-old son was mental before I moved in with her. His mom would routinely be called into school with him doing something crazy.
He apparently never wiped his butt as one of the reasons she was called in was because he soiled himself, it got so bad they thought he was being abused. Which she had to go to parental guidance with him. The various doctors that had seen him and found nothing wrong, physically or mentally, even when he would hide his soiled underwear around the house which would be discovered by the smell.
He has done some over the top crazy over the years such as:
He tried to stab a girl in the eye with a pencil which resulted in a four-inch scrap two inches below her eye.
An alleged attempted harassment.
Trying to strangle a girl on a school bus.
Putting his fist through a window in school.
He had to be picked up at the front door by a taxi and taken to school and back every day because he wasn’t allowed on the bus anymore.
He had a personal helper in school who had to be with him at all times in school.
The list goes on and on.
But this is the cream… He told some local kids he was being ‘beaten black and blue’ and news got around and his mum’s social worker had to come inspect his body and question us. There was not a mark on him of course and the social worker knew him, so he failed that time.
Many years later, and he was 14 at the time I was fixing his mom’s iPhone and come across a picture of him holding his junk. I sat for a moment considering what to do and whether it was really happening, I decided to report the finding to his mom.
I went upstairs and gave her the phone and said look through the pictures, she did and found nothing, so I looked and sure enough nothing. Then it clicked he passed by behind me as I was looking through the pictures and went upstairs, he must have seen the pic or realized what was going to happen and ran upstairs to his room where he had his mom’s iPad which is connected through the cloud and deleted the picture.
Meanwhile, I told her what I had seen, and she called him down, and he denied everything of course which resulted in a huge argument. Later that night, he told his mom that the photo I had seen was a doctored image he had made and sent to a gay friend as a joke.
I forgot to mention he was a habitual liar so much so that if you caught him red-handed he would still deny he had done anything, we gave him the nickname ‘I didn’t do it.’ So I banned him from using the internet for obvious reasons. For that he told his school assistant that I was beating him which resulted in CSA having me put out of the house. All was sorted out sort of when the CSA people worked out he was crazy, but when he hit 16 and was as crazy as ever my girlfriend refused to kick him out even after the things he had done.
The relationship ended soon after.”
More Than Just Sibling Rivalry
“My 8-year-old son had gotten a plastic baseball bat from me and my wife. One day, I walked outside to see my younger 5-year-old daughter screaming and running from my 8-year-old son who was holding the baseball bat and whacking her wherever he can, he was wearing my jeans, had a bandanna on, and a baseball cap on backwards. He kept calling himself a cool kid and wouldn’t stop whacking her. I ran over and stopped him and my wife took our daughter inside to get an ice pack.
I took the bat away and asked him why he was hitting her, and he said, ‘Because I’m a cool kid, and cool kids show their siblings who’s the leader, daddy.’
He got grounded for a week and after he was done with the grounding, he told me he was very sorry. However, he wasn’t finished.
A month later, I found him running around with a plastic sword in a ninja costume from Halloween and whacking my daughter again! I ran over, stopped him, my daughter ran off, and when I asked him why he hit her this time he said ‘because it’s fun.’ He got grounded for a very long time, and I realized then he needed counseling.
My son is now 20 and my daughter is 17. He came over for dinner one night and somehow that was brought up. He denied the entire thing even though before that he said he remembered counseling! I just hope he doesn’t raise his newborn son to follow in his footsteps.”
The Problem Child
“When our son was young, he was a little horror. Always getting in trouble and always disrespectful. We moved multiple times because of this problem child. Doctors, medication, support from us and other family, he was still a trouble. We gave up a life and moved 1,000 miles away to start new in a more rural and less congested and cheaper area and figured we could give him more attention and be more involved. Didn’t matter.
One day, child services showed up at our house. Told us our son was going door to door begging for food and telling people we had nothing for him to eat in the house. Total nonsense. Fridge was always full. When we asked him in front of the social worker why he did that, he said he just didn’t want anything we had in the house.
All the way through high school, he gets in trouble and tells me ‘dad, I didn’t do it, I swear!’ I show up at the school defending my son, just to hear him say he did do it after all. Adult son is about to go to jail for unpaid child support, and parents go pay the bill and get him out of trouble just to find out he had the money but wanted to do something else. About a year ago, my 25-year-old son, who is back living with us, asks us if his girlfriend can stay at the house because her parents can’t stand him. Of course, she can and take care of him and her when she’s around. Always feeding them and giving them gas money just to find out her parents are keeping all her money for her, so she can get her own place. Those are just a very few of examples of how he has been growing up and regardless, we have always been by his side and supported him.
Six months ago they move out. Three months ago I lose my job and truck craps on me. I ask him a few times for a ride. He catches attitude from his girlfriend for always running to help us. For a couple who have stood by and supported a child and done everything they could for him, today I watched his mother put her head down and cry. He hurt his mother so bad, she sat here and cried. I have only seen her, in almost 30 years together, cry like that twice.”
Like An Abusive Relationship
“When my daughter was naughty as a preschooler, we used to put her in the kitchen for timeout. We had a safety gate on the doorway and as long as nothing was cooking in there it was like a holding pen for her. Well she started to ask to go to the toilet as soon as she was put in there.
At first, she was allowed to go but pretty soon it became clear she was just using the toilet excuse to get out of the timeout early. The first time I told her she could go to the toilet after timeout (which usually only last a few minutes), she proceeded to pee on the kitchen floor in retaliation.
She’s 15 now, and her temper is still there. Living with her is like being in an abusive relationship.”
Tears Mean Happiness
“Years ago, my wife and I had a very heated argument. Our daughter overheard us and came into the room just as things hit their peak. My wife rushed into the bathroom crying. I was left sitting on the bed feeling low, listening to my wife sob on the other side of the door. Our daughter looked up at me with a smile and said, ‘Mommy’s crying’ and proceeded to laugh loud enough for mom to hear.
And with that, I was in trouble for something entirely new.”
Evil Child With Bad Intentions
“My sister’s older girl is a saint, but the little one is a psychopath and the girl’s parents indulge every crazy behavior of hers.
One of the worst was last year when one of my sister’s ureter broke, and she had to get a tube from her kidney, out of her body and to a bag, while the ureter healed. She was pretty ill and was in the hospital for a bit more than a month.
Anyways, second night she’s back home, little brat PULLS the tube out of my sister’s kidney, requiring her to get an emergency surgery.
The girl’s excuse? She KNEW doing that would hurt her mom, but she (my sister) was getting SO MUCH attention from he dad since she got home… attention she (little brat) deserves more.
The worst part is that my sister and brother-in-law thought that was cute… The crazy part is that my older niece would have never gotten away with something like that, so I don’t really get why they spoiled the younger one so much.
I know she’s my niece, but I just can’t see past those behaviors and like her.”
Praying For A Doctor
“My 6-year old has always had weird interests. She asked me to show her pictures of what’s in our bodies. I showed her diagrams on Google, and she said, ‘No, I mean inside a REAL body. Like a dead person.’ I showed her some random picture of an arm surgery, and she was begging for more.
She always asks me to stop, so she can look at dead animals on the road. When my childhood dog died, she tried to sneak and look inside the bag while I was bawling.
She shows respect for life, but is DEFINITELY interested in bodies. We’re really pushing for the medical field and not a serial killer field.”
I Give Up
“Before my son could crawl he learned how to climb the extra tall baby gate.
Before he could walk, he climbed the window sill.
Before he could run, he climbed the bunk bed.
Before he could open an applesauce container, he learned how to unlock the front door.
I’m not sure what moment made me think ‘Yep. He’s a monster.’
It might have been when I almost witnessed a Harambe situation. I ducked down for ten seconds to tie his sister’s shoe and when I looked up he had one leg over the barrier ready to go say hello. He was 2 years old at the time.
I finally resigned myself to the leash. I brought it home and prepared for the protests. Instead, he declared himself a puppy dog, made his siblings play police with him for two hours while he ‘sniffed out the bad guys,’ then gleefully showed me how easy it was for him to take the darn thing off.”
World’s Worst Sister
“My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. My dad was having an affair. My sister, who is 10 years older than me, was left to babysit me when I was around 4 years old or so. She pushed me around the yard telling me I was rotten, that I ruined everything, that she hated me, and she wished I would die. She abused me a lot. She liked to tie me up and torture me. Lock me in closets. She made fun of my other older sister to the point where she ended up bulimia. She dislocated my shoulder when I was 5 years old.
She would wrestle anybody for a penny you both spotted on the ground. Take the last piece of cake and say. ‘I don’t want it really but I don’t want you to have it’
My mom had to work a lot to keep a roof over our heads. My sister would steal antiques out of the house and give them to my dad.
When she started working at 16 my mother asked for money to buy to because we were out, and she was broke. My sister said, ‘No. Its like feeding a bear. If I give you money you won’t stop asking.’ Never mind the fact that my mom was supporting her.
If you had a bad sunburn? She would slap it. If you had a bruise, she would poke it…she did this to everyone. And she would laugh ans say she was just joking around when people got mad.
The rudest thing she did was when my mom had just got home from being in the ICU and could barely move. My sister was at church down the street it would have been no big deal to pop in and visit my mom when she called. My mom asked her to bring her facial tissue from the table cause she couldn’t get up. My sister said, ‘No!’ My mom died the next day.
My mom was not emotionally equipped to deal with a trouble-maker.
I haven’t spoken to nor seen my sister in 8 years…because she is a filthy, nasty witch.”