Parents Share Ridiculous Tantrums Their Kids Have Thrown, and We Wonder How They Keep It All Together

Children are like creatures from a completely different universe with their own weird sets of rules. Logic doesn’t always apply to them and sometimes there`s just no point in trying to reason with them. In a brutal and absurd battle between a parent and a child, the child will almost certainly win, rendering the parent baffled and powerless.

We at Bright Side applaud all of the parents who have to deal with these shenanigans on a daily basis and somehow manage to stay sane. Here are some of the funniest stories that internet users have shared about their kiddos.

  • I (slowly) walked up the stairs with my son trailing behind me. I heard him wailing when I reached the top. I turned around and see him full-blown sobbing, face down on the stairs. Unbeknownst to me, we had been racing and I won. @brucelapluma
  • My daughter cried because my wife and I didn’t pick her to be the flower girl at our wedding.
    She wasn’t even conceived until 5 years after our wedding. @OberynMartellsHead

  • One threw a fit because the other flushed her own pee down the toilet, then a fight broke out over whose pee it really was and who should have flushed it. @sprickie
  • When my niece was younger, she had a meltdown because her dad wouldn’t let her kiss the trash goodbye before he took it out. @hummingb1rd
  • Friends of mine have 2 toddlers, a boy and a slightly younger girl. While on a car ride, the boy pretended he had a lollipop (yes, an imaginary lollipop) and refused to share it with his sister. It escalated to the point that the girl was bawling her eyes out, screaming for him to share this nonexistent lollipop, and the mother screaming at the son to share the darn lollipop. @peoples888
  • My 2-year-old had a full-blown meltdown because our dog wouldn’t read him a story.
    When he wants a story, he picks up a book from his shelf and sits on the lap of whichever adult he wants to read to him. Our dog was lying on the floor, and he sat between his front paws with his book, and waited for the dog to read to him.
    Cue an hour-long meltdown when Buddy ‘refused’ to read to him, on account of being a Golden Retriever and therefore illiterate. @daxnerys

  • The other day I had an argument with my 2-year-old because the stickers on his monster truck were actually stuck. He did not like this, and apparently doesn’t appreciate the point of stickers. @Dthibzz
  • My little brother had a full-on breakdown because he wanted to swing. We had a swing, it was in front of him. He wanted for it to swing only in one direction (as in only to be on one side of the swing when swinging, not going backward). I had to explain to him that it wasn’t possible, we can’t do that. @dzonis32
  • I’m not a parent, but I worked at a grocery store and saw plenty of meltdowns.
    My favorite was when I was ringing this lady up, and she had a 3- or 4-year-old with her who wanted chips. She said no, paid, and started walking toward the door doing the whole, “If you don’t come with me I’m leaving you here,” thing.
    The kid legit just dramatically collapsed in my checkout lane and started screaming “potato” over and over. Not potato chips, just potato. I had to walk away because I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
    It was amazing. @Zeosh

  • One of my friend’s kids had a full on meltdown because she hadn’t eaten her ice cream yet. Not that she COULDN’T eat it. She could. It was right in front of her. It was her dessert. But the fact that she had to go through the process of eating the ice cream in order to get to the end point of having eaten the ice cream (and being happy) seemed intolerable to her. @shaidyn

  • My 2 AM, this very morning, was spent convincing my 4-year-old (who had just had an accident) that, no, he could not both wear and not wear the underwear he had made a mess in.
    He wanted to wear them because they had his favorite superheroes on it, but he didn’t want to wear them because they were soaked.
    He eventually lost the battle with quantum physics too. @ilinamorato

  • My 2-year-old son got very upset the other day because we wouldn’t let him drive the car 200 miles home from vacation. @MrsMaglev
  • When my son was a toddler, he once had a breakdown at the grocery store because we got baby carrots and no other carrots to go with them. He was super concerned that we were taking these baby carrots and they would be without their mommy carrots. @nitarrific
  • My son turns 3 tomorrow. We’ve tried to be good parents and teach him some general manners. A while ago he whacked his head on the kitchen table, screamed, turned to make direct eye contact with the table and yelled, “No THANK YOU, table!!!” @SaraBooWhoAreYou
  • My wife and I just discovered we’re pregnant with our third. My wife asked our 3-year-old daughter if she’d like a baby brother or sister.
    “Like Baba?” (character on a Netflix kid’s show)
    My wife said, “Sure!”
    Baby girl pulled a blanket over her head and said, “Just don’t!” @moronicuniform

  • My youngest boy had the devil of all tantrums when his sister took one of his most treasured toys, he wanted me to call the police and have her thrown in jail... This tantrum lasted 5 days, even after she had given the toy back. The part what killed me was that we were out doing the shopping and he saw a policeman, waved him over, and told the policeman the whole story expecting him to take his sister to jail. @dux-spills
  • He enjoys My Little Pony. However, we cannot refer to it as, “My Little Pony.” He can say My Little Pony, but my wife and I must refer to it as, “Your Little Pony” or he loses his little mind.
    It’s adorable in the worst possible way. @LogicCure

  • Just had to deliver the devastating news that slippers are not suitable footwear for snow. @TheRotundHobo
  • My daughter once cried because I wouldn’t “let” her count to infinity.
    When I told her it couldn’t be done, she thought I was speaking as if I personally don’t allow it. She cried at the injustice of my decision. @frumious88

  • He loved being tickled, so I was tickling him one day. He let out a huge fart and suddenly started crying and screaming. I ask him why he was screaming and he replied with, “I was saving that for later.” How and why would you save a fart? @ShutTheFrontDoor__

Has anything like this ever happened to your child or to someone you know? We’d love to hear your funny stories in the comments!

Please note: This article was updated in May 2022 to correct source material and factual inaccuracies.
Preview photo credit OberynMartellsHead / reddit

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When my now 12 year old daughter was 2 she got into a verbal argument, lost said argument, and threw a fit over the loss. Who was she arguing with? Herself. What was it about? If she was a boy or girl? So ya she cried because she was a boy and didnt want to be.

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My nephew, who lives in qld with his mum was visiting to surprise my mum for her birthday. One of the days my partner and I took him to the Australian reptile park. We get there and look at some animals and a shoe where a keeper was showing off different reptiles and he’s all excited. We then decide to go to the picnic area where they have kangaroos roaming around where you can pet them. He asks to pat one and we are all for it.
So he’s really close to one but then sees the massive playground at the back where you have to go out of the picnic area first before going in to the playground area.
He asks to go in and we are like sure just let us pet the kangaroo first (we were waiting for a family to finish taking a photo)
He starts whinging but stops when we start walking towards it.
However when we started to walk left to get out rather than just straight towards the playground he loses it. Cue the biggest meltdown I’ve seen this at the time 3 year old have. I was pushing the stroller so my bf tried to tell him that we were going but to no avail. He was screaming that he wanted to go to the park. And throwing himself on the ground. My poor bf has no idea what to do as he has no one really younger in his family so I got him to grab the stroller.
I pick my nephew up off the ground and started walking all with him screaming and trying to throw himself out of my arms. People were all staring and muttering to each other.
I kneel down once we get out of the picnic area and sternly tell him that we are going to the park but not until he stops screaming.
He whinges for a bit more saying he wants to go to the park.
He realises that that was the plan when we got closer
What ceases the meltdown
“Now, only big boys who aren’t crying can go play so I need you to dry your eyes and have a drink of water before you can go”
He did that so quickly that I bargained a cuddle and a kiss in there too

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My son is Autistic and ADHD, but high functioning, so meltdowns can happen for sometimes odd reasons, to what appears to the general public as what’s acceptable for an 11 year old boy.

Today he freaked out because he will be attending a tour next week of the Junior High School he will be attending in the coming year. During the tour, they will visit the biology class, during a dissection. He protested for the life of the animal and refuses to attend that part of the tour. I give him cudos for his awareness, as animals are of particular importance to him. This boy who wants to bring extinct creatures back to life is going to have to very soon face the ugly truth about the study of life by humans. But it’s also a beautiful story and I know he will find his path. Thank goodness for his incredible teachers and classmates!

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