Toddler breaks $15K Lego sculpture - share your disaster stories here

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

This morning at MNHQ we've been gasping at this story, in which a $15K Lego sculpture was accidentally destroyed by a child less than an hour after it went on display in China.

It turns out that quite a few of us have war stories about times our children very nearly - or actually - destroyed things while in our care, and we thought it would be good to hear yours too, in the spirit of mutual support and/or confession. So, if it's not still too raw , do share your experiences of times toddler met delicate object, with suboptimal results - close shaves also very welcome.

Long before I was a mum I took a little boy with autism on a day trip to a museum.

There was a free standing sculpture by Anthony Gormley on display in the foyer. He ran at it full force and it wobbled like a Weebly. It survived but we exited pretty sharpish.

Feel for these people!

and this is why Will Ferrell was right and we should Kraggle the fuck out of everything!!!
The artist was very kind about not wanting compensation.
As to personal destruction I had
DC1 break a resin snake in a shop (as hideous as it sounds and cost me 18 quid acc to ''if you break me consider me sold'' rule).
DC1 break a light column in tourist info (not fixed to anything and could have hurt her so no action was taken).
DC2 break a couple of baubles (cost to me about eight quid)
DC3 break four bottles of cheap wine (cost to me sixteen quid)
I do have liability insurance for the three kids but not worth claiming for random items above. They have all got clumsy genes but are slowly improving. We avoid ceramics, glass aisles, ming vases and the like but
have to watch them like a bloody hawk. No dead gorillas though.

I have lost count of the demolition derby that is Home. Hold on tightly, let go lightly. No use crying over spilt milk. Oi give that back it's the only nice thing I have left in the whole sodding house! are my mantras (rocks quietly in corner).

I am also surprised the statue was not glued, the legoland ones are.

Funnily enough while the law in Germany means most people get insurance in case they accidentally damage something, children under the age of seven are considered "forces of nature" and completely uninsurable

My dh cousin's boys, 4 and 6, left alone for about 5 minutes emptied my wash bag of a very expensive new face cream and smeared it over every surface. They they found the tipex and painted the (antique) Louis XIV furniture with it.

My dh nephews 4 and 6 tipped over a sofa at the grandparents, switched on the cooker gas and tried to set fire to my daughter, all in the same few minutes.

My dh as a small boy dismantled a television and a telephone. He is now an engineer. His side have all the destructive genes.

fay an eight year old had a collection of cars he could or never had played with? that's so sad. If it had been the Dad's fair enough, otherwise tragic.
thumbwitch (narrows eyes) You were on the kid's side in Lego Movie, huh?! Lego is EVIL. Uni kitty my behind. KRAGGLE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;-)

My son broke my Conran vase with the power of his mind.

He stamped his foot and pointed at it whilst going puce with screamy rage that it wasn't being delivered to him. He was 3m away and it just toppled of the shelf and smashed to pieces.

He then gave me the satisfied grin of toddlers everywhere and resumed watching tv.

Clearly he'd already had an attempt to liberate it when I hadn't been looking hence it was unstable ..... It had been happy in the same spot for years pre dc

With hindsight it was a lucky escape that the vase hadn't been successfully knocked down during his attempt to get it.

I really liked that vase. Good job I loved Ds more.

My 3rd child husband lent on a table outside our room at the Holiday Inn in Brighton and it snapped in half under his weight. A housekeeper was cleaning a room next door and ran out to see what had happened. Luckily it wasn't added to our bill.

In a local Designer Outlet, poncy candle shop. Autistic son (not even having a tantrum) managed to knock over a display of candles in glass containers. I was mortified. There was no way I could have afforded to pay for the breakages. The nice people in there didn't make me!

I think with my 5 sons the most humiliating in public moment though was when my ex (part Italian) decided that as babies wander round half naked in Sicily, so they should in North Yorkshire. At a local stately pile, in the Bird Garden full of happy families - my then 2 or 3 year old sans nappy, (had a long vest thing on like a mini dress and it was in the middle of a heatwave).

Without pausing a beat, on the very crowded path, he stops outside the macaw and does this massive crap. Then toddles off, leaving it steaming on the pavement.

DD was potty training and wee'd on DH's ipad because the red case was the same colour as her potty

Kimmy -

DD broke a very posh and expensive looking glass vase in a very posh and expensive hotel lobby when she was about 4. There was also a Superlambanana in the lobby and she saw it and just ran at it, passing the vase and brushing it so it fell, smashing all over their lovely marble floor...

The staff couldn't have been more lovely and were far more concerned that DD might have been harmed than their vase, but God I was mortified.

My mother still tells the story of me finding her bright blue cream eyeshadow (it was the 70's) and smearing it (at a 3yr old's height) all around her bedroom like a mad dado rail, then into the bathroom and along the wall before spreading it all around the toilet bowl...

I had to break down the bathroom door when my 18 month old ds locked himself in. Exdp was keeping an eye on him while I popped to the shops to get him food.
He (exDP)laid himself up on the sofa and decided to have a snooze while ds emptied the loo roll down the loo, chucked bottles of cleaner/talc around.
When I asked him why he didn't look after him his response was "I like them to have a little bit of freedom"!

When dc2 was just starting to walk, I was part of a Bumps n Babies group that met in a different member's house each week. One week an incredibly house-proud parent hosted. Stripped, palest-grey-painted floorboards and cream leather sofas with cashmere throws. (All apparently easy to clean and really low maintenance.) But pride and joy of her living room was the brand new mega-huge flat-screen TV with cinema-style surround sound.

I left the room to take dc1 to the toilet. We all looked out for each other's dc at these points. While I was out of the room our host brought the food out. She served, among other things, Tunnocks teacakes. Somehow dc2 got hold of one - someone must have peeled it for her -and I returned to the room to find her staggering across the living room holding it.

She lost her balance in front of the TV, and fell onto it, smearing the sticky thing across the screen and over the buttons at the side. Before I could get across the room to her, she ricocheted off the TV and landed on one of the fancy speakers. This time she slithered open-handed all the way down it, pressing the remains of the teacake through the mesh over the speakers.^^

OMG

Our host was totally graceful about it. After a fleeting moment of utter shock and horror crossed her face, she laughed it off and said "That's what insurance is for." She would not even let me pay the excess.

But she also never served anything soft, sticky or chocolatey ever again!^^

Mine was enabled by being in a back pack to reach the communication cord on a packed train. Such fun. The train didn't stop, but the driver came on the intercom. I anticipated a hefty fine but didn't get one.

Also a very close shave at an ancient burial site of some sort, which had survived thousands of years, until DS started trying to move the stones. I tell myself this is blown out of proportion in my memory. I was close to tears at the time.

Oh the joys of toddlers!
Ds1 and his friends being suspiciously quiet at friends mums house. The whole kitchen at toddler height, the floor and the four kids were slathered in lurpak.
Id bought myself a nice jar of face cream (big treat) when Dd was about 8 months old. It was On my bedside.She was in the middle of my bed after coming out of the bath, I nipped back into bathroom to get something, was gone a minute, came back and she was covered top to toe in the stuff.
Finally, came home from work when twins were at the pulling themselves up stage, to find they had climbed on the sofa arms and got some books down. The dust jacket of Dh's 1st edition of a Clockwork Orange was in tiny pieces. That was going to pay for our first family holiday.

Not my dc but me as a child

I was in the hairdressers with my dsm who was having her hair cut. I was sat in the waiting area on a row of those chairs with the hairdryers attached to them. In a bid to catch my sister who was running around I leaned over the arm of my chair and brought the whole row of dryers crashing down on top of me

The manager of the salon said not to worry as this wasn't the first time it had happened!

Every generation in my family hosts an eldritch abomination destroyer of some sort. My great uncle as a 5 year old knocked down a priceless 6 ft devotional statue of St Mary in the local church 20 minutes before the procession; the crones of the time blamed that for the german invasion at the time . My uncle at 4 chased a pidgeon along the sea front, knocked a man talking to someone holding a bicycle into the sea, with the bicycle crashing onto two tied boats, capsizing one,... oh and the lady nearby had to be given sugar water for the shock. At 7 he was swinging on the scaffolding of the neighbour's house, destabilising the whole structure and crashing the man on top into the newly laid piece of the roof. My brother destroyed a TV (climbed on it to get to dad's car models above), somehow brought down a mirror screwed into the wall, sent a whole orange stand across the entire town square, destroyed a roman ruins finding with a skateboard and knocked the town Christmas tree three years in a row (years 5-7). DH and I are working on DC1... I'm considering an insurance in case the country gets brought down in ruins around us...

DS2 on our first and only family holiday in Tunisia last year knocked over a table with a glass top, smashed everywhere
And just today, he threw 2 plates on the floor at a friends house, smashing them both....literally can't take him anywhere

Living abroad 4 year old DS goes to trial/interrogation day at naice International School, finds a pot of blue paint and paints the microwave. Had to go for a second attempt to determine if he was a suitable type to enrol!

Not my DS, but I was heavily pregnant with him at the time (if that counts?!).

Visited the Baltic in Newcastle and wandered into an exhibition of the life work of a very famous sculpture (can't remember who it was now). It was hot, I was tired, and my feet were so swollen my shoes looked like they had muffin tops.

I took a moment to rest on a nearby bench while DH carried on round, only to see exhibition staff homing in on me from every angle.

It wasn't a bench, but a classic example of the sculptor's work from the late 1960s (or something).

Putting it mildly, it wasn't meant to take the weight of a sweaty, heavily pregnant woman.

Sculptor, not sculpture (obviously).

... And may I take this opportunity to apologise to the estate of the late Robert Breer. (Although I hope they can see why I might have got a little confused as to what was seating and what wasn't ...)

I have kids with ASD so I dare to turn my back for a second otherwise everything would be destroyed!
But, I on the other hand, was walking through Sainsburys, at 8 months pregnant, I was reaching to get something from a fridge unit, slightly lost my balance and knocked over a whole display tower of wine. I must have knocked about 30 bottles over.
To make mAtters worse, I had to go home on the bus stinking like a pub with a very obvious bump.

Oh I've remembered a couple more of mine as an adult

I've knocked over a display in a shop and broken several shot glasses, knocked over a whole tray of hot drinks in a cafe and used to knock over my glass of water at least once a week at my desk at work my dc have no hope...

I broke a child's (hand sized) model of a bicycle at a school open day. He had made it in a 3d printer and I said 'oh look, the wheels go round'.

No, the wheels snap off..