Kids and an Open Can of Paint, What Could Go Wrong?

• donna
  July 7th, 2006 at 5:53 pm

  My 20-something son looking over my shoulder says, “See, I was a fairly well-behaved child, by comparison.”

• Inkjammer
  July 7th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

  If I had those kids, oh man… they would be forced to live in a dungeon for the rest of eternity and into forever. I have nothing against kids, but oh man, it’s like a whiteout grenade went out. Destruction. Chaos.

  Total Fisher Price Armageddon.

• Sean
  July 7th, 2006 at 8:46 pm

  Heh, as long as they had fun. Glad I don’t have to deal with them!

  hahahahahaaaa

• Alice H
  July 7th, 2006 at 9:05 pm

  we grounded my 3 year old from TV for a week for scratching our big screen. at least it’s still useable…

• Dataschmuck
  July 8th, 2006 at 11:50 am

  That’s a $3000 dollar TV. Those kids are probably up for adoption by now.

• travesty
  July 8th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

  PARENTS! This is simply what happens when intellegent human children explore and play within the boundaries set around them. Its lack of supervision that leads to messes like this. I once cleaned the kitchen floor with Comet, while dad nappped. I made some beautiful green mud before I got tired and took a nap. Dad’s fault, all the way. Kids are just ignorant, they don’t know how much the TV costs, all they know is that it is fun and interesting to smear paint on it. Lets hope for everyone’s sake that is water based latex and not petroleum based acrylic or alykd nastyness. Those kids could instead be lying passed out and brain damaged in the big white spot, or dead, think about it.

• NerdElite
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

  Travesty is a total buzzkill. If the paint doesn’t kill them, blog commenters must take action. TODDLERCIDE!

• Flexi
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

  I guess it’s good I don’t have kids, because if this happened to me I would not be able to beat them hard enough.

• palad
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

  Reminds me of my kids last fall. http://forums.planethzl.com/index.php?showtopic=6142&hl=grape

  At least mine washed off with a little soap and water.

• Swanky
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

  This is why you have little girls. These are boys. Girls don’t do these things. And they rarely kill the pets or each other.

  Let’s not start the blame game. That’s what cavemen did before speech. Point and grunt and blame. Responsibilty is important for civilized man, and growing children. The parents will have to clean it all up and take care of their responsibilities, and live with these spoiled hell-muffins for another decade. The punishment for this crime was withheld probably 6 years ago and on up until this moment and probably not meted out until law enforcement or girlfriends come into play in a long while…

• Pizza Manibular
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

  wah wah! these people are better off without a tv. they probably use it to babysit their kids like the majority. you all put too much emphasis on the possessions and not the children. serious.

• misscarlapauline
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:39 pm

  Sorry, I’m with travesty. If you don’t want a painted TV, don’t leave a can of paint in a room with two unsupervised toddlers. Those parents are lucky, lucky, lucky that’s all that happened. Parents, if you want nice things and live children, child-proof your house or supervise your toddlers.

  Judging by the smile on the little boy’s face, I’d say the mom/dad understands where the responsibility lies in this situation and wasn’t too upset with the children, though and that’s cool. Glad the babies had a good time and are safe.

• battletoad
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:41 pm

  uh, why didn’t the parents seal the lid on the paint can properly? what a bunch of suburbanized ignorant ingrates, somebody call the wambulance, someone’s financial system is in a rut

• sabrina
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:42 pm

  Swanky — I’m a former little girl, and trust me, I would have been all over that like white paint on a $3000 television.

• dod
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

  Looks like fun! Those parents should chuck their TV and set up a painting room for these guys.

• lindsay bluth, shemale
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:51 pm

  2 words: methyl hydrate. problem solved. oh, also, birth control, naturally.

• Kevin
  July 10th, 2006 at 2:54 pm

  I saw a higher res version of this yesterday somewhere. I am 100% certain that this is a photoshop forgery.

• apiaryist
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:08 pm

  Hah-HAH! Lead poisoning.

• egon
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

  Hmm…I notice that the kids’ seem to have been pretty careful about not getting paint on THEIR toys.

• anon
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:23 pm

  An insurance job if ever I’ve seen one, posting it on the internet doesn’t make it any more convincing

• Zeb
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

  Ah, relax everyone. I love how people immediately jump to judgment, fools. My goodness no wonder kids are messed up these days, they can’t smear paint around, but when they are teenagers they can listen to gangsta rap and act like hoodlums !!!!One little scamp and his accomplice got up to some mischief. Both are covered up enough for there to be almost zero risk of poisoning. Sheesh that sort of thing !! what kids do. Maybe they are the sort of kids who will play outdoors rather than be cloistered inside on computers. Oh by the way I have a phd, a fairly settled life, am fairly happy and I used to love setting fire to aerosol cans.. great fun….

• Subhan
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

  Looks to me like somebody wanted a new TV & couch on their renter’s insurance.
  “hey judy, can I babysit your kids?” “Yeah, sure”
  “now boys, be carefull with this can full of paint, don’t get any on the couch or TV wink wink”

• cindy
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:37 pm

  Mom and Dad can’t be too mad, they went and got the camera instead of instantly killing the kids. If its like my household Dad will just use this as an excuse to get a bigger/better tv. hell he may have even set the whole thing up…

• Chris
  July 10th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

  If the paint wasn’t left out for the kids to get it and the parents or parent were paying attention to them none of that would have happened.As far as beating them is concerned it wouldn’t work, at that age anything they can get their hands on is fair game.It would be like leaving your steak on the couch when you have a big dog in the house.

• Rhonda
  July 10th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

  In this case ” Life hits you fast” just please make sure your insurance is paid. It could have been worse but the best part is the kids are OK.

• Nate
  July 10th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

  Don’t always rush to blame the parents. It is impossible to proof everything and be there for every second. Some kids can be quite resourceful in their efforts to get into trouble. I know I was. For me the harder my parents tried to prevent me from doing something, the more fun I had defeating their preventative schemes. (Up to and including figuring out a way of getting into a safe, just to find xmas presents though, not guns or anything. Sure I was older at that point, but little kids can be resourceful too.) It’s no fun if it’s not a challenge.

• david
  July 10th, 2006 at 4:59 pm

  nice. remind me not to have kids.

• kayke
  July 10th, 2006 at 5:06 pm

  Swanky said:
  “This is why you have little girls. These are boys. Girls don’t do these things. And they rarely kill the pets or each other.”
  Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!! *wipes eyes, catches breath*
  Who says that little girls don’t do stuff like that? My little girl is MUCH more likely to get into mischief than her older brother. Woo! I haven’t had such a good laugh in days!!
  Additionally, if the parents leave an open can of paint out, they deserve the above carnage.

• Dave
  July 10th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

  My two are about the same age as these monsters. If I walked in to find this little scene, I gotta say I’d be too busy laughing my ass off to be too mad.

  If you’re the type of person who’s going to get leave a can of paint and a $3000 dollar TV in the same room as a toddler, and then get mad about property destruction, you might want to re-evaluate your parenting choices.

  After all, its just a frickin’ TV. It’s just a *thing*. It can be fixed/cleaned/replaced…

• 11-year old girl
  July 10th, 2006 at 5:36 pm

  “This is why you have little girls. These are boys. Girls don’t do these things. And they rarely kill the pets or each other.”

  HA!
  Right. Girls don’t do those things?
  As I write this, my mother is cleaning up a gigantic mess made by my 20-month old sister within two minutes while my mother was on the phone. The carpet is covered in chicken soup.

  Trust me, that statement isn’t true. My sister can not be left un-supervised for over 30 seconds. Even if she’s watching television or quietly playing in the corner, for the next time you glance at her, the TV will be disconnected and the DVD player open, whith the disk is in the baby’s hands.

  For her, the question is not HOW to get on the table: it’s how to do it in ten seconds.

  Heh heh. Right. Girls aren’t troublemakers? I don’t think I’ll ever believe that. =D

• Manue
  July 10th, 2006 at 6:05 pm

  well…

  when I was 3 or 4 years old, with my cousin as a partner in crime… we painted books with nail polish and we really loved it (our mothers… less)

  older, my brother threw a bottle of liquid paper at me and it exploded and left white points of “paint” everywhere in the kitchen (not helping, the furniture set was black…). Believe me, there’s a LOT of paint in the little bottle when you have to scratch it from the floor, table and chair!

• James
  July 10th, 2006 at 6:22 pm

  1) They are WAY too young to be left unattended with a freakin’ can of paint nearby. That was WAITING to happen.

  2) They could have been MUCH more thorough, I see unpaint-covered spots ALL OVER the place. Tsssk.

  3) Depending on what show was on at the time, this may have been COMPLETELY justified TV and Room-icide.

  4) I have three children. If this happened to me I would KNOW it was my own d*mned fault. I raised them, I left the can around, I was too busy with myself to be watching them. TV is not a babysitter, folks.

• Steve Parkinson
  July 10th, 2006 at 8:24 pm

  Now would be a good time to educate the kids on how much its going to cost to get the floor, tv and sofa replaced/cleaned.

  Even if they are too young to do the math, you could take them to Toys-R-Us and show them how many aisles they could buy for that amount of money.

• Bill
  July 10th, 2006 at 9:04 pm

  Hey, it’s like Picasso’s blue period, but white. Be happy they got it out of their system so early, now they can go onto more groundbreaking work.

• deannie
  July 10th, 2006 at 9:33 pm

  I couldn’t help but notice that it seems that Barney is on that TV screen - are these kids going to get no credit for saving themselves from that mindless pap?!?

• Parris
  July 10th, 2006 at 9:33 pm

  Kids and monkeys; can’t keep them out of anything. Glad they didn’t paint eyes or eat the stuff. Otherwise, what fun! Glad the parent(s) took it in the right way. Paint will come off glass well.

  Some girls are worse than boys, tho’. When we were poor hippies traveling Europe and living in my VW van, we woke up one morning to discover my daughter had captured a red ballpoint pen. She had decorated herself completely, the little hammock that stretches over the front seats, the walls, the ceiling … and the look on her face was partly angelic and partly Salvador Dali. Priceless!

• Emru
  July 10th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

  This is the fun thing about being a parent. These kids’ parents had enough of a sense of humour that they went and took photos, even though their TV and sofa got trashed. Then, if they’re reading this, they have to put up with a few people who know nothing about the family or the photo’s context insulting them and their intelligence, and making assumptions about their parenting skills and habits.

  Parris called it: Clever kids can outsmart even the most careful of parents. When it happens, all you can do is thank God they didn’t kill themselves, laugh, and take pictures to show them when they’re older.

• Eston
  July 11th, 2006 at 12:29 am

  I agree with Emru. If I had kids and they made a disaster like this, I would’ve taken a picture too. It’s so ridiculous that there’s no way you can actually get awfully angry at this. Nearly everything I can see there you could get the paint off of without too much trouble - the TV is not trashed; it still operates with a bit of paint thinner to get the latex off the screen and the sofa/floor can be cleaned (well, the sofa may require one new cushion.)

  It could’ve been worse. I would have just shook my head, taken blame for the paint, and promptly transported both kids to the shower, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. There’s nothing you can do about it now.

• Dan
  July 11th, 2006 at 1:15 am

  What you don’t see is the person taking the picture (my guess — the eldest child hoping to become, once again, an only child).

• wipe
  July 11th, 2006 at 1:54 am

  throw the tv and the rest of the “sh*t” out and get em a nice room where they can paint all over the walls…then you’d be getting somewhere. anyone who even jokingly places a $3,000 piece of brain liquifier over a child should be summarily shot. in fact anyone who’s spent $3,000 on a tv should be shot period.

• cindy
  July 11th, 2006 at 2:53 am

  Thank Goddess they didn’t paint the Dyson (seen at bottom of photo)!

• lauren
  July 11th, 2006 at 6:32 am

  *kisses IUD*

• Clark
  July 11th, 2006 at 6:32 am

  You can achieve the same effect by mixing cornstarch and water. After it dries it just flakes and brushes off, and you can vacuum it up with your Dyson.

• happy nonparent
  July 11th, 2006 at 7:06 am

  Incidents such as this, documented in all their gruesome glory on the Internet, only serve to further bolster my intense happiness that I will never, ever, have to enter a room to find my furniture and expensive television covered in white paint. Children are the devil incarnate.

• Andy Morgan
  July 11th, 2006 at 7:12 am

  Hey! mummy bought some contents insurance this week. It’s time we got a new lounge…’

• everbody
  July 11th, 2006 at 9:57 am

  Smart kids! Obliterated the idiot box!

• ET
  July 11th, 2006 at 12:30 pm

  I can only assume that the comments calling for 24 hour supervision of two toddlers is not a parent. Even if it were, why would you want to? At some point you have to give them space to figure out what they can and can’t do–here’s a great example of a can’t. An expensive lesson for everyone, but kids have to learn boundaries by testing them–if they never get to, you end up with whiny Gen-Yers who have never been allowed to get hurt in their short, overprogrammed lives.

• trr
  July 11th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

  24 hr supervision is not necessary. But more supervision than was applied here is necessary. Cans of paint should not be accessible to toddlers, nor should they have had enough time to do this much damage. At least the parents who took these photos weren’t upset, judging from the smiling kids. What a pain to clean up though! The glass TV screen - not too bad. The sofa - forget it, it’s garbage now. Looks like the one on the right probably ingested some paint - yuk!

• Fred
  July 11th, 2006 at 1:51 pm

  DO NOT BLAME THESE KIDS! I see people talking about beating the kids for doing this. Blame the parents! Maybe we should be them.

• weredonkey
  July 11th, 2006 at 2:04 pm

  those kids are conveying a hidden message
  smash your tv

• Bubba
  July 11th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

  BTW, that’s not a $3000 tv. More like a $500-600 set. It’s still a terribly funny lesson, though.

• nicole
  July 11th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

  Stupid parents. Stupid, stupid parents.

• pickman's model
  July 11th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

  Man, I’m glad I’m never having kids. I’d wind up pulling a muscle beating the little monsters if they got into trouble like that.

• Katherine
  July 11th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

  I think my tubes just tied themselves.

• Six Nine So Fine
  July 11th, 2006 at 3:39 pm

  Man, why couldn’t they have just been like normal kids and eaten the paint?!

• smokie
  July 11th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

  Hey,

  Lets not forget, some of us are still acting like kids.

  Kids know how to have fun, and they do it with out spending a dime.

  We on the other hadn will spend a fortune and still be board. DUH.

• Spoonaloon
  July 11th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

  I’m just glad there weren’t any animal victims of the painting spree, at least I hope there weren’t.

• Cor
  July 11th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

  At least it goes well with the walls.

• Laura
  July 11th, 2006 at 4:09 pm

  Just to add to the comments regarding little girls and the trouble they cause: When I was about two or three my mother went to take a shower and left me in the supervision of my father. We had just eaten dinner and my parents must have had steak that night. The kitchen table had yet to be cleaned and while my dad was watching TV in another room I played in the kitchen. I would check on my father every couple of minutes to make sure he was still just sitting there. He didn’t think anything of it; obviously I was safe and sound. When my mom got out of the shower I immediately ran up to see her with a big innocent grin. She knew right away that I must be up to something. My mom followed me down the stairs and into the kitchen where she saw what I had been doing for the past 15 - 20 minutes or so. Our old chairs used to have cushioned seats, which I had deliberately murdered with steak knives. One of the chairs still had a knife stuck in it, and only two of the six were left un-harmed.

• Ed Schafer
  July 11th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

  I was four, the paint was pink and it fell from a shelf in the garage. Dad was ready to kill, but mon saved her baby. The punishment was getting me cleaned! My two sons were angels by comparison.

• Little_Serpent
  July 11th, 2006 at 8:06 pm

  What perfect little candidates for post-term abortions.

  No vacuums or coat hangers required!

• Janie
  July 12th, 2006 at 7:18 am

  :O Maybe… it’s cream?

  Another reason not to have kids then…

• Deb
  July 12th, 2006 at 11:17 am

  Who cares how or why or even if this really happened, but I had the best laugh I’ve had in a long time!

• Kathy
  July 12th, 2006 at 3:07 pm

  I think that this very silly photo was staged. It looks like the parents moved the coffee table, put the curtain up off the floor and the made the fake mess themselves. I wonder if they used a broken TV or one of those plastic prop TVs you see in model homes. I can’t believe it actually sparked a real controversy. I wouldn’t base future birth control decisions on this photo.

• JO
  July 12th, 2006 at 9:22 pm

  I’m a professional artist, and can understand!
  I’m not a mother, unfortunately, but was a child of course! And can understand THAT!
  Had the biggest laugh in years over this! this is so hilarious!
  I do hope it was fixable though!
  Thanks so much for sharing this with me!!!

• Demile
  July 13th, 2006 at 1:27 am

  Now… if this was staged do you think the little crotch-loafs would be allowed to spread paint on the couch cushion… Look at the last cushion right near the TV with the little smirking failed abortion. Is it just me or is it covered in paint?

  This is disgusting and sick and those damn kids should be put down.

• Lesley
  July 13th, 2006 at 9:26 am

  Sweet! Kids are angels, huh?? Reminds me of when my husband and I woke up to find our 1 and 3 year old in the kitchen making snow angels on the kitchen floor with baking powder. It wasn’t their fault though, they couldn’t help it, they were hopped up on the Easter candy they found stashed in the cabinet. P.S. This was all discovered at 7:00 am. Yeah, they were real go-getters…and for their reward they each got shiny new locks on their bedroom doors. Aaaaahh…memories.

• faith
  July 13th, 2006 at 11:42 am

  It’s called “learning by doing” and is the best way to educate anybody. At this age, what they learn with is up to adults. Sorry, I think the fault lies with the parents.
  (Unless it is staged, of course.) The neat square area and the one cushion painted is a bit worrisome. Pretty compulsive behavior for such little kids.

• dreamer
  July 14th, 2006 at 4:59 am

  Judgemental lot here. Just look at the pic and smile ffs, it is amusing.

• Arduenn
  July 15th, 2006 at 11:27 am

  Technically I’m still grounded for decorating my mom’s furniture with toothpaste 30 years ago.

• Rebecca
  March 14th, 2007 at 7:03 am

  LOL my they looked like they had fun!

  Can’t leave anthing out with young kids they love to explore…. n these kids look like the had a hoot!

• Theresa
  August 13th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

  I showed my 3 year old the pic and asked him what happened. He says “he spilled it on hisself to be a swamp monster”.

• munchkinchop
  February 8th, 2008 at 3:01 am

  donna @1: your child is a totall nerd.
  theresa @72: your child is a genius.
  eveybody who values $3000 tvs over awesome, hilarious, totally destructive children, i’ve got three little letters for you: i.u.d.
  also, paint and toddlers don’t mix, even if it makes for an endearing, enduring pic.

• Nasra
  February 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm

  Its so sweet …

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