Kids Punishing Parents

"Harry Wormwood had unintentionally given his daughter the first practical advice she could use. He had meant to say, 'When a child is bad.' Instead he said, 'When a person is bad', and thereby introduced a revolutionary idea: that children could punish their parents. Only when they deserved it, of course."

— Narrator, Matilda

Parents often set a penalty for their children whenever they do something morally wrong. This is very standard parent behavior. However, there is a time and a place where a child does this to their parents. In any sense, when the parent does something bad to a child, unfairly punishes them, or even just does something stupid, the child decides that the parent needs some parenting and punishes them in return, whether it be ignoring a punishment that said parents set for them, barking orders at them like a parent would do to them, or even straight-up disowning them. In any case, this is a trope where the roles are reversed and the parent is disciplined by the child. In some cases, this can be misused like say a Bratty Half-Pint punishes his or her parents for the littlest of things. Some parents take this due to being doormats.

Compare with Calling the Old Man Out, which is just someone calling out their parents, or any old person they know, for their flaws rather than penalizing them. Also compare with The Dog Bites Back to anyone in the media where an abused child gets back at their abusive parent. Contrast Honor Thy Parent. Depending how it plays out, can fall any number of places on the Sliding Scale of Parent-Shaming in Fiction.

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Examples:

Fan Works

• In The Loud House fanfic How Lynn Clogged the Toilet for the First Time, Lynn Sr. pranks his kids by pretending they're not getting any candy. As a punishment, the kids tie him up, gag him, tear his pyjamas up, throw finger paint, glitter, and soda at him, beat him up, and write a bunch of insults and one swear word on his face.

Films — Animation

• Coco: In a sense, Miguel is punishing his family, both dead and alive, by running away from them because he hated their outlawing of music. His "Reason You Suck" Speech to Imelda when she actually tries to appeal to him is the icing on the cake.
• Tangled had Rapunzel decide to leave Gothel to rot in her tower after finding out that she kidnapped her from her real parents when she was an infant in order to hoard her magic hair for herself. Gothel, however, is having no punishment of the sort.
• The Willoughbys: One can interpret the Willoughby children sending their neglectful Mom and Dad on a dangerous vacation for them to be killed is a punishment for their cruel treatment of the children. They actually get punished when the movie implies they are devoured by a shark.

Films — Live-Action

• This is basically the premise of Clifford; when his uncle refuses to take him to an amusement park he's been aching to go to, Clifford makes his life a living Hell.
• Neil Perry killing himself in Dead Poets Society is most likely him doing this to escape his father's hold of him since the latter is doggedly determined to make him become a doctor and not let him have the life he wants, thus giving Mr. Perry a punishment for his cruel parenting. While doing this caused his dad to try and blame his Positive Friend Influence teacher Mr. Keating, the fact that Mr. Perry can no longer control Neil and make any more choices for him makes it clear that said accusing won't matter in the long run.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter kills his long-lost father for killing innocent children and his mother. It couldn't be any more fitting.
• House Arrest revolves around teenagers Grover and Stacy Beindorf locking their parents in their house's basement to make them rethink their decision to divorce (for what the kids wisely think is being childish, disproportionate excuses) after eighteen years of marriage, followed by all of their friends tossing their own parents in the same basement as punishment for their various stupid flaws (and one of them being a belligerent jerk). "Home Alone" Antics ensue as the kids try to prevent other people from finding out this scheme is going on (and other than Grover being grounded for the rest of his teenage years, it succeeds).
• In Matilda the title character starts doing this to her parents after having to put up with her mother's negligence and her father's sleazy car business. The Narrator lampshades the trope as seen in the page quote.

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Played for Laughs in "Old School" when Frank sends Grandpa (his father) to the timeout chair for accidentally inviting all the women he knows online to the Heffleys' house and having a wild party.
• In the book Little Men one of Professor Bhaer's punishment methods is to make the naughty child whip him on the hand with a ruler. It's a form of psychological warfare, as all the children love him so much that it tears them apart having to hurt this dear man.
• The titular character of Matilda does this to her parents when they belittle her for being intelligent or speaking badly about her father's scam involving cars. They never figure out it was her, though, so it overlaps with Practical Joke. One particularly memorable prank was her putting superglue on her dad's hat, forcing her mom to cut it off him with scissors.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Full House, after an attempt by Joey to be a TV host results in Stephanie getting her nose broken, Michelle tells Joey he was bad and to go to his room. Joey agrees with her and starts to leave the room while Jessie calls out "She's three years old! She has no authority to punish you!".

Theatre

• In Beetlejuice, Lydia decides to help the Maitlands and later Beetlejuice scare her father out of the house to punish him for his apparent neglect in the wake of her mother's death.
• In the "Daughter dies" ending of The Trail to Oregon!, Daughter is revealed to have faked her death in the same manner Mother did earlier in the show to make her daughter feel guilty. Mother admits it didn't feel good to get a taste of her own medicine.

Web Animation

• GoAnimate:
  • Sometimes, a troublemaker will get back at their parent for grounding them for petty reasons by giving them a "Punishment Day" (read: putting them through several painful punishments). However, the parent often won't let them get away with this and they'll punish them afterwards.
  • There have been many videos in which the troublemaker is a parent. In such videos, the one who grounds the parent is often the child or spouse.

Western Animation

• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Muffin King", Mom makes a batch of muffins that Dad makes multiple attempts to consume. However, Mom puts Deedee and Dexter in charge of keeping them safe, and in two instances, one where Dad disguises himself as Mom and tells the kids they are going to Cubby Cheese's for dinner and another where he attempts to hypnotize Dexter, the kids catch him and send him to his room. He even lampshades it.
• In DuckTales (2017), Doofus Drake is an Enfant Terrible whose sadism includes a delight in treating his parents like servants. We're not told what he's punishing them for, but it's implied there's something:
  Mr Drake: Why does he hurt me?
  Mrs Drake: You know why.
• Meg from Family Guy often does this to Peter and Lois for all of the times they acted like Abusive Parents to her. Chris and Stewie are capable of doing this as well.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Lil Gideon never actively punishes his parents, but threatens it quite a few times, since he is the implied breadwinner of the family. His father appears to take it in stride, his mother... not so much.
    Bud Gleeful: Gideon Charles Gleeful! Clean up your room this instant!
    Lil Gideon: I CAN BUY AND SELL YOU, OLD MAN!
    Bud Gleeful: (beat) Fair enough.
  • While Stan is not Dipper and Mabel's parent, he is their guardian while in Gravity Falls. As such, this is played with a couple of times between them.
    • In "Land Before Swine", Mabel gives Stan the silent treatment after she discovers Stan endangered her pet pig.
    • In "Dreamscaperers", Dipper considers not helping Stan as punishment for putting Dipper through particularly painful, difficult chores, and later for calling Dipper "pathetic" and "weak". Both turn out to be misunderstandings, as Stan was actually proud of Dipper and just trying to make him stronger.
• Played for Laughs in an episode of King of the Hill where at the end, Bobby learns that Hank took drugs and feels the need to penalize him. Hank, out of amusement, indulges it and Bobby tells him that he is forbidden from mowing the lawn for a week. For Hank, this is Serious Business.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken", the children of Springfield are subjected to a curfew after wrongly being accused of vandalizing Springfield Elementary. They get back at the adults by exposing their parents' darkest secrets on the radio.
    Bart: Now we come to Mr. Homer Simpson. Do you know he likes to eat out of the Flanders’ garbage?
  • In "The Old Man and the Key", Grampa starts acting like a rebellious teenager after getting a new driver's license, and Homer punishes him when he steals his car for a "death race" and crashes it.
    Homer: Oh, that's IT! Abraham J. Simpson, you are never! Driving! Again! EVER! (tears his license in two)
  • Referenced in "I Am Furious (Yellow)"; Marge lambasts Bart after his prank to get Homer mad ends up causing millions of dollars in damages, but Dr. Hibbert tells her that he actually saved Homer's life because his attempts to repress his anger could have killed him had he not been set off.
    Marge: You mean I shouldn't punish Bart at all?
    Dr. Hibbert: Why, if anything, he should punish you.
    Marge: Huh. Hmm, okay.
  • Homer also once threw Abe out of his car after insulting him.
• South Park:
  • In "Chickenpox", the parents decide to have a chickenpox party in order to get all their children infected at once so they won't have to deal with it later. Unfortunately, Kyle learns what the parents did and takes Stan with him to get a prostitute with herpes and infect all their parents' belongings as a punishment.
  • A very satisfying example happens in "Grounded Vindaloop". Butters punches Stephen in the groin for all the times he's unfairly grounded him.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In the episode "The Bully", SpongeBob is faced with threats by a bully named Flats the Flounder. He attempts to tell Flats' father, only to learn that the father is just as terrified of his son as SpongeBob is, and that Flats is going to punish him for talking to strangers.
  SpongeBob: Huh? Are you Flats' dad?
  Flats' Dad: Why, yes I am.
  SpongeBob: Okay, see, I didn't know where else to turn! Patrick couldn't help me, and Mrs. Puff only made it worse. I sit next to your son Flats in school, and he is a fine boy and all, and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but he wants to kick my butt.
  Flats: Dad, what are you doing?
  Flats' Dad: Uhh, nothing son.
  Flats: What did I tell you about talking to strangers?
  Flats' Dad: [to SpongeBob] Now he's gonna kick my butt!
  • In "The Slumber Party" Krabs orders Spongebob to infiltrate Pearl's girls only party, and when he manages to get into the party he trashes Krab's house. When Krab's goes into the house he tries to ground Pearl for throwing a Wild Teen Party, but she rightfully calls him out for making Spongebob crash her party, traumatizing her friends, and destroying the house and to make sure he learns his lesson she makes him pay for a rave which includes a bouncer that has been instructed to keep him and Spongebob away.

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