Parents know that feeling when they realize their kid’s room has been dead silent for a while. The infinite amount of what if’s crosses your mind, and sooner than you know it, your body is in a race against time. Chances are, upon opening the door, you may have caught your beloved little daredevil in action.
So parents on Twitter who have experienced a fair share of close calls and deliberate stunts that were too far ahead to be stopped are sharing their experiences.
From a child who sneaked a baby penguin out of the zoo to a dad hearing “trust me, this is a good idea” from his kids’ room only to have the fastest sprint in his life, you wonder how on earth these sneaky adventurers came up with such ideas.
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If you have kids in the house, chances are you are no stranger to their sneakiness. Sometimes their stunts are purely spontaneous and born out of boredom, other times they’re elaborate and pretty alarming. And even though some sneaky behavior seems essentially harmless, it’s always better to set the boundaries with your child to make sure their behavior doesn’t escalate.
First off, every parent should see sneaky behavior as something that happens for a reason. Your teen may try to test boundaries—like fudging the actual time they returned home for curfew—to see how much control they actually have over their own lives. In these cases, our little daredevils are quite simply testing us to see how far we allow them to go.
Kids are incredible observers, whether we realize it or not. So the best way to teach them not to indulge in sneaky actions is by being honest yourself. If your little one detects your dishonesty, (and trust me, they do!) they may lose their trust in you and not see being sneaky as somewhat of a big deal.
This can be as simple as fabricating a lie when you don’t want to tell your kid the truth, or prefer to avoid possible questions. But the next time you attempt preaching honesty, they may well remind you that you’re not very good at it either.
Another way of solving sneaky behavior is not being overly reactive. You may be tempted to lose your temper, but this won’t lead you far. Instead, you may want to address the behavior by giving your child an opportunity to explain themself.
Confession: I was 6 when I asked my mom, "Can I use Dad's power drill for just a minute?" and that was .... a hard no from my mom.
You may also want to look for solutions and agreements so that sneaky behavior, e.g. a $5 bill that’s gone from your wallet, never happens again. What if you discuss ways of helping your kid to earn that money and make the unpleasant situation into a teachable moment?
It’s incredible how much we learn simply by talking to our kids without underestimating them. Ask them how they felt when doing wrong and whether they regretted it or not afterwards. At the same time, it’s also helpful to remember that kids often don’t realize how much their lies can hurt us. In this case, you may be expecting too much from them, and you want to start the conversation by addressing the problem from the very bottom of it.
The went well. If you do some research, you will see that many household plants, many flowers, and many garden plants are poisonous, some even very poisonous when chewed. This is easily overlooked, but some infants will happily chew them when teething, and they can indeed become deadly.
Mine did that mid-spring ... butt naked, while I was 8 months pregnant! The little rascal used a box of Bisleri to unlock the bolt and was out before I could come for the stairs to get him!
When my twins were 2 or so I was in the bathroom, came out to hear a chair being pushed across the kitchen floor. Peeked around the corner and the twins were working in concert. They got the chair over to the kitchen counter, I was curious what they were up to so remained quiet. Twin A kneels down on the floor in front of the chair, Twin B climbs up onto his back then onto the chair and pulls the cookie jar over. Grabs 3 cookies, one he handed to Twin A. I came out of hiding and asked what they were doing. Twin A said we needed a snack. I said why do you have two cookies and he said one was for their 4 year old brother who was in the family room playing with Legos. Their thieving was so cute and thoughtful I couldn't even be mad. I did tell them to just ask next time. It was fun to watch their teamwork.
That's wholesome and cute at the same time. :)
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My middle grandson at 2yrs stacked 3 12packs of Pepsi by the front door so he could unlock it and go outside. The cops brought him home. (We lived in a cul-de-sac and he never left the sidewalk.)
The lesson to be learned is definitely that children and balconies are not a good match.
Wow you were really lucky, that someone had the sense to call you and not “try catch him instead “
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I came in from the garage just in time to hear my grown ass EX-husband say, “Oh, s**t! We almost forgot your helmet.” I made a mad dash through the house to find him. Instead of hiring someone to clean our 2 story conservatory windows, he decided to put our 10ft ladder on a flat dolly, climb to the top, and have my 2.5 year old niece stand on his shoulders 18 feet above the ground. Apparently, the ladder was too short for him to reach the ceiling, but he realized my niece was the right height to reach the 3 extra feet. He lost his privilege to be unsupervised around children.
This is very minor compared to a lot of these but one day I was doing the dishes whilst watching my 3yo play outside. All of a sudden he disappeared from my view so I went out to look for him. Well I couldn’t find him anywhere, I started frantically calling his name and then I hear giggling coming from under the deck. He had found a gap and crawled under the decking. I couldn’t reach him coz he was so far under and the gap was too small for me to get through. I had to bribe him to crawl out by himself. I blocked the gap after that so it didn’t happen again.
I caught my daughter trying to heat water and Vaseline in a plastic yogurt pot over a toaster that was on. She’d seen a beauty blog and was trying to make lip balm. I once left my two daughters quietly watching Paddington and came back to find the older one with the biggest, sharpest knife in the house. She was copying Nicole Kidman who was trying to stab Paddington,. The younger child was being Paddington and had no problem with this at all.
This all just tells me that not having kids was a GREAT idea and I'm so glad I didn't.
I came out from my shower to find my 4 yr old sitting quietly crosslegged in front of the door, waiting. I asked my husband how long and he said maybe 20 minutes. Said he was quiet so he knew he was not up to no good. inhave told him before and told him again - that's when they're more likely to hurt themselves or break something. Sometimes....
My grandparents had a patio/deck in front of their home with a 12' flight of steep concrete stairs down to the drive. They had those moulded plastic ride-on toddler bikes on the patio. In the less than 5 minutes between us arriving, and Dad and Grandad finishing carrying up the bags, the childgate was open, and three-year-old me dodged four adults to ride down the steps on the plastic bike. Somehow I landed at the bottom with only a few bruises and scrapes. I remember doing it. My plan was to go down the stairs, down the sloping driveway, and onto the steep (fairly-busy) road. It seemed like it would the most fun thing ever. Little kids have no sense of self-preservation.
I was 4 and my brother was 8, and he thought it would be a good idea to play catch with me by chucking a wooden block and my face HARD. It almost blinded my right eye, and I had to go to the hospital to get stitches (I have a scar below my right eye now). 8 years later when we were playing outside in the snow, he decided to play a live action version of Angry Birds with me (and not tell me until AFTER). So he determined that I was the big, he was the catapult and the sheet of ice that he would throw at my face would be the bird. That sheet of ice hit me on the other side of my face, so now I have matching scars below both of my eyes XD
Partially my fault. My dad took my kids and I fishing on a pier with a four foot fence around it. At one point Grandpa drops his tackle box. It's floating so I climb over the fence, Grandpa holds my hand and I lean down and pull the box out. As I'm climbing back over the fence I hear "Splash, Splash, Splash". My youngest wanted to pick a water lily. So inspired by me, the middle child helped him climb over, held his hand while the oldest held on to middle child's feet. (Ages 5, 8, and 11)
Story 1. My brothers had a friend when they were small who was a few ants short of a picnic. They managed to partially explain abseiling to him but he hadn't grasped one of the main points. My mum could only watch in horror as someone else's child carefully took hold of the end of the rope and launched himself of the top of our 30ft pine tree. She genuinely thought she was running out to pick up his dead body as he hit every branch on the way down. His only injury was a gash on the chin from a brick tied to one of the lower branches. Story 2. Put 2 y/o daughter to bed and chill in front of TV. The neighbours across the road knocked on our door and said " we don't want to worry you but your little girl is on the windowsill". Rush upstairs to find her sitting in the 1st floor window swinging her legs in the warm summer air and singing. She turns 20 this year and still isn't scared of heights.
I have no conscious memory of this, but my mother heard my then 7yo sister laughing hysterically, and me (then 2yo) screaming out in the yard. She'd gone inside for a cup of coffee, and in the interim, my sister dump a cup of Kool=Aid on me and put me on an anthill. Sis thought it was hilarious. I have a phobia of ants to this day. My mother very oddly went on to leave me with my sister, unsupervised, for extended periods of times.
when i was 7, we were at a dinner party at my parents colleague's house, and i sledded down their stairs on a beanbag, crashed into this giant ornamental pot plant, broke the pot, and got dirt all over their nice white carpet. We haven''t been there since.
My husband was pulled from a frozen Canal he's crashed through the ice of by a passing guy when he was 8 riding his bike across it. The chap pulled him out to the side opposite where he lived so he cycled back across!
When I was 5 or 6 my sister and I were at the top of the Cellar Stairs and I looked at here and said I am feeling like Super Man, she (9) says "Do it" I take one step backwards, Yell SUUUUUPEERR MAAAAAN and dive down the stairs. I didn't hit one step in the way down but sure as s**t hit the plastics green table dead but on the corner. Still have the very visible scare below my lip. Mom was horrified, Daddy looks at Mom, shakes his head as says Christ she has no Fear, she's gonna be the one we need to keep an eye on. Did Super Man Last Night into bed from my doorway at 45yrs old. Some things never change..... SMH LMFAO
The boy was about 4, daughter is 5. I'm in the kitchen prepping dinner and they're in the play room. All of a sudden I hear my girl screaming bloody murder- I dropped what I was doing and raced to the playroom thinking someone had lost an eye...homeboy had dumped the LEGO tub, flipped it over and trapped my daughter inside. He was sitting on top of it, beyond proud of himself
I once told my brother to step on a bumblebee without shoes "cuz it's fuzzy!" he did, and got stung. he still brings it up XD
One of my brothers got bored playing indoors with his friend on a bitterly cold winter day, but the wind chill was too severe to be safe to play outside. So, they shovelled a whole bunch of snow through one of the basement windows onto the cellar floor and played with it downstairs. Our father was not amused.
Gnutella girl hero Jethro is a great place to work for you and your family and friends with you as a bjrher queen employe wpuld help Thabo glam Tibetan juices hurtful
My mother when she was around 7 was messing around with matches on the old tip (an overgrown old village rubbish dump). She got a few out of the box and lit them all at once and set light to a sheet of paper, dropped it and watched as the tinder dry bracken went whoosh. Most of the fire was put out but it carried on smouldering for weeks. Chaos just after 5 years of war. The same mother whilst we were going up an escalator said to me look at those down there. I did and got whacked on the side of the head by a Perspex sheet to stop people from falling. I still think she was trying to kill me.
Apparently, when my bro-in-law was 8, he got up at 3am to take the telephone apart because he wanted to figure out how it worked. He got it back together before anyone got up, but it had kind of a sickly ring after that...like it was really really tired.
I was a fearless kid, there was an unfinished bridge where I lived and my fri nds and I use to race each other over the pylons- )they ascended), like we were on fear factor. Years later adult me drove past the bridge pylons - I had moved a way. They look so high nd the space in-between the pylons are about meter, I can’t believe none of us got hurt or died. It was so high I got ligh headed looking up at them
When I was around 13 or so, our group used to bike on a trail into the hills to a creek. The route involved going over several hills and so the trail is littered with sharp turns. One particular downhill stretch ends with several quick turns that descends into a valley. So, I was the second bike in line as we were going down that slope. After my friend in front and I made the turn into a lower terrace we saw this crazy bloke flying straight off the top level on his bike, clipped the rear wheel on the level we're on, flips and sent his bike into the valley. He landed on some thick scrubs two turns down. Each terrace would be around 8 feet in height of the next. Miraculously, the clown only had some bruises and scratches but otherwise fine. His bike was banged up but still worked. We all graduated from high school more than 2 decades ago.
I came in from the garage just in time to hear my grown ass EX-husband say, “Oh, s**t! We almost forgot your helmet.” I made a mad dash through the house to find him. Instead of hiring someone to clean our 2 story conservatory windows, he decided to put our 10ft ladder on a flat dolly, climb to the top, and have my 2.5 year old niece stand on his shoulders 18 feet above the ground. Apparently, the ladder was too short for him to reach the ceiling, but he realized my niece was the right height to reach the 3 extra feet. He lost his privilege to be unsupervised around children.
This is very minor compared to a lot of these but one day I was doing the dishes whilst watching my 3yo play outside. All of a sudden he disappeared from my view so I went out to look for him. Well I couldn’t find him anywhere, I started frantically calling his name and then I hear giggling coming from under the deck. He had found a gap and crawled under the decking. I couldn’t reach him coz he was so far under and the gap was too small for me to get through. I had to bribe him to crawl out by himself. I blocked the gap after that so it didn’t happen again.
I caught my daughter trying to heat water and Vaseline in a plastic yogurt pot over a toaster that was on. She’d seen a beauty blog and was trying to make lip balm. I once left my two daughters quietly watching Paddington and came back to find the older one with the biggest, sharpest knife in the house. She was copying Nicole Kidman who was trying to stab Paddington,. The younger child was being Paddington and had no problem with this at all.
This all just tells me that not having kids was a GREAT idea and I'm so glad I didn't.
I came out from my shower to find my 4 yr old sitting quietly crosslegged in front of the door, waiting. I asked my husband how long and he said maybe 20 minutes. Said he was quiet so he knew he was not up to no good. inhave told him before and told him again - that's when they're more likely to hurt themselves or break something. Sometimes....
My grandparents had a patio/deck in front of their home with a 12' flight of steep concrete stairs down to the drive. They had those moulded plastic ride-on toddler bikes on the patio. In the less than 5 minutes between us arriving, and Dad and Grandad finishing carrying up the bags, the childgate was open, and three-year-old me dodged four adults to ride down the steps on the plastic bike. Somehow I landed at the bottom with only a few bruises and scrapes. I remember doing it. My plan was to go down the stairs, down the sloping driveway, and onto the steep (fairly-busy) road. It seemed like it would the most fun thing ever. Little kids have no sense of self-preservation.
I was 4 and my brother was 8, and he thought it would be a good idea to play catch with me by chucking a wooden block and my face HARD. It almost blinded my right eye, and I had to go to the hospital to get stitches (I have a scar below my right eye now). 8 years later when we were playing outside in the snow, he decided to play a live action version of Angry Birds with me (and not tell me until AFTER). So he determined that I was the big, he was the catapult and the sheet of ice that he would throw at my face would be the bird. That sheet of ice hit me on the other side of my face, so now I have matching scars below both of my eyes XD
Partially my fault. My dad took my kids and I fishing on a pier with a four foot fence around it. At one point Grandpa drops his tackle box. It's floating so I climb over the fence, Grandpa holds my hand and I lean down and pull the box out. As I'm climbing back over the fence I hear "Splash, Splash, Splash". My youngest wanted to pick a water lily. So inspired by me, the middle child helped him climb over, held his hand while the oldest held on to middle child's feet. (Ages 5, 8, and 11)
Story 1. My brothers had a friend when they were small who was a few ants short of a picnic. They managed to partially explain abseiling to him but he hadn't grasped one of the main points. My mum could only watch in horror as someone else's child carefully took hold of the end of the rope and launched himself of the top of our 30ft pine tree. She genuinely thought she was running out to pick up his dead body as he hit every branch on the way down. His only injury was a gash on the chin from a brick tied to one of the lower branches. Story 2. Put 2 y/o daughter to bed and chill in front of TV. The neighbours across the road knocked on our door and said " we don't want to worry you but your little girl is on the windowsill". Rush upstairs to find her sitting in the 1st floor window swinging her legs in the warm summer air and singing. She turns 20 this year and still isn't scared of heights.
I have no conscious memory of this, but my mother heard my then 7yo sister laughing hysterically, and me (then 2yo) screaming out in the yard. She'd gone inside for a cup of coffee, and in the interim, my sister dump a cup of Kool=Aid on me and put me on an anthill. Sis thought it was hilarious. I have a phobia of ants to this day. My mother very oddly went on to leave me with my sister, unsupervised, for extended periods of times.
when i was 7, we were at a dinner party at my parents colleague's house, and i sledded down their stairs on a beanbag, crashed into this giant ornamental pot plant, broke the pot, and got dirt all over their nice white carpet. We haven''t been there since.
My husband was pulled from a frozen Canal he's crashed through the ice of by a passing guy when he was 8 riding his bike across it. The chap pulled him out to the side opposite where he lived so he cycled back across!
When I was 5 or 6 my sister and I were at the top of the Cellar Stairs and I looked at here and said I am feeling like Super Man, she (9) says "Do it" I take one step backwards, Yell SUUUUUPEERR MAAAAAN and dive down the stairs. I didn't hit one step in the way down but sure as s**t hit the plastics green table dead but on the corner. Still have the very visible scare below my lip. Mom was horrified, Daddy looks at Mom, shakes his head as says Christ she has no Fear, she's gonna be the one we need to keep an eye on. Did Super Man Last Night into bed from my doorway at 45yrs old. Some things never change..... SMH LMFAO
The boy was about 4, daughter is 5. I'm in the kitchen prepping dinner and they're in the play room. All of a sudden I hear my girl screaming bloody murder- I dropped what I was doing and raced to the playroom thinking someone had lost an eye...homeboy had dumped the LEGO tub, flipped it over and trapped my daughter inside. He was sitting on top of it, beyond proud of himself
I once told my brother to step on a bumblebee without shoes "cuz it's fuzzy!" he did, and got stung. he still brings it up XD
One of my brothers got bored playing indoors with his friend on a bitterly cold winter day, but the wind chill was too severe to be safe to play outside. So, they shovelled a whole bunch of snow through one of the basement windows onto the cellar floor and played with it downstairs. Our father was not amused.
Gnutella girl hero Jethro is a great place to work for you and your family and friends with you as a bjrher queen employe wpuld help Thabo glam Tibetan juices hurtful
My mother when she was around 7 was messing around with matches on the old tip (an overgrown old village rubbish dump). She got a few out of the box and lit them all at once and set light to a sheet of paper, dropped it and watched as the tinder dry bracken went whoosh. Most of the fire was put out but it carried on smouldering for weeks. Chaos just after 5 years of war. The same mother whilst we were going up an escalator said to me look at those down there. I did and got whacked on the side of the head by a Perspex sheet to stop people from falling. I still think she was trying to kill me.
Apparently, when my bro-in-law was 8, he got up at 3am to take the telephone apart because he wanted to figure out how it worked. He got it back together before anyone got up, but it had kind of a sickly ring after that...like it was really really tired.
I was a fearless kid, there was an unfinished bridge where I lived and my fri nds and I use to race each other over the pylons- )they ascended), like we were on fear factor. Years later adult me drove past the bridge pylons - I had moved a way. They look so high nd the space in-between the pylons are about meter, I can’t believe none of us got hurt or died. It was so high I got ligh headed looking up at them
When I was around 13 or so, our group used to bike on a trail into the hills to a creek. The route involved going over several hills and so the trail is littered with sharp turns. One particular downhill stretch ends with several quick turns that descends into a valley. So, I was the second bike in line as we were going down that slope. After my friend in front and I made the turn into a lower terrace we saw this crazy bloke flying straight off the top level on his bike, clipped the rear wheel on the level we're on, flips and sent his bike into the valley. He landed on some thick scrubs two turns down. Each terrace would be around 8 feet in height of the next. Miraculously, the clown only had some bruises and scratches but otherwise fine. His bike was banged up but still worked. We all graduated from high school more than 2 decades ago.
