Children are notorious for their ability to get themselves into troublesome situations. So, it’s no surprise that their actions often result in some quite unfavorable outcomes for those around them as well. And whether they entail minor inconveniences or something way more substantial, the heroes of the story might only come to realize the significance of their actions years later.
Quite a few members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community took a walk down memory lane after one of them asked about the worst things they unknowingly did as children. Redditors’ answers covered all sorts of situations, from separating one’s parents to pitchforking a neighbor, and beyond. Scroll down to find them and see what other unfortunate situations from their childhood people remember to this day.
This post may include affiliate links.
When I was about 8 I asked my dad if we could play "the naked man game." My dad, trying not to panic, asked me what it was. I responded "it's the one we play when [the babysitter] is over." He then asked me to show him where the naked man game was, so I took him to the closet, opened the door, and pointed up to Operation.
He told me years later that he nearly had a heart attack.
Sounds like the dad played a VERY DIFFERENT naked man game when the babysitter was over!
I dry humped the sofa while my parents watched in silent horror.
I thought I was the first person to discover that rubbing my penis on things felt good. Many pieces of furniture fell victim to my testing. I discovered that the sofa was the best and I had to show my parents. I couldn't keep this to myself! I told them to come to the living room. I had something amazing to show them. I didn't just sexual assault their couch. I was teaching a class on it. Offering to let my dad have a go. They just stood there. It haunts me to this day. I have never asked them about it. They must have thought they were raising a sexual predator.
😂 Saw some weird kid sexual behavior when I worked in a kindergarden too, the kids think it's completely normal. Mostly we just initially let the kids in order not to shame them, or create shame around sexuality for them in the future, but taught them that we do these things alone (not in front of others) so to go to the bathroom. AFTER discussing it amongst ourselves and with leadership, looking it up research wise, and talking to the parents, of course. Was a lot of laughter in the lunchroom over these things, it was super awkward. 😂
I almost let my younger stepbrother drown.
I (8 yr old) was supposed to be holding his(2yr old) hand while we were at lake fishing. He yanked out of my grasp and took off full sprint into the water. My stepmom had to go diving in after him. They blamed it on me but as an adult with kids about that same age, I would never trust a 8 year old to watch a toddler around a body of water. So it’s their fault.
100% shifting the blame. My 3yo straight up walked into the pool last month and was shocked she went underwater, even with life vest on. It wasn't the first time she had done that either
I called it "the wolf game." I'd stand halfway between my house and the woods and howl, and see how many wolves I could get to show up.
My record was three before common sense kicked in... I should not have survived to adulthood lol.
I broke my parents up.
I asked my Mum if I could have dinner at my "Aunt Christie"'s house again because she cooked my favourite pasta. Turns out Mum didn't know who "Aunt Christie" was - which is because she wasn't really my aunt, she was the co-worker my Dad was sleeping with.
I used to spend several weeks out of every summer staying with my aunt and uncle. I got to play with my cousin, and presumably my single father got to take a break. One year, on the day I was due to come home, I called and asked permission to stay another week, and he agreed. After I went home, a family friend told me they had been at my house the week before...for my surprise welcome home party. Dad bought a cake, decorated, and bbq'd. This was a man who did not entertain or demonstrate affection. True to character, he never told me about the party he attempted.
Edit: Thanks for the heart to heart, reddit. To clarify, this was the 80's, before cell phones, so rescheduling the day of would have been difficult, plus just inconvenient to everyone who had agreed to attend. He could've made me come home, but the point is that he didn't, because he didn't want to disappoint me. I was still in HS when he died, so not mature enough to recognize how hard he tried sometimes. Glad to hear so many of you will be calling your dads.
This gave me the feels. It reminded me of a time when my stepfather (my dad passed when I was 6) came to my school at lunch to take me flying with him. He got his pilot license about 6 months earlier and flying was the one thing that we bonded over. That day I was on a school field trip. He never let me skip school. It still makes me sad that I wasn't there. I have great memories going fun places on a Saturday with him, but he never tried to surprise me and let me skip school again. :(
The worst one was taking my mothers "personal massager" to school for show and tell as i was a fairly literal child and thats what it said on the packaging, it wasn't obviously a marital aide as it was one of the more "bullet" options. However my at the time **FEMALE** teacher knew exactly what that was and took it away from me and called my mother to let her know as delicately as possible what i had taken to school.
It wasn't until i was much older that I realized what i had done! my mother gets a good laugh out of that one though for sure!
**EDIT** and now my most rated comment is about my mothers dildo, im sure she would be so proud!
Cudos to the teacher for how she handled this....aaaand now I realise that sounds dirty. I mean for how she dealt with the situation.
I don't know if it's the worst but I ruined my parents romantic anniversary.
I was around 7 and I woke up in the middle of the night because my stomach didn't feel well. So I went upstairs to tell my parents.
When I opened their door I remember there were candles, music playing and when my mom saw me she immediately pulled a blanket around herself.
She asked my what I was doing up and before I could even finish my sentence I projectile vomited all over everything.
I got pissed off at my parents and yelled "FUCK YOU!" at them. The next day I told a friend of mine "I fucked my dad last night," because that's what I thought fucking someone was to tell them "fuck you."
My uncle and his new wife came over to visit late one night when I was about 6. I was supposed to be in bed so the adults could enjoy visiting but I was determined to stay up and see what was going on, so I asked my mom in front of everybody if I could have a snack before bed, even though I’d never had bedtime snacks. My mom was strict about eating right, so of course she said no and told me to go back to bed. I decided to make a scene and lay in the floor begging for food, saying I hadn’t eaten in ages, that I was starving and ask for just one raisin. My new aunt watched, horrified, as my mom stayed firm and dragged me back to bed as I fake cried and begged her not to beat me. I was a very skinny child due to illness, so my aunt probably thought I really was being abused, but the truth is that I had good parents, I was just a little s**t sometimes.
I was about 7 when I made an enemy of my next door neighbour. I still dont see it as my fault that he had side chicks and side children and I didn't understand s**t about that. When one of his assorted children came to play I was like 'I was playing with your brother the other week'.
'What brother?'
'Oh you know, the one your dad has with that other lady'
Book smart street dumb, was me.
As a young little [airhead] my favorite prank was to lock bathroom stall doors and then crawl underneath them and exit the scene. One time, my parents dragged me to Costco with them. I went to the biggest stall in the back of the bathroom, locked that s**t and scampered away with a grin. I ended up going back to the same Costco the next day because my parents had to return something. I went to the same stall and it was still locked, this time I actually had to take a s**t. I crawled under the door only come face to face with an old guy looking at me like I was from another planet. I recoiled away so hard that I smacked my head on the bottom of the door and ran from that bathroom like I'd never run in my life. I crack myself up whenever I try to imagine what that guy was thinking when a 9 year old tried to hijack his toilet.
I was using the bathroom in my dorm and a little kid did the same thing. I was very amused and she didn't seem old enough to be embarrassed
One time I put a penny in my parent’s car’s cigarette lighter socket. It was the 80’s so lighter sockets were all over the car, including the doors in the backseat. It completely drained the battery within a few hours, and it took the guy at the garage a few days to figure out what was wrong with the electrical system.
The family of a classmate took me with them to camp in croatia. the toilet building had a huge room with like 2 dozen sinks or something, and for some reason two sinks in single, lockable stalls. I took one of these stalls to brush my teeth, and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to spit some water into an outlet. The whole building lost power and I never fessed up.
When I was a kid, I used to hit rocks from my backyard with my wooden bat out of the yard. For some reason, I never thought of what consequences could from it because to me I was just practicing my swing. One day, my neighbourhood got together to figure out why someone was smashing their cars with rocks. I never got in trouble for it and to this day it's still a mystery to them and I'm in my 20's now.
My baby sister once said to one of the nursery staff that her favourite thing to do was "crack with mummy".
After some concerned phone calls and some explanation. Mum explained to them that "crack" was when they hit the top of a boiled egg with a spoon.
I decided I wanted to burn trash in the middle of the Texas summer so my dumb little a*s did just that. I just threw some cardboard boxes and s**t into this barrel on my property we always had, figuring it would be contained you know? I poured some lighter fluid in there from my dad’s grill, lit a match and boom!
Up it went and my weird child obsession with Fire was quenched until the damn fire jumped out of the barrel and started racing towards the pine woods.(It was around Huffman tx, lots of pine trees) . There was apparently a raccoon in there I doused with lighter fluid and set on fire under the trash I was trying to burn.
Well I ended up burning up a good portion of trees behind my house before the fire fighters came. Thankfully it wasn’t that bad and our house didn’t burn down but it was the scariest moment of my life. I don’t think I ever burned anything again, my heart was broken. I cried for days I felt so damn bad for that raccoon.
I told my mom I betrayed Steve Irwin because I hurt an animal really bad. I’m pretty sure I started writing a letter to apologize but I was afraid he wouldn’t forgive me so pussed out.
Aww poor raccoon and poor kid, though I’m sure the guilt ensured it wouldn’t ever happen again!
um kid- I think that trash panda wasn’t the trash you were hoping to burn-
You must have been a good kid at heart to feel as you did afterward.
I really wish I hadn't read this 😔 I know it was completely unintentional but it's still horrific for that poor raccoon
When I was a kid, my friend and I took a bag of trash into my neighbor's yard to burn it. Unbeknownst to us, there was an aerosol can in it, one of those air fresheners. It exploded in my friend's face. Fortunately, he was unharmed, so I didn't feel guilty laughing my butt off.
Not me, but my sister. She used the garden hose to "put gas in Mommy's car."
My mom has/had severe depression, and I wrote her a poem for mother's day when I was 8 that had lines like "I love you even though you cry all the time." I was really proud because I thought it really showed how much I care and I read it aloud to her. I didn't get the reaction I was expecting.
I put nails under my parents car tires because I didn't want to go to church...
--Edit-- This blew up overnight! Thank you kind stranger for taking my reddit gold virginity!
When we were both 8, I gave my cousin a corn cob pipe I found in a drawer in the garage, and he put lawn clippings in it and smoked it, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Apparently my aunt and uncle had just chemically treated the lawn and he smoked a whole bunch of nasty pesticides and herbicides.
I chopped my sisters finger off in the bedroom door. My mum told me you always shut it so my sister couldn't get in the room, so I did. Unfortunately her finger was in the way and it chopped the top of her pinky finger off all the way to the first knuckle bit. It was pretty gory.
Edit- no they didn't reattach it. It got mangled pretty bad. I just texted my sister and told her about her pinky finger's reddit fame. She was mildly impressed.
When I was about 6 or 7, we went to Palm Springs on some vacation. This was '98/99, when Pokemon was HUGE. Mom wanted to do some ~American Shopping~ and took me to a mall. One of the stores we went to was a book store. Well I was in luck: in this store they were selling The Pokemon Handbook that /included/ Mew and Togepi, which the original handbook didn't have. I showed it to my mom and begged her to buy it. However, considering I already had the original book she said no. I was sad, but continued to look through it.
Then we left the store and began doing window shopping on our way back to the rental car. The parking lot was all the way on the other side of the mall. When we finally got there I tried to open the car door but noticed I couldn't: there was a book in my hand. I turned to my mom and showed her my accidental thievery. She looked at the book, then looked across the parking lot at the mall.
Mom decided it was too far to walk. I got my stupid Pokemon book, and became the first successful theif in my family.
-My mom was ironing clothes. She left the iron unattended for like 2 seconds. Then 3 year old me thought "hey, this should fix the wrinkly skin on my fingers" and ironed my own hand. 3rd degree burns. Still have the scars.
-When i was 6, I was super excited about my new scissors. Went around the house cutting s**t. Then I started cutting electric cables, until one was from a lamp that was on.... Not fun. And melted my new scissors.
-I was 5. My older cousin had a very chunky, full bodied friend, not fat, she looked big and muscular. And had short hair. So when they introduced me to her I asked, why is this man wearing a dress and has a girl's name? It was HER birthday and all of her family and friends heard. 🙁
Edit: no guys, my name is NOT Kevin. And I did go to University. Now I am a very successful engineer. I was just an extremely hiperactive kid with a very curious mind and high sense of experimentation.
This question comes at just the right time of year...
In kindergarten, **I was the a*****e kid who blew the whistle on Santa Claus.** I thought I was doing everyone a service, but several children cried and my mom had to talk to my teacher at pick-up time bc I basically talked back when asked to apologize.
My mom was so embarrassed. The icing on the cake was when my mom told me in front of my teacher that I would in fact apologize to the class, I said "dad says I shouldn't say sorry unless I really mean it and I don't think I should say sorry for telling the truth."
I don't even remember this but my mom tells this story all the time bc I never apologized. Same teacher put me in timeout bc I said The Pledge in a funny voice. I don't think we were on good terms...
It never did make sense to me. I was told from before school that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy were all pretend for fun. Why do people plant such firm belief in their kids that they’re crying to find out the truth? Sounds like a way to create trust issues ngl
The first day I moved into my new house at 6 years old I was meeting the new neighbor boy who was a couple years older than me. We were out in his driveway talking about some stuff when his Mom walked out and, for whatever reason, I instinctively smacked her a*s as she walked by. My parents still bring up how embarrassing that was for her to come over and tell them what happened.
Accidentally pitchforked my neighbour in the head when I was about 7.
I was helping her (in her 70's) do some gardening - planting flower beds etc. and we were just finishing up. I, in all my 7-year-old bravado, heft the pitchfork over my back to go and put it away, and accidentally catch her in the back of the head with it. She ended up going to the hospital needing stitches, but she forgave me.
Edit: Insert obligatory edit about my best comment being about almost killing my neighbour.
To clarify, Yes, obviously I was sorry for doing it. When my mum came over wondering what had happened, she freaked out, but the neighbour said that it was an accident, so no big punishment or anything. Neighbour's all fine now, and doesn't hold a grudge.
I put a canned Miller Lite in my Pikachu lunch box in the 2nd grade because I wanted to be the cool kid at the lunch table and impress my friends.
Unfortunately, my mom saw how shady I was acting protecting my lunchbox and ended up opening it.
She was livid.
Til this day, she still brings it up. It’s basically the go-to story when I bring someone new to the house.
It could have been worse, you could have put a can of beer in there. [\sarcasm]
I called out my two cousins (who were brother and sister) for "being girlfriend and boyfriend" because I saw them kissing and touching each other.
Caused us to miss a few family holidays as things blew over.
Edit: yes I saw them kissing. Also the male cousin admitted they had touched each other. We were in the 10-12 year range at that point. No we're not from Alabama (roll tide). Yes now they're in their 30s and married and normal (not married to each other).
When I was around 3 or 4 years old my family lived in a rented townhouse. We had a small dog that was not very well house-trained and would frequently poop and pee in the carpeted house.
Supposedly my parents were planning to move and painstakingly cleaned the carpets to remove any evidence of the dog going to the bathroom in the house in order to get their security deposit back. Obviously being so young, no one clued me in on the situation.
On the day the landlord came to inspect the house I was playing outside in the yard. He stopped to say hello to me before knocking on the door and I allegedly said something to the effect of, “Hi! My dog Frankie goes potty in the living room!” The landlord immediately went inside and began ripping up the carpeting and saw all the stains underneath.
My parents did not get their security deposit back.
I unknowingly broke my arm when I was four. My parents had no idea. I didn't complain much even though it hurt like hell. I wound up carrying my arm around with the other arm. Parents noticed me doing this but didn't know what to think. The break eventually healed this way and when I went for a check up the doctor informed my parents that I had broken my arm.
My grandparents used to have a time share condo in Florida, basically an old person's community. My mom took me there when I was maybe 5-6, I would sit on the balcony and just shout, "hey you're really old" at all the people that walked by. I've never been to Florida since.
Probably not the worst, but the one I can think of off the top of my head. I live within a half hour of the US/Canada border, Canadian side, and back in the 80s and 90s and earlier a lot of people would go over to the states to buy gas, beer, milk, etc. It was pretty much a Sunday tradition for us. One time when I was maybe 6 or 7 we were over there for the usual load of junk food etc, and my parents bought me a cap gun. Coming back across the border the agents ask the usual questions about where we were, what we're bringing back. Dad lists off everything (except probably a lot of beer and tobacco, because smuggling that stuff was super easy back then), and when he finished I pipe up in the backseat and say "And a gun!", somewhat proud of my new toy. Well, turns out that's a sure fire way to get your car searched, and your dad busted for smuggling beer, who'd have known?
Edit: Holy this blew up more than I expected. I should mention that 'getting busted for smuggling' didn't mean they hauled him off to jail, he just either lost the beer or had to pay a bunch of duty fees on it. Not as bad as it sounded I guess.
And beer isn't illegal up here, it was just waaay cheaper to go get it down there.
There were stray cats hanging around our house that had kittens. Me and my brother desperately wanted to keep one but of course my parents said no. So we grabbed one and hid it in the BBQ which had a lid on it. It suffocated. And we got in big trouble.
That was over 35 years ago and I still feel awful about it.
I did a similar thing when I was 4. My sister and I were playing with the half-feral shed cat's kittens, trying to get them used to people one summer. My grandfather also had a broken dryer in the shed. We would put the kittens in the dryer, take them out. I have no idea what we were pretend playing. Well, we forgot to take them out the last time... My grandpa found them a few days later. I still feel extremely guilty about it, poor kitties. I guess, tbf, you probably shouldn't allow a 4 and 7yo to play unsupervised in a dirty shed full of random junk
Backstory:
I got a really bad burn on my arm while my dad was taking tea out of the microwave. I thought it would be really funny to slam the door on him while he was grabbing it. The result was a huge, and bad burn on my arm.
Cut to a while later, my arm was almost healed. But you could still see the burn in spots. I hit my head on a table and cut it open. My mom brings me to the hospital to get stitches. Right when they are done stitching my head, I say have this conversation with the doctor.
Me: Oh! My other owie is almost gone!
Doctor: What other owie?
Me: From when my daddy poured hot tea on me.
That resulted in a very awkward conversation between my mother and the doctor. And the doctor almost calling CPS.
"Taking tea out of the microwave" That raises so many questions. What, how, and why? What was he doing with tea in the microwave? Tea and microwave is such a weird combination of words.
I told all of my friends I wanted to be a prostitute when I grew up.
Prosecutor. The word is prosecutor.
I was with my mom over at her friends' house. We were out in the barn looking at their chickens. As we were going out the neighbor guy shut the automatic garage door, and I thought it would be neat to do a sweet James Bond move and slide under the door as it was closing. Long story short, I got stuck under the door, and the guy had to lift it with his hands against the motor so I could slide out. I was a little older than I'd like to admit.
3 years old: I poured lighter fluid on my cat Cooter because I wanted to give him a bath. Mom broke the shower door trying to wrestle the cat into the shower to rinse it off.
Every Christmas I’m haunted by one year when I was eight that I begged to spend Christmas Eve at my maternal grandparents’ house (my aunt and uncle are one year older and two years younger than me, respectively, so their house was fun). My dad paid for me to fly from Florida to Missouri to spend the holiday with him, just for me to want to be with my grandparents.
As a mom now I know that that probably gutted him. He passed away ten years ago, so I can’t even make it up to him now.
My oldest daughter is 25yo. Her daughter is 6mo. My youngest daughter is 19mo. Hope my house is just as fun for the grandkids!
I was an awfully animated, precocious kid that thought she knew a lot but didn't know s**t about s**t..... So I often f****d things up. Examples:
-Someone thought it was a good idea to teach me the phrase "Chips make hips" and I was offered chips by a plus size woman. Instead of simply saying "no, thank you" like a normal person, you can guess what I said. Age: 4ish
-When I found out my dad knocked up my best friend's mom, from her mom, I asked if he was going to be a bastard. I had just learned the meaning of the word; had no clue it was derogatory in nature. I was really trying to ask if they were going to get married. (answer: no) I hope he never hears about it. Age: 12ish
-Trying to be helpful and noticing there was ice coating the inside of the freezer and mom was always complaining about the lack of space, I decided to chisel it out with a hammer and flathead screwdriver. I hit a coil in no time flat. Didn't know that I had in fact killed the fridge and all the food in it for a few hours afterward. $$$$$ Age: 13ish
-Again, trying to help, I put 16 pairs of jeans in the washing machine. Killed that too. $$$$ Age: still 13ish
-When you had to pay 10¢ per text message and buy ringtones and AIM was a thing, I ran up a $600 phone bill one month. Age: 14ish
There's more. I was oblivious. Still am at times. I should probably take my parents out for dinner or something now that I'm swimming in guilt all over again.
Awww, at least you were trying to help! Being a teenager never has, nor will be easy. But, every parent would love a dinner with their kids! I'm an older parent with a teen, and sometimes it does seem like one disaster after another, but then, she makes us dinner or snacks, and I see what an awesome person she really is.. I bet your parents feel the same!
Told my brother to eat newspaper because it’d make him smarter.
Once when I was about 4, I sprayed a man driving by my house on his motorcycle with a water hose. I have no idea why I did it, I just remember that I was playing with the hose and he kept riding by over and over and I just had an impulse and went with it. He didn't come by again after that, obviously.
I was really young and shared a room with my older brother. I remember one time I begged him to tie me to the bed frame because I was pretending I was a creature or something. My brother got really embarassed and I couldnt understand why. I cringe when I think about that
Up until I was around 6 or 7, whenever my family and I were heading out of a restaurant, and I noticed that my parents were forgetting cash on the table, I would always make sure to grab it and slip it back into my mom's purse. I didn't know tipping was a thing, and it's not until I made a comment about how they were always leaving money lying around at restaurants, and how I always had to be the one to keep an eye out for it and make sure they didn't forget it, that they realized what was going on, and I learned. I cost a lot of waiters their tips :(
I had just gotten home in the afternoon from middle school and there was about an hour or so I'd be home by myself before my parents came home from work. On this day I decided to boil a few hot dogs as a nice little snack while I watched TRL. My buddy from next door comes over and invites me to do play video games or whatever the hell I was into at the time. An hour or so goes by and I come back into my house and realize the stove was still on and the hot dogs were burning. Apparently the Teflon from the pan releases a noxious gas that is lethal to birds and killed my mothers beloved parakeet. She came home about ten minutes later and immediately saw this dead parakeet and started crying. She looked me right in my eyes and said 'everything in my life is dying!' (this was around the same time my parents were getting divorced) and she slammed her bedroom door and I didn't see her until the next morning.
When my cousin and I were 5-6, we got hooked on this amazing hot chocolate at this hotel. The hotel had a bar in the middle of the pool, so you can drink it while you’re sitting in the water, which made it even cooler. Our parents told us we couldn’t have more, so we went to a random couple and asked them to buy us the hot chocolate.
They did. And they babysat us until our parents found us, a few hours later. We didn’t say anything about the hot chocolate since we didn’t want to get in trouble, so the couple never got paid back.
Looking back, I think they were probably some honeymooning couple and we forced them to babysit a two bratty kids.
**TL;DR**: Probably convinced a couple never to have kids.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they maybe didn't want kids in the first place
Not me, but my older sister needed material to make something (I can't remember what it was, some arts and craft thing). Anyway, she found my mother's wedding dress and decided it was the perfect material, so she cut a big square out of the dress.
Luckily my mother is very, very easy-going and has never cared about material things that much (she's was a hippie, and still is), so she was initially annoyed but pretty much just laughed it off in the end.
When I was 7, I was in the family change room/locker room at a swimming pool when I noticed a stray thumb tack sitting on the ground under a bench. Didnt know why it was there but some morbid curiosity told me to place it on the ground in the open with the pin side up. About 5 minutes later, I started to think about how dangerous that could be and went to go pick it up only to find this teenage girl sitting on the bench in severe pain and nursing her foot while her family was helping and inspecting it. The last thing I remember was the girl saying, "who would do this???" And her father responding, "A F*****G IDIOT, THATS WHO."
I was at a birthday party, age 7, and there was this orange air freshener that smelled sooo so good, so I sprayed it all over myself, and then I smelled really good, so all the kids started spraying it on themselves. Not 20 minutes later, all of us are crying and screaming because our skin is burning and turning red. There was something very irritating in the air freshener.
I had a habit of storing entire phone conversations between my mother and her mother in my head. I was little and she'd just talk in front of me and assume I wasn't listening.
NOW TO BE FAIR I was very little, okay?
Well I heard her laughing about how she had a crush on her coworker and grabbed their a*s (I guess it was an ongoing joke, looking back at it.)
My dad would play with our basset hound by kind of... grabbing his thigh and he'd reach around to grab my dad's hand, and then my dad would grab the other side, etc etc. So I was watching him do this and laughing and then...
"THAT'S LIKE WHAT MOM DID TO JASON!"
Ooooh. S**t. My ears are still ringing. Eek.
Now both my parents were a******s to each other, rampant infidelity, the works. And they're both a******s to everyone now that they're divorced so I don't feel *as* bad, but still.
so many of these stories are kids accidently calling out cheating parents
Played with a used condom I found at the river. I thought it was a balloon.
We found condoms in the house of a friend and thought they were water bombs. We filled them up and threw them from the balcony to the amusement of all kids on the street on this hot summer day. The neighbors saw the remains of our bombs and some men laughed about the boy's father needing the extreme nobbing. We didn't understand why they laughed. It was fun. :)
At 3 years old, I had learned what a screwdriver was, and how to use one.
Proceeded to use a screwdriver on my dad's brand new video camera to show him what I had learned.
My username includes my birth year...
jumped into soft, pink fiberglass insulation
Made fun of someone with cerebral palsy using canes to walk. I thought they were just walking funny on purpose and didn't know that they were handicapped. I still cringe thinking about when the teacher told me to stop and explained why that was wrong.
My daughter did something similar when she was about 3 and we were waiting at a doctor's surgery. A woman was using wrist crutches. She was quite bent-over and didn't have great control of her legs, but she was managing to get around OK. My daughter pointed and said loudly "Haha look at that!" (not in a cruel way, just like a little kid seeing something for the first time). I don't think the woman heard, but I still died of shame.
I was 5 years old and the day care I went to was in someone’s house. The owner’s mother stayed with her, because she recently had a stroke. As a result of said stroke her tongue was always slightly protruding out of her mouth. 5 year old me thought she was sticking her tongue out at me to be rude, so I returned the favor by very dramatically sticking my tongue out at her while shaking my head. Interestingly enough, no one was in the room but us and the mother couldn’t speak so I didn’t get into trouble!
I messed up two computer monitors back in after school daycare in kindergarten. There were these magnet toys that were laying around and for some reason I had put it up to the monitor and thought it was so cool how they made rainbow colors on the monitor. Me and a friend continued to do it until we both got yelled at and that’s all I can remember. I don’t remember what happened after that but I’m pretty sure they stopped putting out the magnets
Edit: Damn I didn’t expect so many people to have a similar experience to this. It’s good to know that there was a degauss feature now because I thought I permanently ruined those things until now lmao.
I was little and we were at my grandpas funeral.
Being only 6 or 7 I hardly understood what it meant for him to be dead, especially considering it was an open casket.
In my mind everyone was walking up to him and saying goodbye and he was sleeping like when we saw him in the hospital.
Little did I know....
So when it was finally my turn to go up my mom asked me if i was sure i wanted to see him.
I said of course, and I ran up to my grandpa and yelled out "granddpaaa" just like I did when we would go over and visit.
It wasnt until he didnt reply and I felt his freezing cold clammy hands that I realized why people were crying.
He was dead :(
Edit: wow, thank you all for all the kind words. <3
When I was in the 5th grade, I had a male teacher who was kind of weird and who basically let me and my friends get away with anything because we were smart. I was not smart enough to know that teasing my mom for said teacher's crush on her would mean an all-out screaming match between her and my stepdad. This fight lasted for 5 more years. He thought she was cheating on him because I had said my teacher had a crush on her.
This was the dad's fault for being insecure and immature. It should have been a laughing matter, and a compliment to the mum.
Told the heavily pregnant mom of my best friend that she was sooooooo fat!
I was 6 but even if she were fat Stfu, Lil Lola! I practically lived at their house but didn't understand the concept of pregnancy.
I think she forgave me at the baby's first birthday. Who knows, she could still be holding a grudge.
Freak out my teach who thought I was psychotic.
When I was in Pre-K I was playing with my friend while waiting for our parents to pick us up. We decided to play in this fake plastic house, and we were pretending a family lived there. Then we thought it was a great idea to pretend robbers were breaking into the house and attacking the family, after the police would come and save the day. That's when things went south. We proceeded to get fake knives, and we entered the house screaming, and cutting the baby dolls inside the house, before we had a chance to pretend we were the police the next thing I know my teacher is staring at us with horror, and made us lie down on our nap time mats until our parents came. The entire year she was freaked out by me and my friend, and never let us play in the little house again :(
When I was little I overheard my mom saying how my aunt chewed with her mouth open. Sometime later my aunt is in the car with my mom, myself and my sister, and I proudly yell out how my mom says she chews with her mouth open. It was terribly awkward and I’m glad I can only remember fragments of it.
Another time I came home from school crying and in front of my mother and grandmother told my mom how at school everyone else has a great-grandmother but I have a mean one. Didn’t understand the concept and we laugh about it constantly now.
Ate fertilizer that I found out in the yard because I thought it was candy.
Oh man I was just thinking about this today.
So when I was in grade school, a girl a few years ahead of me, in my sister's grade, suddenly died. She also happened to be my sisters friend, and she didn't handle that well either.
I didn't really understand death, I was in the second grade and also dumb. Things have changed a lot since then of course, now i'm just dumb.
Anyway, the first worst thing I did, my dad was trying to explain death, and my sister was in the room as well. All I remember is piping up, like I had it all figured out, "IT'S LIKE SHE RAN OUT OF POWER!". That did not end well.
The second terrible thing I did related to this, our school was a catholic school so Mass every Friday. To preface this, we had a mouse problem at my house at the time, and one of the little bastards woke my a*s up early.
So fast forward to the school service we're having for this dead girl, and when one person is up there speaking, I suddenly and without warning let out the loudest, angriest, dad yawn in the history of yawns.
Dead silence. Everyone is looking at me. Not knowing the gravity of the situation I find myself in, I simply say "what? I woke up early"
I guess not completely unknowingly, but up until I was about four, I’d grab my mom’s glasses off her face and throw them down the stairs. 3-4 pairs later, she’s gotten laser eye surgery and now doesent use them today.
Not me, but my brother (20 years older than me) as a kid was house sitting for someone when he was like 7
Taking care of the dogs, cats, fish and a hamster or two.
He spilled something on a hamster (koolaid I think?) And he gave it a bath, then tried to dry it off in the microwave so the family wouldn't know.
To his credit, the hamster was dry.
1. Stuck a butter knife into the controls of the dishwasher-the electric shock sent me across the room.
2. When in the car, whom ever was driving would shout “Jagoff!” when another driver did something to annoy them. One day, I was in the backseat as my mother drove the family to the mall or wherever. Somebody cuts us off, and before anyone else could comment, I shouted “JAGOFF!!!” at the top of my lungs. Dead silence ensued. After we got home, my dad scolded me for swearing. I never realized it was a bad word. In Pittsburgh it’s a vulgar insult.
Upvote for Pittsburgheese! We're you on your way to Pants N'at? 😆
Flooded my neighbor’s basement.
We lived in a duplex. I was 3. The neighbor had our shared hose through his window to fill his water bed. I turned on the hose at the faucet then went to find the end. When I couldn’t get the end out of the window, I turned the hose off.
But I was 3. I didn’t know my right and left yet, much less “righty tighty, lefty loosy.” I turned the faucet all the way on, exploded his water bed and flooded his basement.
I will say that I have no memory of this, but my mom told me this story from when I was about 5: I had a best friend that went to the same montessori school as me. Apparently that day, she had done something I didn't like, so as a response, I grabbed her by the back of the head and slammed her face into the table until she bled.
I'm not a violent person so I have no idea why this would be my reaction to anything. I'm glad I don't remember doing jt and I hope she turned out okay
Kids generally react like this when upset (hitting, kicking) and have to be taught that it's not how we solve things. But 5 maybe is a bit old to not know 😅
According to my mom, I stole a s**t ton of things from Best Buy and got away with it because I was a tiny toddler who couldn’t reach the detectors.
I tripped a waitress carrying dishes by leaving a crayon on the ground, but my dad may have been lying to teach me a lesson about not leaving crayons on the ground in a restaurant.
Took a LOT of money out of my parents plastic tupperware thing and bought a nintendo 64 from another kid. I didn't know how much, but probably a lot
Edit: When did this comment blow up??
Edit x2: Corrected an error. Everyone can stop freaking out about, "tubaware."
I was 5 and my brother was 8.
I showed him where our mom was keeping the Christmas presents and told him it was okay to look.
I promptly ran out and told on him.
For what he tells me, the worst part was that my mom just tossed him this toy he wanted after she yelled at him.
I don't thinK I did it unknowningly, but I killed a lot of ants by molten plastic. How? you put a stick through a plastic bottle to create a handle, then burn the bottle by a small lighter, super hot molten plastic will start dropping down like napalm, [just like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3xHHVWhP5A).
Kills every thing it touchs. I did this so may times that, after awhile, it's really hard to find a single fire ants nest in my local area.
I once swatted a mockingbird out of the sky. I thought it was a bug
Touched an electrical plug while it being slightly connected to an outlet. Gave me a shock.
And, the details escape me, but somehow producing blue sparks from an electrical plug and outlet.
Then on, I'm afraid of electricity.
When my younger sister was 4 and I was 5 I talked her into jumping down an entire flight of stairs in our house. She almost made it! She landed 3 steps from the bottom and crashed the rest of the way down. She then just curled into a ball, not making a sound or moving. I remember being terrified that I'd killed her. Not because she would be dead but because I'd be in soooooo much trouble. She wasn't seriously injured in the end. She just had the breath knocked out of her. I then somehow convinced her not to tell our parents.
...in keeping with the highest traditions of older siblings everywhere.
Load More Replies...
I've done two crappy kids as a kid, both of which involving my grandma. Once I told her over the phone that we were "starving." Cue my grandma arriving with two huge bags of various food products (and my mom being very puzzled about this delivery). One other time I told her (again over the phone) that my parents were physically fighting each other, prompting her to come visit us in a panic. I have no idea why I told her such things, and I must have been about 3 or 4 y.o. when it happened. None of it was true, of course - we weren't starving or fighting one another.
Kids being kids... With that I mean: - applying kids logic to things we take for granted, but coming to a very different conclusion - kids being curious - kids being brutally honest at times (combined with weird memory to remember "bad" things that have been said around them) - kids having a vivid imagination at other times. Most posts were a learning moment. Often a painful one unfortunately.
Honestly I don't know exactly who the guilty was. My sister (5 or 6) and me(4 or 5) were playing with matches. One of us decided to try and strike one. The spark and flame startled us and instinctively jumped tossing the match in the air. Unfortunately, we were standing next to a newspaper recycle bin...you know where this is going. The match went into the open bin and started to burn. We got our mom who quickly put out the fire. When she asked who started the fire, we blamed the neighbors boy, Danny. Yes, actual name from the 1960's. My mom went to tell Danny's mom what he did. Sigh, he had an alibi. He was taking a nap. We really should have gotten in more trouble than we did
We had to sit through a 2 hour long timeshare presentation for $200 on vacation a few weeks ago. We told our kid in the car on the way there we were going to play pretend and tell the lady we were moving out of the country. So as I’m telling the lady my kid comes up and whispers in my ear “she doesn’t know we’re lying to her.” Lol I just spoke louder hoping she didn’t hear my kid. Anyways it worked out pretty well and she didn’t really bug us about buying one after that.
not crappy, but .... my little 3 or 4 yr old self went charging out across the street, without looking. because my Grandfather happened to be walking down the sidewalk on the other side. Almost killed 3 generations of my family, me by being hit by a car and mam and grandpa from heart attacks.
My kid brother made my friend shriek with horror when she found him cleaning his French horn with my Tampax. "These are great! They get up into all the tight spots!" We still laugh at his innocence and my friend's hysteria.
Bring back the post about people who choose not to have children... then attach this one.
When my younger sister was 4 and I was 5 I talked her into jumping down an entire flight of stairs in our house. She almost made it! She landed 3 steps from the bottom and crashed the rest of the way down. She then just curled into a ball, not making a sound or moving. I remember being terrified that I'd killed her. Not because she would be dead but because I'd be in soooooo much trouble. She wasn't seriously injured in the end. She just had the breath knocked out of her. I then somehow convinced her not to tell our parents.
...in keeping with the highest traditions of older siblings everywhere.
Load More Replies... I've done two crappy kids as a kid, both of which involving my grandma. Once I told her over the phone that we were "starving." Cue my grandma arriving with two huge bags of various food products (and my mom being very puzzled about this delivery). One other time I told her (again over the phone) that my parents were physically fighting each other, prompting her to come visit us in a panic. I have no idea why I told her such things, and I must have been about 3 or 4 y.o. when it happened. None of it was true, of course - we weren't starving or fighting one another.
Kids being kids... With that I mean: - applying kids logic to things we take for granted, but coming to a very different conclusion - kids being curious - kids being brutally honest at times (combined with weird memory to remember "bad" things that have been said around them) - kids having a vivid imagination at other times. Most posts were a learning moment. Often a painful one unfortunately.
Honestly I don't know exactly who the guilty was. My sister (5 or 6) and me(4 or 5) were playing with matches. One of us decided to try and strike one. The spark and flame startled us and instinctively jumped tossing the match in the air. Unfortunately, we were standing next to a newspaper recycle bin...you know where this is going. The match went into the open bin and started to burn. We got our mom who quickly put out the fire. When she asked who started the fire, we blamed the neighbors boy, Danny. Yes, actual name from the 1960's. My mom went to tell Danny's mom what he did. Sigh, he had an alibi. He was taking a nap. We really should have gotten in more trouble than we did
We had to sit through a 2 hour long timeshare presentation for $200 on vacation a few weeks ago. We told our kid in the car on the way there we were going to play pretend and tell the lady we were moving out of the country. So as I’m telling the lady my kid comes up and whispers in my ear “she doesn’t know we’re lying to her.” Lol I just spoke louder hoping she didn’t hear my kid. Anyways it worked out pretty well and she didn’t really bug us about buying one after that.
not crappy, but .... my little 3 or 4 yr old self went charging out across the street, without looking. because my Grandfather happened to be walking down the sidewalk on the other side. Almost killed 3 generations of my family, me by being hit by a car and mam and grandpa from heart attacks.
My kid brother made my friend shriek with horror when she found him cleaning his French horn with my Tampax. "These are great! They get up into all the tight spots!" We still laugh at his innocence and my friend's hysteria.
Bring back the post about people who choose not to have children... then attach this one.
