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 includeaffiliate links.
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 includeaffiliate links.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 st 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 st. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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Told my brother to eat newspaper because it’d make him smarter.
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 :(
“Look mom, chocolate people!” In Walmart.
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.
Played with a used condom I found at the river. I thought it was a balloon.
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.
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 magnetsEdit: 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.
Taunted my sister into peeing on me
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.
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 7Taking 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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 lotEdit: 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 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.
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Rugilė Žemaitytė
Monika Pašukonytė
Denis Krotovas
Parenting
