Parenting is weird: on one hand, you’re trying to set a good example for your kids, and on the other hand, you are sometimes impressed when they do things that you know are wrong…but are also pretty clever.

You know you do it!

Let’s check out some funny stories from parents on AskReddit.

1. You’re being watched…

“She used her tablet to secretly record me so she could figure out where in the kitchen I was hiding the candy.”

2. Little sh*t.

“When my son was about 3 or 4, he was going through a phase where he refused to sleep in his bedroom alone. It was a nightmare.

I could NOT get this kid to fall asleep in his bedroom. It was a battle every single night. One afternoon on a weekend, he was messing around in his room and kept messing with the doorknob. I told him to stop, he’d keep keep messing with it.

I finally snapped at him, “If you don’t stop messing with that doorknob, you’re going to lock the door and mommy’s going to have to call maintenance and that won’t be any fun.”

About five minutes later he comes running down the hallway… and in that cute little baby voice.. “uh oh mommy!!! i accidentally locked my bedroom door!” then he put his hands up in the air in the oh well motion and said, “I guess I can’t sleep in my bedroom tonight.”

Little sh*t. LOL”

3. Out of sight, out of mind.

“My middle child is lazy ninja. He stays in the basement and plays PS4, and stays out of the way. Meanwhile my 2 girls are constantly around, leaving their stuff everywhere, asking for things, and complaining when I ask them to help around the house.

My son never complains, but the best part is he never leaves stuff around. It is in his room or in the basement, and he keep both fairly neat.

He has become an expert at “out of sight/out of mind”.”

4. Crossing the line.

“We live in a duplex with a driveway on each side that are connected in the back.

Our 3 year old was playing in his car on our side and we told him not to go past a certain point because we didn’t want him going in the front yard where we couldn’t see him. So instead, he goes back to the carport where the driveways connect, goes down the neighbor’s driveway and into the front that way.

He never actually crossed the invisible line we created, so I couldn’t get mad. But a new line was created soon after.”

5. Plotting against you.

“When my twins were really really young, like they had just learned to walk, they would work together to get things they wanted.

One day, I walked from the back of the apartment to the living room to find one son crouched on all fours and his brother standing on his back unlocking the dead bolt on the front door. They were getting ready to waltz out of our 2nd story apartment while I was using the bathroom.

Two things I learned that day: kids are way smarter than we give them credit for, and never shut the door to pee when home alone with crafty toddlers.”

6. Proud, but…

“When our 4 year old misbehaved, we’d confiscate a toy for a week. The toy would be placed on top of the fridge. One day while we were distracted entertaining some friends in our backyard, our kid snuck into our kitchen.

He built an enormously unsafe tower of boxes, stool, & chair in an attempt to climb on to the fridge.

I was extremely proud of his problem solving abilities, but I made sure not to express my pride with praise or encouragement since the whole project was an exercise in breaking our rules.”

7. Done with school.

“My kid was 6 and decided he’d had enough schooling.

Day 1: he locked himself in his bedroom and we had to use a screwdriver to take off the doorknob and get into the room.

Day 2: he woke up earlier than anyone else, gathered every tool, or potential tool, in the house, and locked himself in his bedroom.”

8. Kleptomaniac.

“My boyfriend sent me a text the other day that said “I think our daughter is a Klepto.”

He tells me that last week he took her to the Auto Parts store to get some stuff he needed, and our 2 & 1/2 year old daughter developed a fascination for some kind of tool with a long bendy neck and a mirror at the end. She kept trying to hide it from him, and he kept putting it back.

Finally, she asks him if she can carry her diaper bag, so he gives it to her. Fast-forward a week later…. And he finds the thing in her bag. He said he didn’t know if he should be proud or angry. (Back story… Years ago, before we had her & got our lives straight, we were quite the shop-lifting team.) We both, of course, had a talk with her about having to pay for things before you could take them home from the store.

And, we will both be watching her a lot more closely from now on. (Though, to be honest, it wouldn’t have happened if she was with me… She’s got her dad wrapped around her little finger.)”

9. Chip off the old block.

“My 4 yr old son kept u asking us if he could have this sucker. We said only after dinner.

He disappears upstairs to play and we are making dinner… bed time comes and he drops his Lego between the bed and the wall. Move bed to retrieve Lego, and not only do I find the wrapper for the sucker but also 3 other candy wrappers he’d stuck there.

I quickly realized that I used to do something similar as a younger kid.”

10. Scammer.

“In the 3rd grade, my son had not moved to advanced classes yet, and was just breezing through classes and work. He wasn’t shy either and would keep yelling out the answers in class before the teacher could call on other students.

The teacher decided to try to quell this by giving him three sticks. If he shouted out an answer when she didn’t call on him, he had to surrender a stick. If he did it with no sticks left, he had to skip recess.

The very first day she enacts this clever plan, she goes on teaching and asks a question and my son immediately pipes in with the answer, proudly hands her a stick and says “I get two more, right?””

11. Beach party!

“When my daughter was three, she decided to take a vase filled with decorative sand and pour it all over the wood floor, set up a reclining chair, put on sunglasses.

We walked in and got really upset at first because of the  sand all over the place, and when she saw our faces, she looked up at us with this heartbroken voice and said, “I wanted to pretend I was at the beach!”

We were still upset at the mess, but she was being creative and honestly didn’t know it was wrong. We gently told her that we understand, but this needed to be a one time beach trip and not to dump the sand again.”

12. I bet that was trippy.

“While I was out at a rehearsal for some weird performance art, my kids, then 14 and 11, collected all the money and spare change off my dresser and in my bedroom and then the entire house and took the bus downtown and somehow managed to buy tickets to the Roger Waters “Dark Side of the Moon” concert.

They called me at set break and were like, “so yeah, we stole all your money and we’re at the Roger Waters concert, just thought we should let you know in case you got home and freaked out cuz we weren’t there, gotta go, second side is starting now.”

I was like, well, why didn’t I do that?”

13. Sneaky!

“My ex wife decided that my son (15) is no longer allowed to date this year, despite the fact that it was never a problem before.

This coincided with him starting to date a girl down the street who’s parents hate my ex wife, though she claims that had nothing to do with it. She claims it is to ensure he gets good grades, though he has yet to have a problem in that area as a A/B student.

Instead of sneaking out and around, or getting mad, he went directly to the gir’ls father and offered to work for him in his shop (guy runs a machine shop on his property), cleaning up, sweeping floors, organizing. So he got his first part time job, which his mother was ok with, and in turn gets 3 nights a week where he is “working” where he gets paid to go out with the daughter.

It was sneaky and underhanded, and perfectly orchestrated between my son and this guys daughter and I am extremely proud of him.”

14. Disturbing and enlightening.

“When my kid was 8, we were having some “behavioral problems” with her to put it mildly. Went to a therapist who talked to each of us individually, and figured out the root of the problems.

She was playing us off of each other. Despite being only 8, she had our number, and was – unintentionally for the most part – winding her mother and I up over some minor thing, then watching with glee as we fought over what she wanted us to fight over.

The therapist suggested we try an experiment. The next time we caught ourselves being manipulated, we were supposed to lock ourselves in the bedroom and refuse to engage with our little hellion.

Her reaction was at once disturbing and enlightening. She tried to bash down the door to the bedroom. Starting with the vacuum cleaner, and when that didn’t work she went to the kitchen, got the pizza cutter out of the drawer, and tried to saw her way into our bedroom in order to keep the fight going.”

15. Good at strategizing.

“For Christmas one year my then 18-month-old nephew got a set of trucks.

His 6-month-old cousin got her hands on one and was playing contentedly. Nephew noticed, stood over her for a moment and very deliberately dropped a different toy a few inches from Niece, who dropped the truck to pick up the new toy.

Nephew snatched up the truck and scurried away. Niece realized she’d just lost a toy and gave him a sad look. Nephew hesitated, slowly walked back towards her holding out the truck… and grabbed the new toy out of her hands and ran off with both toys.

He’s not great at sharing, but the boy does strategize quite well.”

16. Beating the system.

“In 5th grade, my kid’s teacher would let the students retake any quiz if they got lower than a certain grade. But she gave the same quiz.

My kid was deliberately tanking the first quiz, finding out what the answers were, and scoring 100 on the retake.”

17. One way to do it.

“Heard a ruckus down the hall and came in to see my younger son standing over my older one like that famous Muhammad Ali picture.

“What’s going on?!”

“We were boxing.”

My older son had a loose tooth and they were trying to
knock it out. Older son gets up, tooth is on the ground.

“Looks like it worked…”

High fives all around.

Turns out the tooth he knocked out wasn’t the loose one they were after, but a different one. Oh well.”

18. Find the loopholes.

“Malicious compliance and finding every loophole to a rule (and now he’s a lawyer).

Book report? He’ll do it on a 1st grade book (in 6th grade) and analyze the living sh*t out of it. Can only get up to sharpen pencils? He saved his pencils from every other class to sharpen like 10 pencils a day in her class and take the most circuitous route to the sharpener.

New rule you have to walk straight to the sharpener and back? Didn’t say you couldn’t walk at 1/2 mph and sharpen in slo-mo.”

19. That’s a good thing!

“My son loves reading.

He’s always really sneaky about reading after “lights out” and although I have to foil his plans and tell him to go to bed, part of me is proud of him for liking reading that much.”

20. Go for the King Size.

“I told my 7 year old she could pick out some candy at the gas station. She came up with 2 small Kit Kat bars and I said “no, you can have ONE”.

I watched her go put those back and grab the king sized one instead. Well played, kid.”

21. Tablet wars.

“This actually just happened last night. My six year old daughter had youtube taken off her tablet after I caught her watching a ” Live at home birth” .

She is allowed one hour a night on her tablet. She came into my bedroom around three am… Her: Mom , how do you spell Taylor Swift Me: ” Why are you out of bed and what are you doing?” Her: I couldn’t sleep , so I pushed the kitchen chair up to the fridge and grabbed my tablet , I downloaded youtube back on again and I wanted to watch a music video.

I wanted to be angry but this took a lot of follow through at 3am.”

22. Foul mouth.

“My older two were playing on the trampoline with the kids from next door. I was playing nearby with my youngest son and was keeping an eye on the kids.

Neighbor boy does a trick and now everyone else has to do the trick. My oldest said he didn’t want to do it because he didn’t want to get hurt. My middle son (6 years old) says, “Stop acting like a girl.” Neighbor girl took offense and told my son not to say that. My son sighs and says, “Fine. Stop acting like a b*tch then, Gavin.”

No idea where he pulled that one from. He’s my only kid that appears to have a potty mouth and we don’t even curse in the house. I thought it was pretty funny, but had to correct him while trying not to laugh.”

23. Busted!

“At my kids’ school, they have a process to recognize achievements that the children make outside of school.

So, the kid does something good – maybe gets a ballet certificate, or wins a trophy in a sporting club – and they take evidence of this to the Head of the Junior School. The Head listens to their story, gives them big kudos, and the achievement is written up on a board, with all the others.

My daughter is clearly thinking it’s been too long since she’s been able to get this kind of attention, so she looks around herself to see what she can turn into an achievement.

She finds a “#1 dancer” medal, given to her at her recent birthday party. She is a terrible dancer. Nevertheless, she takes the medal to the Head, who does the whole “congratulations” routine, and writes up the “achievement” on the board. She tells us none of this.

One day, I’m walking past the board. I usually give it a quick scan to see if there’s anything interesting on it. Well, unexpectedly seeing my child’s name along with “Awarded #1 Dancer Medal” certainly fell into that category.

I had a word with her about it. I told her that I was very proud of her for her problem-solving, but that if she did it again, I would make her go to the Head and explain the ruse.”

24. You win this round…

“My three year old wanted to take a bath the other day.

But my wife told him no, it’s not bath time.

So he asks for juice and my wife gets him juice.

When she comes back he has rubbed mud in our 1 year olds hair, just covered.

So guess what, it’s bath time now.”

Okay, moms and dads, now we want to hear from you.

In the comments, tell us about times when your kids did something wrong…but it still impressed you…

Please and thank you!