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.
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 “
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.
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.