November 8, 2021 | Taylor Medeiros

These Parenting Scares Are Utterly Traumatizing


Having a kid means you're bound to worry until the day you die. Of course, these little deviants are apt to get into all kinds of trouble. Dangerous stunts, terrifying pranks, and absent-minded mistakes. Here are some priceless parental nightmares where children scared the daylights out of their own parents.


1. A Shocking Resemblance

This one makes me cringe just thinking about it. When I was 13, I was about as hot and bothered as you'd expect a 13-year-old to be. The problem was, I was living in a very religious household at the time and my parents had an ironclad parental filter on the computer, so smut was out of the question. So, I decided to draw my own smut—and it ended in disaster.

I'm a pretty good artist when it comes to drawing things that are right in front of me to look at. So, what I'd do is, I'd take magazine pictures of women who had relatively little clothing on, and just edit out the clothing as I was drawing. Well, of course, my parents found my stack of drawings eventually. Which isn't too bad I guess, my dad even said uncomfortably that I had some talent at drawing and should pursue it. But here's the part that makes me cringe.

My mother decided that one of the drawings looked too much like her. It was purely coincidental...it was literally a picture out of an advertisement that I had copied to the best of my ability. She...asked me...VERY uncomfortably...if I fantasized about her. Ladies and gentlemen, not much in the world makes you want to crawl into a hole and die more than when your own mother thinks you've been fantasizing about her.

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2. Falling For It

When I was about nine years old, we lived in a crappy high-rise apartment building. I opened my bedroom window, removed the screen, stuck my head out the window, and screamed as loud as I could like I was falling. I then quickly proceeded to hide under my bed as my parents frantically came running into my room with me nowhere to be seen and thought I fell out the window.

Eventually, I started giggling and was busted. They were not impressed, to say the least.

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3. More Interesting Than Intended

When I was in the eighth grade, I stayed the night at my friend's house. It so happened that one of my favorite movies, A Christmas Story, was going to be playing on TBS. My family didn't have cable and I knew everyone would enjoy watching it on Christmas at my house, so I asked my buddy if we could record it onto VHS so I could take it home.

He grabbed a blank tape from his dad's office, popped it in the VCR, and we recorded Ralphie and his Christmas shenanigans. The following day, I went home and told my parents and siblings that I had a copy of the movie. They were ecstatic and we all agreed to watch it the following week on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve rolls around, and my parents, brothers, sister, and myself gather around the TV to watch the movie.

I rewind the tape to the beginning and press play. And that's when the HORROR began. For the next three seconds, although it felt like an hour, my entire family and I watched a woman sucking a large one before it quickly cut to A Christmas Story. We had obviously taped over one of my friend's dad's smut tapes. Nobody flinched. I looked at my parents, who had these bizarre frozen smiles as if nothing had happened and everything was right with the world.

My brothers and sister continued watching the TV but had looks of bewilderment on their faces as they tried to process what they had just seen while simultaneously trying to enjoy the beginning of A Christmas Story. Nobody in my family has ever mentioned this event since, and A Christmas Story is no longer a part of our family Christmas tradition.

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4. Coming Out Both Ends

When I was a kid, I got an ear infection and was prescribed Augmentin. As it turns out, I was super allergic to it and it gave me awful diarrhea and tons of vomiting...none of which I could control. So on one of my many trips to the bathroom, I began to throw up and have diarrhea at the same time. I didn't know which end to point at the toilet so I stood there spinning around trying to switch. It didn't work.

The entire time this is happening, my mom is watching. I remember hearing her scream. All of the walls and floor in our bathroom was plastered with my poop and vomit. My parents ended up having to clean everything up and repaint the walls and basically redo our entire bathroom. She told me it looked like something out of the exorcism and that she wouldn't wish that on anyone.

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5. Gone Away And Back Again

It begins far away from my parents, deep in the woods. I was 18 years old. As summer came to a close, I went on a weeklong hiking trip with my girlfriend. We went off the grid, many miles from civilization. There were no designated campsites, running water, etc. We were roughing it. Being young and randy, we wanted to shake some sheets, so I bought a sizable stash of condoms.

Of course, there were no garbage cans in the middle of the woods. When the deed was done, I had to put the used condoms into a ziplock baggie in my backpack. By the end of our week in the sweltering August sun, that baggie was full and funky. The trip went well. I returned to my parents' house exactly one day before I had to leave for my sophomore year of college.

I was a ridiculous slob. So, using my patented packing style, and hastily dumped my backpack's contents into my bedroom closet, picked through the mess, took what I needed, and left the rest. Yeah. I forgot about the baggie. But somebody else found it. No, not my parents. My dog. Basically, my parents came home one day to find used condoms spread all over the living room.

Apparently, my dog had found the baggie, but he didn't just sniff it or eat it on the spot or whatever. No, he took it downstairs and spread my week-old rubbers and spooge all over the couch and carpet in the living room...the first room you see when you enter the house. Welcome home, Mom and Dad! They didn't tell me about it for years, to spare me the embarrassment.

When my dad did finally tell me, he was laughing his butt off. But my mother was apparently...not pleased.

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6. Just A Tad Too Many

This happened the summer after my senior year of high school. After a long night of drinking, I came home and apparently felt the desire to puke. My parents live on the third floor, I live on the second and have a bathroom on my floor. For some reason, I turned the fan on when I went into the bathroom, which is kinda loud and my parents' room is pretty much right above the bathroom.

So I puked hard, mostly in the toilet at first. I get hot and really sweaty when I'm puking, so naturally, I strip down to my boxers. I then somehow manage to puke all over myself. Well, that's unacceptable to intoxicated me, so I guess I decided to take a shower to clean up. I never managed to turn the water on. The next thing I know, I'm getting woken up by my mother screaming at the top of her lungs, crying profusely.

Apparently, I passed out in the tub. The fan woke my mom up in the middle of the night, so she came to investigate, and found me nearly undressed covered in my own puke passed out in the bathtub with, as she says, my eyes rolling into the back of my head. She thought I was dead. I would say that was a bit traumatizing for her.

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7. An Invasion Of Privacy

My mom is the kind of person who doesn't believe children or teenagers should be allowed any privacy whatsoever, for their own good. I was really dumb and used to log all my AIM convos, because who would want to read every single line hoping to find something salacious? Well, my mom, I guess, because she did, and buried in an AIM log was me telling someone that I really loved giving him a blowjob and couldn't wait to do it again.

But, she didn't tell me she read it. She told EVERYONE ELSE IN MY FAMILY...my siblings, my aunts, all of them. And all her friends. She's a gossip and she lives on that stuff. So, everyone but me knew she had found this, as well as some racy pictures a guy sent me. Instead, she just carted me off to confession, bought me one of those "Bibles for Teens" and told me I needed to get right with Jesus. It wasn't until years later that I discovered the depths of her invasion of privacy. Oh well.

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8. Truly A Mouthful

My dad was fixing this big closet one day. The closet was very old and had an extremely heavy door. The problem with that closet was that the door hinges were loose. At that time, I was about eight or nine years old, and my little sister was fooling around inside the closet while my dad was trying to tighten the hinges. He told me to get her out of there, since she was just bothering him.

As I lifted her up, the closet door fell down on my pinky toe. Pure chaos ensued. It's all a blur, but I clearly remember me running down the hallway screaming my heart out while my sock got pumped with blood. After that, I passed out, waking up a while later in the backseat of my father's car, with a bunch of toilet paper around my foot. My dad didn't say a word.

When I arrived at the hospital, I got drugged down and operated on. Fortunately, they managed to put my pinky toe back where it belonged. I'm guessing my dad felt very shameful after the incident, however, my mom told me a couple of years ago that after I lost my toe, he immediately put it inside his mouth. He had read that that was the only way to "save the toe from dying," or something like that, and drove to the hospital with the toe in his mouth. I don't think he'll forget that.

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9. Curiosity Harms The Cat

When I was about eight years old, I was going through our medicine cabinet and found one of my brother's old EpiPens, the Epinephrine injector for use during a severe allergic reaction. I was curious about how it worked, and figured it was like any other pen in that you clicked the top with your thumb and the needle came out the other end. WRONG.

As it turns out, the needle comes out of the end that you click, and it ends up going right into my thumb when I click it! When my parents came upon me screaming my lungs out in the bathroom, the walls were painted with blood that I'd sprayed around while trying to frantically dislodge the pen from my thumb. Apparently, it was pretty extremely gross.

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10. A New Type Of Snack

When I was two or three, my parents had me in the backyard. I was running around and generally being a small child...you know how it is. Apparently, I saw something cool on the ground and, like most children, my first reaction was to put this fancy thing in my mouth. But this was not a tasty treat. The fancy thing was bird poop. My mom screamed and took a hose to my mouth.

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11. Trying To Play Nurse

For some context: When I was about seven, I lost my cat. He just disappeared one day. Probably coyotes. But, his favorite thing to do was to sleep in my mom's bathroom sink. Also, my neighborhood is infested with cats because someone down the street never got hers fixed. So, now for the real story: I was swinging on my porch swing, looked over into the bushes, and saw a cat.

It was laying down, eyes closed, mouth open. No wounds as far as I could see. It looked asleep. But it looked sick too. So to 'make it feel better,' I picked the dead cat up, took it inside, and placed it in the bathroom sink. Plus, I was feeling really lonely after my first cat disappeared. I thought my mom would let me keep this one.

Poor mom walked in on me petting a dead cat in our bathroom sink.

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12. A Secret Dragged Out

When I was in high school, I was very bulimic. If someone was downstairs after I ate dinner, I wouldn't be able to go into the bathroom, so my brilliant plan was to go upstairs and puke into grocery bags. I found this to be way easier than using the bathroom, in the comfort of my room, I could throw up in peace and not be worried about getting caught.

Of course, I couldn't throw them away when my parents were home, so I kept them around my room. I had vomit bags everywhere, under the bed, in my desk drawers, in my closet...it wasn't pretty. One day, I went out with a friend and came back at around three to get my clothes for work. My stepdad was in the living room and I could hear the wet/dry vacuum.

I asked why he was cleaning, in a joking way, and my mum turned around and said, "The dog got into your room today." I was instantly mortified. I went into the living room and my stepdad refused to acknowledge me. There was old puke everywhere...on the stairs, on the floor, in my room, on the couch, oh god it was horrible.

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13. The Impromptu Prank

This happened when I was ten...I was in the bathroom preparing to take a bath. For some reason, our cat was in there with me. She was sitting on the side of the tub while I was brushing my teeth. When I finished brushing and flossing, the cat hadn't moved. When I turned on the faucet to draw the bath, the water really freaked her out.

She was pretty young and sprightly, basically full-grown but still a kitten. The sudden burst of water from the faucet caused her to leap straight into the air kicking and clawing and somehow her back paw clawed into my lower lip while she was doing this weird kitty acrobatics. I don't remember feeling any pain, but I looked into the mirror and discovered a ton of blood.

If you've ever cut your lip, you know how it bleeds...dark, thick blood, seemingly unending. At that moment, I knew exactly what I had to do. With blood pouring out of my mouth, down my chin and onto my chest, I ran out of the bathroom and into the living room where my parents were watching the evening news. Clutching my abdomen and falling to my knees, I began screaming.

"My stomach, my stomach! I don't know why this is happening!" Oh the horror. I still remember their faces. When I told them, after maybe 20 seconds of this charade, that it was just a cat scratch to the lip, they were so angry.

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14. A Devilish Deed

I’m from a Catholic family. When I was baptized, I started crying, which the priest assured my worried grandmother was normal. After the priest was finished pouring water over my head, I started to urinate on the priest's robe. The priest was obviously extremely angry, and started yelling and saying things like, "Child of Satan! Hell, you shall go!"

My grandmother passed out, my mother started crying, and my uncle was laughing his head off. Obviously, I don't remember this, but there's a family video.

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15. The Cold-Hearted Prank

One day, I apparently decided to hide in the refrigerator as my mother was outside the house. She was babysitting me alone at home and left me by myself for a minute to deal with the gas people, the ones that bring natural gas for use in the stove at home. When she came back, it took her a minute to realize she couldn't find me—and then she lost it.

Apparently, she spent 30 minutes combing through our huge house and its yard, progressively approaching insanity as she failed to find me. She even climbed the mango tree in our backyard, in case I had somehow done so. She eventually cracked and called my dad, sobbing and saying that somehow I had been taken by the gas people.

As my dad took over and called for some officers from work, my mom tried to calm herself down and went to get herself a glass of water. As soon as she opened the refrigerator door, I burst out and screamed, “You found me!!!" with what she said was the biggest smile ever. She then proceeded to collapse on the floor, woke up a minute later, and then called my dad to tell him everything, as he rushed out of work to come back home.

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16. Constant Compromising Comments

I traumatized my mother twice, both times when I was about three years old. The first time, we were walking through the Botanic Gardens and there was a wedding taking place. Apparently, the bride was a larger lady, and I piped up in my piercing little voice and said the worst thing imaginable, "Mummy, look at that FAT BRIDE!"

My mother grabbed me under one arm and ran away —she thinks the bride didn't hear, but she's certain some of the guests did. The second time I traumatized her, it was even worse. She took me to her work one day and I met one of her colleagues. He was from Ghana and had very dark skin. Apparently I said, "Mummy, look at that dirty man!"

Mum said she just wanted the floor to swallow her up, but the guy handled it with exceptional grace and just laughed and said, "Don't worry, at least I can't blush." Yeah, I'm surprised I wasn't left at an orphanage after those two episodes. I now have kids of my own who are determined to give me my comeuppance.

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17. One Big Inside Joke

The first movie I saw with my ex-wife was Knocked Up. At the time, there was awkwardness, because we'd accidentally had unprotected intercourse the week before. It turned into a big joke between us, and I bought the movie for her for Christmas. Mom asked me, "What did you get Jen for Christmas?" And without hesitating or thinking, I said, "Knocked Up."

She was driving, and almost wrecked the car.

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18. Just Trying To Help Out

I was three years old when my brother was born. When he was just a few days old, my mom put him in his baby swing, turned it on, and left the room to answer the phone. Well, while she was gone, the swing stopped and my brother started crying. Being the concerned older sister that I was, I pulled him out of the swing and carried/drug him to my mom saying, "Mommy, the baby is crying!"

She freaked the heck out and never left him in his swing again.

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19. A Shared Intimate Moment

My girlfriend and I were in my room having intercourse. We had pretty much finished and were just talking and cuddling on the floor. We hear my dad coming upstairs but think nothing of it, as the door is shut and he typically knocks. He does knock. But he has a question for me, so he starts talking and pushes the door open.

I'm facing away from the door, but my girlfriend is facing me. Everything's too quick. We don't have any time to cover or shove crumpled clothes in front of our bodies. My dad opens the door and is shown full frontal. He is stunned for a moment, then turns quickly and says simply, "Get her!" A piquant line, but unfortunately our dog had followed Dad upstairs and wanted to check in with my girlfriend and I.

Dad came back five seconds later, cracked the door just wide enough for the dog to escape and told him to get out. It was...an awkward dinner.

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20. The Unknown Play Date

When I was in kindergarten, I made a friend while at school. We really hit it off, and she said she had a big bag of Halloween candy at home and offered to share it with me. It was a fairly short walk to her place from school, and from her place, a short walk home. So I head over to her place, and completely forget to tell my parents where I went after school.

I completely lost track of time. We ate candy and played video games. Her family must have thought my parents knew where I was. We played board games and ate dinner, and I didn't go home until after nine. I remember getting home, walking through the front door, and being greeted by the sight of my parents, both completely in tears, on the phone with the officers.

I immediately realized what I did wrong, and I thought for sure I was going to be grounded forever. They weren't mad, though. They were just overjoyed that I was okay. A bunch of bear hugs and tear-filled expressions of parental affection later, I felt terrible. They must have thought I was dead. I was missing for over six hours. Every single one of their friends was out looking for me. I really suck.

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21. An Experiment Gone Wrong

When I was seven or eight, I did a science project on the antibacterial efficacy of various soaps. It basically involved keeping hands dirty for a day, pressing grubby thumbs into petri dishes full of agar, then washing and doing the same again. I'd take tracings of the cultures: bigger colonies were bad, smaller ones good. This ended up winning the county science fair for my grade in a large metropolitan area, so that was nice.

But before that, after I'd finished the experiments but before I'd discarded the dishes, I got into a dispute with my parents but don't remember what about. I thought, "I'll show them." So, I took the nastiest culture and swabbed it onto their bedroom door knob. They both got sick as dogs and I had to take care of them for a couple of days. It served me right.

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22. XXXmas Came Early

When I was young, maybe around five or six, I was trying to find Christmas presents in closets or under beds, but instead, I found a ton of condoms and toys. At the time, I didn't know what they were, so I opened up the box of condoms, thinking they were balloons. I started to run down the stairs with what I thought was a sword and trying to blow up the condoms.

The sword turned out to be a vibrator. I then ran into the room where my parents were and started telling them how I "finally found my Christmas presents." My parents still love bringing up this story.

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23. Right Across The Face

I was about two or three years old at the time and living at my grandmother's house with my aunt. One day, after we hosted a family gathering, my aunt decided to take a nap on the couch. I do not remember this at all, but apparently, I decided to pick up an empty champagne bottle from the previous night and smack her in the face with it. Yeah.

The way my grandmother tells it is that she was in the kitchen making dinner when she heard my aunt start wailing and crying. So, she goes outside to see my aunt going down the stairs into the yard with blood all over her face and clothing, crying and carrying a blood-covered me in her arms, also crying. Her eyebrow, to this day, is split and her hair will not grow where she had to get stitches.

There is no recollection of this even a little bit from me. None.

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24. Closer Than Just Family

When I was 16, I found out that my Dad was actually just my stepdad and not my biological father. Well, a sister I never knew about contacted me and it turns out my real dad lived in a small town just a few miles away from mine. I met my sister and had her come over one day while my mom was at work. My mom came home early, and, when I introduced my sister, I introduced her as my girlfriend.

The look on my mom's face was priceless.

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25. Regrets Were Had

My mom got my sister and I our first set of makeup when we were 11 and 15. We ran to the bathroom to try it out and immediately decided that the best course of action was to paint bruises and wounds all over our faces, fake fight sounds and screaming, then run to our mother's office area appearing like we needed to go to the hospital. It worked. She took one look at us and turned as white as a sheet.

Then she started screaming. By then, we couldn't stay in character and collapsed in a heap of laughter. We weren't allowed to have makeup again until we were adults and could buy it for ourselves.

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26. A Mess On Top Of The Mess

When I was little, I thought trashing my parents’ room and bathroom was a great idea and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. I took toothpaste, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, all that jazz, and just squeezed it all over the place. It was all over the bed, pillows, carpet, sheets, bathtub, sinks, counter, toilet, tile floor...down the hallway...one nice long trail of toothpaste.

Why I thought this was a great idea, I have no clue. I was grounded for a very long time.

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27. Innocence Or Ignorance?

When I was around 13 and first started realizing how good it felt to rub one out, I had no idea what the procedure entailed as far as cleanup. I lived with a devout Mormon mother who would clean my room. One day, she asked why my sheets were crusty and what the discoloration was on my white sheets. I embarrassingly told her everything as I was raised not to lie...ever.

This was bad, but then she realized something else. Those stains and crust remarkably match the living room throw blanket on our couch. Ya...when home alone, I would rub one out there and just use the blanket thinking it would go unnoticed. It was an extremely rough week.

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28. The Secret Comes Out?

One time during my sophomore year in college, I had been feeling guilty for not seeing my family very often, even though they lived twenty minutes away. So, I decided to take them out to dinner. Since I had some extra cash, I thought I would take them out somewhere nice. We all went to Black Angus. I thought it would be cool to bring my boyfriend that I had been dating seriously for six months.

No one in my family normally does this. I found out later that my dad was scared that I was either going to tell the family I was either pregnant or getting married at that dinner.

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29. Hide And Can’t Be Found

When I was in fourth and fifth grade, my dad was in the air force and we were stationed at the NATO base in Iceland. My parents were out at some party at the officer's club and there was a girl babysitting my siblings while I stayed at a friend's house. My sister decided to play hide and seek with the sitter. Well, the sitter looked for her for over an hour and got scared that she had left the house.

She called the o-club and had my parents paged. They left the general's table in a hurry and turned the house upside down. They couldn't find her. Anywhere. The MPs were called and hours went by. They literally sealed off the entire base...No one in or out of any gate and all planes were grounded. They put all of the officers and the entire group of KC135 crew members there out looking for her everywhere.

Around one in the morning, she finally came out of the coat closet she had hidden in after she was awoken by all the commotion of the officers' radios going off. Apparently, she had fallen asleep on the floor there under some coats. My mom had looked in that closet numerous times, but she didn't pull everything out of it.

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30. Keep Me Out Of There

I hated school in the fourth grade. A terrible teacher and a few bratty other students made going to school miserable. So, I loved any excuse to get out of school for all or part of the day, even if it was a doctor's appointment. One day, for some reason, my doctor's appointment was canceled. I was having none of this.

I barricaded myself in my bedroom with no lock on the door, just my desk chair, and some stuffed animals as a "blockade," and screamed that I would rather do anything else than go to school. My mom was freaked out. Crying and everything. My poor dad, having to deal with two crying women/girls at once. The next day, I had an emergency session with my mom's therapist.

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31. The Schoolboy Prank

When I was in high school, this guy I was friends with had a very realistic-looking cockroach. It was huge and glassy and rubbery. It looked very real. He gave it to me for some reason, so one day while my mother was blow-drying her hair in the bathroom, I sneakily placed the cockroach on her bare foot and took a step back.

She freaked! She probably jumped up in the air as tall as me and screamed and cursed. When she saw me laughing, she realized it wasn't real and proceeded to beat me with the blow dryer. She was so angry that I don't even think she intended to really hurt me, but she did. I ended up with a huge lump on my head and a major headache all day.

She hates roaches, so I guess I should have seen that coming, but gosh, she hit me hard. Don't traumatize your mother...

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32. Poor Lapse Of Judgement

When I was eight years old, I was flying home solo to Pennsylvania, and back then, it was okay for your parents to walk you to the gate without a boarding ticket pre-TSA. So, as my entire family is going through security I slyly, but not quietly, ask my mom, "Hey Mom, did you remember to pack the shooter?" I swear, I do not know what possessed me to say that, but said it I did.

Of course, security did not take it lightly. They took us out of line, went through all our stuff, twice, and warned me about not saying stupid stuff like that ever again. My mom said she was so completely mad at me she could have "dropped kicked" me to Pennsylvania. I'm a 44-year-old grandma now and I still haven't lived it down!

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33. The Youthful Addiction

I played the game RuneScape for a while when I was nine or 10 and I got fairly addicted to it to the point where I took my parents’ credit card and spent close to $1500 of their money to buy RuneScape gold from a website. I've paid them back since, with interest, but I feel like absolute garbage about it all the time.

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34. A Little Too Real

When I was about six, I made up a long list of symptoms to fake sickness in order to get out of school. As it turns out, my symptoms were very consistent with malaria. My dad had a job with the U.S. embassy and we were living in Lagos, Nigeria at the time. I had no idea why they were so worried.

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35. Guest Without An Invite

When I was four, my family lived on the beach. I liked to go out on the shore and explore, throw rocks, and whatnot. We had some neighbors I was always interested in because they always had big parties. One day, I decided I wanted to go. I walked over and joined the party, playing with kids and eating just a few hot dogs.

Nobody thought otherwise, because they assumed I was somebody's son. I came back a few hours later, last hot dog in tow, to find my parents had called the authorities and were trying to find me. They asked where I was and I just told them I was at the neighbors’ and they gave me hot dogs. I didn't get in trouble, but I didn't get to visit the neighbors much after that.

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36. Chip Dipped In Ketchup

When I was around 12, we had a big old fat dog named Chip who did nothing but sleep and eat. So, one day when my mom was grocery shopping, the dog was laying in the kitchen. I decided to squirt ketchup on him and on the floor and everything. When my mom came home into the kitchen, I pretended to cry and said, "Mom! Chip went crazy, I had to kill him!"

She legitimately started bawling and dropped the grocery bag, breaking stuff. She got on the floor, only to see Chip roll over and walk outside. She was so angry when Chip dragged ketchup everywhere.

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37. Watching, Always Watching

I was in second grade or so, and I was just becoming curious about how stuff works down there. I also had a teddy bear that was as big as me too. Anyway, so I was watching TV one day, when "Starship Troopers" came on, and it was a smut scene. I had never seen that kind of thing before, so I started becoming aroused. I took my teddy bear, and I got on top of it.

I started doing what they were doing, and it felt funny at the time. When I looked behind me, my jaw dropped. My mom was watching me. She never talks about it.

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38. Toys Tucked Away, Then Thrown Away

I'm 25. I spend a lot of time at my boyfriend's house. But when I'm not with him, I'm at my parents' house saving up to get an apartment. I have my vibrator with me for those lonely nights. I was at my boyfriend’s house and my mom decided to go on one of her famous cleaning frenzies. She went through my sock drawer, where I keep my vibrator…

While she was moving things around, she must have activated the vibrator because she heard the buzzing. My sister sent me a text message and told me my mom was so mad that I had a vibrator, and so she threw it away. They were Catholics. The next time I came home, she could barely look me in the eye.

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39. Asleep For The Ride

The first time I rode the bus while I was in kindergarten, I fell asleep and didn't get off when I got to school. The driver then took the bus to an industrial parking lot in the city, with rows of hundreds of other school buses. I woke up hours later, and stayed put like I was told to do. The school noticed that I was missing, and called my parents, who rightfully freaked out.

Officers were notified, a city-wide search was initiated, and eventually, someone decided to check the bus, when they found me. The bus driver was fired because of it.

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40. Took A Short Trip

A friend of mine once decided to smoke salvia in his room after his parents went to sleep. In case you don't know what salvia is, it basically makes you trip for just about 20 minutes. Anyway, right after he took a massive hit, he started tripping and eventually wandered out of his room and to the top of the stairs. When he looked down the stairs, he must have bugged out or something.

He started repeatedly shrieking as loud as he could. His parents ran out to see what was going on, and they quickly figured out from his incoherent responses that he was on drugs, and dialed for some officers. By the time the ambulance arrived, he had sobered up and had to explain to everyone what was going on and that he didn't need to go to the hospital. His parents were not amused.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

41. How Much Is Too Much?

I suffer from pretty bad insomnia, and nothing seems to help. One night, after not having slept for more than two hours in the past week, I took four mg of Xanax which was quite a lot for me as a 110lb female. I still couldn't fall asleep. So, becoming desperate, I decided to have a cocktail in addition to the Xanax I took.

I have no memory of anything after that, but apparently, my mother heard a loud crash and got up to investigate. She found me lying on the bathroom floor, unresponsive but breathing. She and my dad drove me to the ER and I was fine the next day. She says it was the most terrifying moment of her life and she will never be rid of the image of me lying on that floor.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

42. Spy Under The Sink

So when I was about 14, I was going to prank my sister in the bathroom by hiding in the cupboard under the sink and making scary noises while she was in the shower. It was obviously not well thought out, but I was bored. I knew she was showering soon, so I got under there and shut the doors, and waited. To my horror, my mom came in and took a long pee...

When she opened the cupboard doors, she found me curled up in the cabinet. I exited hastily with a burning red face and later my dad chewed me out for trying to spy on my sister in the shower. I still feel the horror many, many years later.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

43. Lock The Doors

My husband was an uh-oh and his only brother is about 17 years older than him, so he got away with a lot. He would put mouse traps in the mailbox, lock people out, traumatize the neighbor’s dogs, and even made a homemade explosive which he set off right outside their back door. I think she said the worst part was with him and the bathroom.

I always wondered why there were hook-and-latch locks at the tops of all the doors on both sides. Apparently, they had tried it to keep him from hiding in the rooms. His mom said she would often go to use the bathroom and he would fling the shower curtain open and scare the bejeezus out of her while she was sitting on the toilet.

That's right, he didn't get them when they came in the door, he waited until they were comfortably seated doing their business and then ruined it. The locks didn't do any good, they just never bothered with taking them down.

Irrelevant_muffins

Traumatizing parentsPexels

 

44. Diving In Head First

I was a very fidgety child, restless, always wanting to go out and explore. So, it happened that two-year-old me was in a shopping cart at Costco, while my mom was exploring some aisle or another, not too far from the cart. Somehow, I ended up standing up and diving headfirst...unintentionally I hope...into the ground, resulting in what my mom describes as the sound of a bowling ball hitting concrete.

Nothing bad came of it, I think. She checked my head for any sort of direct injuries, concussions, or fluids leaking from where they shouldn't be. I was apparently not bothered at all by having landed on my head.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

45. Punching Papa’s Peanuts

When I was a little kid, I thought for some reason it would be hilarious to sneak under the table at dinner time and punch my dad straight in the nuts. To this day, I vividly remember grinning and pulling back my fist and letting go with all the velocity of a four-year-old. My dad proceeded to take me around the corner and give me the second-worst spanking of my life.

Needless to say, I don't punch people in the balls anymore.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

46. Turn It Off And Back On Again

When I was in high school, my dad bought his first Mac. He was very protective of it. I discovered the joys of ResEdit and made a very official dialog box that popped up at start-up saying his system was corrupt. I went out that night and completely forgot about it. I returned a few hours later and he was so angry. He spent the entire night troubleshooting his "corrupt" system.

He started yelling at me asking what I did to break his computer.

Traumatizing parentsUnsplash

47. That Will Show Them

When I was younger, my parents took one of my toys away from me. It was a brand new hulk toy. This made toddler-me angry, so, I did the only logical thing to do—and it was absolutely diabolical. I pooped in their room. I pooped all over their bed and floor. I reminded my mom about it and she said it wasn't just poop, but diarrhea. I sprayed diarrhea all over my parent's bedroom.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

48. Personal Photos Become Impersonal

I went on a trip to Jamaica when I was about 19 years old with some friends. I got back to my parent's house after a late flight and wanted to show my mom pictures from the trip. I had them on my computer and had put the parent-friendly ones in a separate iPhoto folder. My mom was on the couch, close to falling asleep so she put her head on my lap to see the pictures.

I went to click on the family-friendly folder and instead clicked on my trash icon in iPhoto. Months earlier, I had taken a few...risque pictures for my then-boyfriend's birthday and had since moved them to the trash. So, instead of showing my mom the beautiful beaches of Negril, she was laying on my lap staring at 20-30 pictures of her daughter’s chest and "come-hither" stare.

I have never clicked around so furiously in my life, trying to close that window. All she said was "Oh!" and then the next day said, "I hope you're not posting those on 'the MySpace,'" and luckily never mentioned it again. But, I'm pretty sure she was absolutely traumatized.

Traumatizing parentsShutetrstock

49. Recreating An Absolute Thriller

When we were about five or seven years old, me and my brother discovered the similarities between ketchup and blood. Mom wasn't home yet, so we got some knives from the kitchen, all the ketchup we could find, cut some holes in our shirts for the knives, and staged a huge scene in the living room. We loved secretly watching the thrillers our parents used to see in the evenings.

We'd watch from the living room door, while they assumed us to be asleep. So, we had some experience with a plausible scenario and put a lot of thought into it, creating a huge battle scene with blood on the walls, the couches, and of course lots of ketchup on our motionless bodies in the center of the room. Mom had kind of a breakdown.

Traumatizing parentsUnsplash

50. A Collection From The Night

I was severely afraid of the dark as a kid. I would hide under my covers and not get out of bed while it was dark. But, I often had to urinate late at night. So, I came up with a clever plan: I decided to keep a bunch of empty Snapple bottles on hand. Sadly, I was too grossed out/lazy to get rid of them the next day. So, my mom found all these full bottles on the shelf next to my bed.

I guess urine starts to smell pretty bad when it's been sitting for a few months.

Traumatizing parentsShutterstock

Sources: Reddit,


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