When children are growing up, sometimes their curiosity and their imagination can get the better of them. And when they voice what’s going on in their head, this can result in some cringe-worthy and adorable situations. Whether these are stories of kids out in the wild or their own embarrassing past, these Redditors tell tales of when children didn’t know what they were saying or doing.
1. Picture From The Future
A few months back, my wife showed a picture of herself to our three-year-old daughter. In the picture, my wife is only about seven years old. My wife asks her "Do you know who this is"? My daughter reacts like this: (gasps) "That's me when I'm bigger"! I love that she thought this was actually possible.
2. The Thought That Counts
My son and I are playing catch. I have a terrible throw that sails over his head. I say, "Sorry, that was a bad throw". He stops, gives me a kind look, and says, "No Daddy, that was a wonderful throw". Then takes two steps toward getting the ball. He stops again, turns back around, and says, "When we say something nice, even when we don't mean it at all, that's called being polite, right"?
3. Following To A Tee
My little sister was at the doctor's office for her annual checkup—she had to be somewhere around three years old. The nurse was asking all the standard coordination-type questions—touch your nose, put your hands up, jump, etc. Being a healthy capable little devil, she's doing everything fine. Then, the nurse says, "Stand on one foot". Her reaction was incredible.
My little sister looks at the nurse, looks down, and hesitates. Then she walks over and stands on one of the nurse's feet.
4. Taking It Literally
I try to make it a point to take about 10 minutes at the end of each evening to help my daughter straighten up her room. After a particularly rough day, I sat down on the floor of her room to help her sort through her dolls, and I muttered "I really don't have the juice for this tonight"... My daughter left the room and returned a few minutes later with a cup of apple juice for me.
5. The Ultimate Weapon
I gave my son a timeout from swords, lightsabers, and Thor hammers due to him being too aggressive while playing with them. After about 10 minutes of quiet, I went to check on him and found him building with his Legos. After I told him that I was proud of him for listening, I asked him what he was building, and he told me he was building an ultimate Lego device so that he could destroy me. I think he may have missed the point, but at least he's persistent.
6. Picky Eater
My son just turned two and is barely saying complete words. On Halloween, we took him trick-or-treating and when someone would hold out their hand with candy, he would inspect it carefully—but it gets even funnier. If he didn't care for what the candy was, he would look up and say, "No thank you," and then start making his way towards the next house. It was hilarious.
7. Woe Is Me
My girlfriend was in the pediatrician's office with her five-year-old son for a routine checkup. A nurse glanced at his chart and announced that he was overdue for a particular shot. When the nurse left the room, the little boy threw himself back upon the examination table and stage-whispered, in a wavering voice, "Do you have any idea...(pause for drama)…what I've been through"?
8. Sugar And Spice
When my younger sister was around two or three, she was sitting on my grandfather's lap and he was reciting a bunch of childhood sing-song rhymes to her like Humpty Dumpty, the Itsy-Bitsy Spider, etc. At one point, my grandfather says the rhyme that goes, "What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of"! Her reaction was unforgettable.
My sister says, "No they aren't"! My grandfather responds, "They aren't? What are little girls made of, then"? She says that: "They're made of bones and blood".
9. The Scientist’s Conclusions
I used to host imaginary science shows where I would get questions from viewers that I had to answer. I don't remember a lot of the questions from my fake audience, but I remember trying to explain that glass actually could let air through, and that was the explanation to how we didn't suffocate when all the doors and windows were shut.
10. Owie!
When my little brother was around four or five years old, he got a cut on his middle finger. When he got it, he decided to walk up to my parents and grandparents and say, "Look at my owie"! and shows it to them, by sticking up his middle finger at them. In return they laughed their faces off. A few hours later, my dad and grandpa, and little brother are at the hardware store asking this mean worker for some stuff.
Dad says, "Excuse me, can you tell me where the saw bands are please"? The worker tells him "I’m busy right now, go ask someone else". My dad continues to say, "I just need you to point me in the direction". The worker bluntly says, "I told you to ask someone else" My dad knew just what to do. Then, my dad turns to my younger brother and tells him, "Jake, show this man your owie".
Then, my little brother sticks his middle finger up at the guy, and my dad and grandpa start dying of laughter while my little brother is standing there proudly presenting his battle wound.
11. Know-It-All
I tried to explain to my 7-year-old nephew that Santa wouldn't bring him a four-wheeler, because he was too young to drive it, and I think it may not be allowed to drive them at his house anyway. He replied "What do you mean you think? You're a mom! Don't you have to know all the laws to be a mom"? I just looked at him and said, "I know a lot of laws, but moms don't know everything". I saw his little brain exploding over this revelation.
12. We Need To Talk
A close friend of mine has a young daughter named Maya. When Maya was about 4 years old, she had a tendency to comment on people around her out loud to her mother. My friend then told her that it was better that, if she had any comments or questions about other people, to take it up when the two were alone. A few days later they were sitting on a bus and in walks a very obese woman.
Maya eyed the woman suspiciously and then pointed at her: "Mum. We're going to talk about her later".
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13. Naming Fun
I have a daughter who is just a few weeks shy of her second birthday. Her language skills are already pretty good, and you get some interesting sentences out of her. A few weeks ago, I was drying myself off after having my morning shower and heard her push the bathroom door open. She looked up and said, "Oooooh, Daddy's got a tail". I now lock the bathroom door when showering.
14. What Does That Mean?!
A couple of weeks ago around 2 am, I'm sitting at my desk finishing up some work and playing Rift. My nine-year-old daughter stumbles past me to the bathroom, does her thing, comes out rubbing her eyes, mumbles "I found a Fruity Pebble in my belly button," and goes back to bed. It might sound silly, but it was one of those little moments of clarity that makes you glad to be alive. Man, I love that kid.
15. The Broken Silence
When my daughter was around three years old, we were visiting my sister. On Sunday, we dressed her up in a cute little denim skirt for her church outfit. It was the first time she's worn this skirt. The church was a rather small one and the kids were with us for the whole service. During one of the "Silent Prayer" times, my daughter discovered her cute little jean skirts and proclaimed VERY loudly, "POCKETS!!!! I have POCKETS!"!!!
You could hear hushed little chuckles all around.
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16. The Language Barrier
My old teacher—she and her family are French—has two children. These children would constantly make remarks about those around them in French, since where we live, not many speak French. However, on a holiday in France, these two children forgot that others could understand what they were saying. That’s when they made a dire mistake. They started joking about how fat the woman standing in front of them in line was.
Thankfully, this slightly overweight lady had a sense of humor and easily shrugged off the rudeness of the children, but my old teacher claimed that it was the most awkward situation she had ever been in.
17. Be Realistic, Please
I took my boyfriend's three-year-old to the zoo once, and while we were passing by the tigers I said, "Aww, he's so cute. I just want to give him a hug". The three-year-old stopped right in his tracks, looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and said to me, 'That tiger would eat your face".
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18. The Fairest Of Them All
My daughter's first word other than the exploring of "ma ma" and "da da" was "me". I'd just given her a bath and dressed her in a flowery dress with a headband and shoes to match. My aunts descend on her cooing, "Who's so pretty"? To my surprise, she said, "Me". Well alright, you vain little tart. You're so pretty.
19. Speaking In Code
Several friends and I had a fascination with writing in code. We had little pocket notebooks full of codes and deciphering instructions which were also in code, and would write volumes of notes between us in code. The notebooks got confiscated by a teacher, but we wouldn't tell her how to decode them. She tried to get us in trouble, but our parents thought it was hilarious. I'm almost 60 and I still have one of these notebooks around somewhere.
20. Picking Your Meals
For much of second grade, for some reason, my parents let me pack my own lunch. I had two sandwiches of choice. One was what I called a triple butter sandwich: peanut butter, apple butter, and butter. A little strange, but okay. The other was a lettuce sandwich. White bread, mayo, and a few leaves of iceberg lettuce. I have no idea how they let me eat that for most of a full school year.
21. Keep Your Eyes On Me!
When I was a kid, in the 80s, I had very strict teachers. Any form of backtalking or, God forbid, swearing, would get you a quick smack and a fast march to the head teacher's office to explain yourself. My teacher once sat me down for "a talk", as happened often, which was basically her just berating me. In the middle of this, she suddenly stopped and told me I needed to keep my eyes under control because I had this terrible nervous habit of twitching my eyes when she was talking to me. She had no idea what I was really doing.
In actual fact, I was tracing out imaginary swear words with my eyes. Basically, drawing out things like "GET OUT" and "SHUT UP", tracing the letters with my eyes as if they were right in front of her face. I didn't realize she could see my eye movements. I mean, I don't know why, as an adult, it's obvious that my eyes were darting all over the place and looking crazy, but child me thought that it was subtle enough that it was unnoticeable and that I was being super sneaky.
As soon as I realized she could see it, I stopped, but looking back, probably the funniest part to me now is how much it must have unnerved her. And she never knew the reason for it. To her, I must've just been the weird kid with the crazy eyes.
22. No, That’s Mine!
My nephew is two; he's not much of a talker, but typical to that age, everything is "mine" and "no". The other day, I was watching him and his infant sister when all of a sudden, he comes into the room with two balls tucked under his shirt like my sister and I used to do to pretend we have a large chest. When I asked him what he was doing he grabbed the balls, still tucked under his shirt, and said "Mine," giggled, and ran away.
23. Choo, Choo!
When I was around five, I would basically act like a train and follow the lines on the playground whilst also using my hands as those little rail things on the wheels; I think they’re called coupling rods. I would also look directly up when it was cold and use my mouth as a chimney, blowing out condensation. Honestly, it must have looked like I was insane.
24. Practice Proper Wiping
So, my stepbrother was six and I was eight when we first met. When he and his mom eventually moved in a year or two later, I was going through a period of time where no one taught me the proper way to wipe my butt. So, instead of front to back, I was wiping back to front. That would cause irritation, which I called "lightning". My solution to the problem was seriously demented. I would lay down on the couch, put a round puff pillow over my butt, and have him sit on it and hop up and down as we both chanted "lightning in the butt" over and over again.
Suffice it to say, my dad and stepmom put a stop to it, and I learned to wipe correctly over time.
25. The Know-It-All
I for some reason had one mission as a kid. I would try my best to make people believe I was the smartest kid ever. I would talk gibberish to make people think I could talk another language; I would also make words up to give the impression that my vocabulary was so advanced. But it all backfired when I lost the spelling bee in the first round, then subsequently failed first grade. I was a sad kid.
26. Feeling The Fuzz
I would wash things made of rubber; the kind of rubber that already feels slightly tacky. Then, I would pat it dry with a really fluffy towel so the rubber would get kind of fuzzy from the towel fluff, and then just touch it until the fuzz wore off. Turns out I was just autistic and no one had figured it out yet. I still have a thing about textures but in a much less weird way.
27. The Coloring Book
I was fostering this Navajo boy for a while. He had a rough childhood. When he was about seven, we were at the doctor's getting his tonsils out and this white 18-year-old Mormon receptionist gave him some crayons and a coloring book with the story of getting your tonsils out. She was sugary sweet. The coloring book had a picture about your family, your tonsils, etc.
He looks at the crayons, searches through the colors, there is no brown, he looks at the receptionist, looks at the family picture, and back at the crayons. Then he looks her straight in the eyes and says, "Everybody ain't pink".
28. A Voracious Vocabulary
My oldest son, who's six, tries way too hard to sound sophisticated and intelligent. He's constantly asking what words mean, for instance obsolete, frivolous, etc, and then uses them constantly. Well last night, he was doing this during dinner. He says "Mommy, your dishes are fantastic. I absolutely love your Mac and cheese"... Then my 3-year-old daughter cuts him off going "Blah blah blah BIG WORD".
29. A Brutal Assessment
When I was 3, I walked up to a man at Lens Crafters, tugged on his pant leg, looked him in the eye, and told him: "You're the fattest man I've ever seen". Needless to say, my mom was completely embarrassed, and the man left. While she was scolding me, one of the people that worked in the store walked over and kept trying to interrupt my mom. Finally, she turns around and says, "What is it"? Their answer was hilarious.
They respond, "Don't scold him too much, we were all saying the same thing in the back room".
30. Where’s Daddy?
Once in a grocery store when my sister was barely two, my mom had her in the basket and was just minding her own business, when for no discernible reason my sister started pointing at random men and asking my mom, "Is that my daddy"? Mom would say, "No honey, you know your daddy's at work". Then my sister would point to another man and say, "Well, is THAT my daddy"?
This went on for the entire grocery trip.
31. Down The Alphabet...
We were all at dinner with family friends once at the Melting Pot for dinner, and for anyone who doesn't know, the ambiance is all nice and quiet in there. Their youngest child, who was around five at the time, decided to start singing things that rhymed with "duck". It was a recipe for disaster. I think the realization all hit us at roughly the same time that she was going down the alphabet, singing, "Buck buck buck, cuck cuck cuck, duck duck duck"... You get the idea.
We're all watching her with bated breath, hoping to diffuse the situation when she hits "f" but the second she says it, her sister lets out a snort...which of course makes her giggle and repeat it again. Any attempt to hush her just made her repeat it again, louder and louder, until she was standing up in the booth scream-singing it out for all to hear.
32. Two And Two Together
When I was four or so, we lived in a flat in the USA that had this massive concrete structure behind it. I've no idea what it was, but at the bottom of it was at least a foot of dank water, trees, etc. I was convinced it was a swimming pool and begged my mum to let me swim in it. "No, absolutely not," she said. "It's full of snapping turtles, and they will snap off your fingers".
I also wanted to eat all these berries that were on local bushes. "No, absolutely not," she said. "Those are poisonous. They'll make you very sick and hurt you". Clever me, I put the two ideas together and thus spent that summer throwing poison berries into the swamp structure in order to get rid of all the turtles. Four years old, stuck in exterminator mode for three months.
33. The Honest Truth
My daughter just had a little boy start at her school who has two moms. The close-minded and gossip-y moms at her school have made a huge deal about it and their hatefulness is starting to trickle down to some of her peers. She came home and asked me about it. I told her there was nothing wrong with love and she should treat him and his mothers the same as everyone else.
She then asked me why people are so against people of the same gender getting married. I said, "I don't know, some people are just close-minded". She was thoughtful for a moment and said " Well it's not like the whole world is going to explode if two ladies get married". I’m so proud of her.
34. That Doesn’t Make Sense...
My daughter is three years old and is getting excited about Christmas and Santa Claus. I told her that Santa will come on the 24 of December to bring her presents and he will come down the chimney. My daughter replied, "Why will he come down the chimney? I will teach him how to use the door when he gets here".
35. An Interesting Memory System
Until I was about 11 or 12, I used to imagine my brain as an endless room, full of filing cabinets for different things; memories, schoolwork, random facts, etc. But it gets weirder. In the center of this room sat a toad in a waistcoat, in a rocking chair with a pipe under a single lamp. If I couldn't remember something, I'd ask him to look it up in my filing cabinets, and off he'd go, and then I'd remember. Not gonna lie, I had an excellent memory as a kid.
36. The Spicy Tea
I would add several drops of Tabasco to my unsweetened iced tea. I called it Asian tea despite knowing that neither Tabasco nor Lipton was in any way Asian. I also didn't like it very much but made myself drink it so that I could understand the Asian community better. My Asian friends I have now are still baffled at the connection I tried to make.
37. Phrasing!
We go to the dog park as a family and let our black Lab make friends and play with other dogs. My 5-year-old daughter saw one male dog getting frisky on another dog. She asked what was going on, so my wife quietly explains that this is how male dogs settle dominance issues and decide who is going to be the alpha male. She didn't want to explain anything complicated, so left it at that.
It kind of backfired though, because a little while later she spotted our Lab Phoenix trying to do that to another dog. She excitedly yelled across this small dog park: "MOM LOOK, PHOENIX IS TOTALLY DOMINATING THAT OTHER DOG!"!! Lots of dog owners suddenly gave us the strangest look...
38. Gesundheit!
The other day we were pretending to sneeze, and it just cracks my son up. I would go, "Ah...Ah...CHOOOO," and he'd be out of breath from laughing so hard. But then it backfired on me. Two days ago, I picked him up from daycare and he saw me, and instead of his usual "UM", which kind of means mom, but also has meant "pick me up," he says, "Achoo"! He's said it to indicate me twice more since then. So now, my name is Achoo.
39. Moving Just Right
Until I was like...8, whenever I was on a car journey, I'd spend the entire time moving my eyes from one side of the road to another, trying to avoid the streetlamps. I'd get really excited if the windscreen wipers would move exactly between the lamps and would become actively stressed out if they "hit" the street lamps. If I'm being honest, it still slightly bothers me, I just don't mention it anymore.
40. Showing Off Statues
I used to stand in my bedroom window and try to stay as still as possible so the neighbors would think my parents had had a statue made of me. I would stand in different poses, too, so they'd think there were multiple statues of me which my parents would rotate around the house. My logic was…interesting. The way I saw it, only important people had statues built of them. I wanted the neighbors to know they lived near a pretty important guy.
41. The Entrepreneur
I used to run a "purified dust" cartel. My school had a sandbox area with eucalyptus trees, and I’d assign workers to throw sand over the trees so that the larger pieces would get filtered out by the bark. The remaining sand was labeled "purified dust". Surprisingly, a huge number of kids were interested in buying our dust. Our currency was plastic BB pellets, and a pinch of dust was worth 5 pink pellets.
Different colored pellets had different values, and freshly made dust cost more than old dust. There were even different "companies" of people creating purified dust at different trees. We’d devise plans to sabotage each other so that our own company could earn more profit. We were basically 6-year-old capitalists running a fake business. Weird times.
For the people wondering what kids did with the purified dust—most of them kept it in Ziploc bags or jars as a status symbol. The more dust you had, the "richer" you were. Some kids even decorated their jars with glitter glue or tried to steal dust from other people’s jars. Looking back on it, I’m surprised teachers weren’t more concerned about the whole thing.
42. Tantrum Twins
When I was three, I was with my dad at the supermarket. We start doing our shopping, and just before we get to the cashier, I start bugging him about getting some small candy. It all turns into me being on the floor throwing a tantrum, how does my dad respond? He lies down next to me and starts doing the exact same thing. I stand up and say to my dad: It's okay, let's just go home. It was the first and last time I had a tantrum...
43. My Sister’s Nickname
When I was about 10, my younger sister was around four. She used to have a nickname she would call me because she couldn't pronounce my real name. One of my friends at school found out and spread the word around, and pretty soon, a ton of people in school were making fun of me for it. A few days later, as my family was driving to our campsite for the weekend, I started to tell my parents about what was going on and how it was embarrassing.
During the course of the talk, my sister turned, looked at me, and said enthusiastically, "If anyone but me calls you that I'll kick their butt"!
We had to pull over because my dad was laughing too hard.
44. A Variety Of Drinks
My oldest is in junior high this year and my husband and I decided it was time to buy a cabinet that we could lock to keep out curious teens. As my husband was moving things from a kitchen cabinet to the new liquor cabinet, our seven-year-old son asked why we had a bunch of different bottles of the same type of stuff.
My husband said something along the lines of "This is a drink. Some of them are plain and some are flavored. Mom likes to buy different flavors". Our son nodded and said, "Mom must be a heavy drinker".
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45. Absolutely Rich!
My little sister is significantly younger than me, so I got to witness some funny moments. One of my favorites was while we were driving through some Podunk town in the south, we stopped to get some road snacks at a grocery store. Now, my little sister had just recently lost her first tooth, and the lady checking us out in line only had about three teeth left in her face.
As we're about halfway done getting our groceries packed up, the woman smiles at my little sister, and she lights up and says "WOW! How much money did YOU get from the tooth fairy"? My mom looked like her stomach dropped through to the floor. I had to go out to the car because I was laughing so hard.
46. The Cushion Castle
We had most of our family around for dinner. I was sitting on a chair, and my daughter started pulling the sofa apart and stacking the cushions on top of each other. I looked at her, quite puzzled, and said "Kayla, what're you doing? Put the cushions back on the sofa, please". She turns around, shrugs her shoulders, claps her hands to her side, and says with the straightest of faces, "Ugh, I'm just trying to build a freakin' castle".
She was three at the time, and never have I been so mortified. To make things worse everyone was laughing and encouraging her!
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47. Tissue Troubles
I used to eat tissues as a kid. My mum found out one day and yelled at me to stop, as any sane parent would do, so I started eating them in secret. Sneaking away with a tissue box to another room to eat a tissue or two. Until one day, when I was about five years old, I had to go to the hospital. I had no idea what was going on, all I knew was that I had trouble breathing through my nose.
Before my operation, I was in the hospital, and I overheard one of the nurses. What she said made my blood run cold. She talked about how they just needed to remove the excess tissue in my nose. Naturally, I thought that the tissues I had eaten had started getting clogged up in my nose and I never ate a tissue again. I made the realization at 14 that it was actually muscle tissue in my nose and not the paper tissues I was eating.
48. The Logical Conclusion
On a scorching hot summer day, my three-year-old son asked me "What is air"? I explained that air is what we breathe in, it’s made up of oxygen, etc. Then he asked, "What is wind"? I said, "If there is a lot of air, it blows the trees and that is wind or a windy day". Then he said, "So a foggy day means there is a lot of fog"? I said "Exactly"! Later on, my husband was mowing the lawn and he took his shirt off.
My son looked at his dad, turned to me, and said, "Daddy is very skinny". I was surprised because my husband is far from skinny. What happened next is unforgettable.
I said, "Why would you say that"? He looked at his dad’s big belly and replied, "He has a lot of skin"!
49. Acting For Grandma
My friend is not terribly religious, but her mother is. One time, her mom was visiting, and so on Sunday she and her two young boys went to church with Grandma to keep up appearances. Halfway through the service the three-year-old says to his mother, loud enough for Grandma and everyone else nearby to hear: "Who's the guy stuck on the stick"? And thus, the illusion of the dutiful religious daughter was broken.
50. All The Tools I Need
My nephew had a short temper, like his dad, but he really liked his playschool tool set. So, when he was a tad older, about five or six, we got him an older kids' tool kit with a small but real hammer, saw, belt, etc. He was delighted. After a while, we noticed him starting to gather some wooden items from around the house, so we asked what he was up to".
I'm going to build a boat," he said. "Aw," said all the grown-ups. So cute! "I'm going to build a boat, and sail away from this place as soon as possible".
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