40+ Stupid Things Kids Did That Made Us Wonder Who Their Parents Are

This article appeared in Instantlymodern and has been published here with permission.

Kids Being Hilariously Stupid

We were all kids at some point. For the most part, child logic is shrouded in a cloud of mystery. Even as grownups or parents, it becomes difficult to understand the psychology behind why a kid said or did something. This time, people share stories of themselves as a child or their kid being a total nutjob, and it’s seriously the most hilarious thing you’ll witness all week. Enjoy!

It Wasn’t You, Right?

With age, a child’s vocabulary increases. Not just the regular sentences, but also with metaphors, jokes, and just random smart things that adults say. So, it’s understandable if a kid is confused about a certain term.

It Wasn’t You, Right?

Oftentimes, it will help parents analyze their child’s creative process or mental growth. When Miriel was penning down a condolence letter expressing how sorry she was about the passing of her friend’s mom, her son had a burning question that if you really think about it, makes sense.

Setting Priorities Straight

How do you differentiate between needs and wants? Needs are the items or services you need to live a healthy, fulfilling life, while wants are everything you think will make you feel better. Here’s a kid who has their priorities set. Let’s take a look.

Setting Priorities Straight

They want vegetables (the parents don’t have to struggle with that, phew), a bike for some outdoor fun, candies, water, air, clothes, and a tablet (because it’s the 21st century and everyone wants technology). However, what they truly need is a hippopotamus. Fair.

I’m Leaving, Susan

Being the only kid in the house has its perks. For example, everyone is showering you with attention, you never have to share, and you are treated like royalty. The moment you have a sibling and you’re forced to share the spotlight, this can be a difficult transition for some.

I’m Leaving, Susan

Here’s the most adorable girl who was not okay with her mother having another child. She knew she had to find a home where she would be loved as she deserved. Dejectedly, she packed up her stuff and tried to flee in an attempt to find it.

Virtual Field Trip

Global digitalization has made life so much easier. You can sit in the comfort of your own home and tour the entire world. That’s how a virtual tour works, so amidst the pandemic establishing a firmer grip on humanity, a ton of “virtual” alternatives took over.

Virtual Field Trip

However, kids don’t necessarily understand the difference between virtual reality and real life. So, this daughter was all packed and ready for her virtual trip to Disney World. We like how the mother was low-key offended that her daughter didn’t consider her FOMO issues.

For the Bears

Kids are naturally pure at heart. This is the stage when every soul is untouched by the ever-consuming darkness and evil that awaits them when they step into adulthood. Too dark? Well, this post sure isn’t. In fact, it’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

For the Bears

After watching a documentary where a bear was licking the yogurt from a yogurt lid that it found by going through people’s garbage, this Redditor had a spiritual awakening. From then on he left yogurt out on the lids for bears because conserving wildlife is important.

Her Rock Collection

Children grow a fondness towards collecting things they like, which is why many adults can recall collecting barbies, toy cars, stamps, and more when they were younger. However, what about a rock collection? As strange as it sounds, it really is a thing.

Her Rock Collection

This dude’s girlfriend had a younger sister, who despite her age and size, had a really heavy backpack. When they finally opened it up to reveal what was weighing it down, the answer was that she collected “beautiful cube rocks.”

Run Aaron, Run!

Since their vocabularies and learning skills aren’t as developed at that stage, kids will often make up names for objects. Ellie had a very similar story to share. As a child, she used to mishear the word “errands” for “Aarons,” which is also her father’s name.

Run Aaron, Run!

We now know that “running an errand” means going out to finish a task, but she used to think adults name their chores after themselves. How endearing is that? Maybe we’ll start to catch on to this.

The Mysterious Egg

As parents, you need to be the bad guy sometimes. You need to learn to say no. A six-year-old told their father that they had found something but they wouldn’t reveal what it was since the dad would simply ask him to stay away from it. It was some sort of egg.

The Mysterious Egg

Obviously, the kid was asked to stay away from it. However, after close inspection, the father realized it was only a rock. The son insisted it was a dragon’s or snake’s egg but nope, it just wasn’t that mysterious.

Ant or Aunt?

As a child, were you familiar with this theory that if you draw a circle around an ant, it can’t escape it? These children got to know this from their parents, but they weren’t exactly able to wrap their heads around it. As expected, they did something funny to test it out.

Ant or Aunt?

Instead of drawing the circle around a group of ants, they drew it around the chair their aunt Mary was sitting on. This is similar to a “Bee vs Be” situation. They tried, at least. Let’s give them an ‘A’ for effort!

Rebranding for the Greater Good

Fooling people isn’t right. But what about fooling toddlers when they’re being stubborn and petty when you’re only trying to do what’s best for them? That’s chapter one of the parents’ manual. Their kids won’t always be a ball of sunshine, occasionally they’ll be a total pain in their backside.

Rebranding for the Greater Good

So, when this little girl decided she was done with the vegetable squash, the parents decided to do some strategic rebranding – everyone, check out these yummy yellow cucumbers!

Sharing Is Caring

For families with more than one kid, it gets pretty challenging if the children don’t get along. Teaching kids to be loving, supportive, and cooperative from a young age is the best way to keep them in line.

Sharing Is Caring

So, when this Redditor’s daughter received a five-dollar bill as a gift, she remembered the importance of sharing and decided to tear the note into two so that her brother could also get some. How adorable?!

The Simpsons Over Everything

We’re pretty sure that this mom was infuriated by this. Having a child can be a big moment for any woman. Recordings, pictures, journals, and so much more help to keep the memories alive. They’re like small treasures that families cherish forever.

The Simpsons Over Everything

So having a tape of an unborn baby’s ultrasound is an irreplaceable possession. Unfortunately, it was replaced in the end and worst of all by the reruns of the popular animated series The Simpsons. 

Just a Toy

A two-year-old was terrified of going into her room. When her parents asked her why she replied with a very cryptic “Bad Yoda watch her.” Goes without saying that the parents were not comfortable with her answer.

Just a Toy

However, they later realized it was nothing more than the backside of a Powerpuff Girl’s toy. Not going to lie, when we first saw the big googly eyes of the Bubbles toy, we were slightly spooked too.

The Time Thief

Pre-kindergarten students are generally four to five years old. Given how young they are, you can’t expect them to be extremely intelligent and solve calculus (special cases omitted). As a pre-kindergartener, one student thought that everyone used their class calendar to keep track of the days.

The Time Thief

Mischief took over her one day and she sneakily messed it up. The teacher didn’t fix it, so for a few years, she was left thinking she messed up the entire time continuum.

Can’t Find His Parents

This kid has survival instincts which are pretty impressive at such a young age. His family rented out a three-bedroom beach house for their trip. One night, after finding the bed in the master bedroom too uncomfortable, the parents shifted to the spare bedroom.

Can’t Find His Parents

Upon finding his parents missing the following morning, the boy knew he had to take matters into his own hands. He walked all the way up to the beach, scoped out the neighboring houses, and finally brought a stranger in to help find the missing couple.

Becoming a Mermaid

Talent comes in multiple forms. You’re either born with it or learn it and nurture it to reach its zenith. Or, you delude yourself into believing you’ve got a gift. Either way, a little denial never hurt anybody.

Becoming a Mermaid

Just ask this girl. She doesn’t need to use her arms or legs to swim, she’s born to be in the water. It’s just the small fact that she was floating on her back. Then again, if she’s happy like that, why not float forever?

A Babysitter’s Nightmare

Has anyone ever felt like babysitters truly don’t get enough appreciation for their services? Not to mention, the bad pay. If they’re lucky enough, they get to work with a calm child who doesn’t need more than food, attention, and sleep to function.

A Babysitter’s Nightmare

Then we have these kids. They are hyperactive and don’t know where to stop. Little Audrey took advantage of the fact that her babysitter was distracted for one minute. She removed her diaper and proceeded to do something we can’t speak about without vomiting.

The Eerie Bath Mat

Adults may suffer from a variety of phobias. The fear of spiders – Arachnobia, the fear of enclosed dark spaces – Claustrophobia, the fear of small holes – Trypophobia, among many others. Kids, on the other hand, suffer from fear without meaning.

The Eerie Bath Mat

Does this bath mat seem like anything is peculiar to you? Was it haunted? No. A family from Edmonton has a one-year-old who was immensely scared of it. Out of options, the family had to sell it off for their child’s sanity.

You Got What Stuck?

This one reminds us of the one pre-teen who burned her hair off with a hair straightener. If you haven’t watched that video, we highly recommend it. What’s concerning about this image is that the girl doesn’t seem to be too young. In fact, we would think she was pre-teen or teen.

You Got What Stuck?

Under these circumstances, we fail to understand why she would attempt fitting an entire hammer inside her cheeks. Needless to say, she was rather terrified to share it with her mother. Imagine coming home to that…

There Goes the Switch

When you can’t get your kid to heed your words the nice way, you shake things up. For example, if they can’t adhere to your rules then they don’t get to keep their fun vices. So, when this parent decided to sell their son’s Nintendo Switch, we knew they had reached their limit.

There Goes the Switch

The fact that this kid would go to the bathroom while showering is really weird to us. Perhaps the kid needs therapy instead of getting his gamer taken away?

An Eco-Friendly Approach

First things first, we are quite disappointed at this school. Not having toilet paper in the bathrooms should be considered a major violation of hygiene codes. No wonder the author of the post had to resort to such drastic measures.

An Eco-Friendly Approach

Due to the lack of toilet paper on the school’s premises, they used to use their undershirt to wipe themselves. For an entire month, they would walk around school with a big wet stain on it. It wasn’t until their mother realized what the pungent smell was that this weird act stopped.

YouTube Searches These Days

Parents will often put a child lock on their devices to prevent them from venturing off into restricted territory. So, when your young one is in constant contact with the internet, it’s important to keep a close eye on them.

YouTube Searches These Days

The internet can get pretty dark super-fast. However, does this kid care? No. They have their goals set. They know what they want to know. It’s extremely specific and it’s mostly related to ‘potty talk.’

The Nap Trick

You love your kids or younger siblings, we all do. However, we can’t deny that they will often get too much to handle. With their overwhelming curiosity or sensitive attitudes, children aren’t always the best company to have around.

The Nap Trick

You can never go wrong with a bit of strategy so we praise this mom for her nap trick. She turns a Spanish movie on to confuse her kids and then tells them to take a nap to wear it off. After that, she’ll put the same movie on in English and everything’s peachy!

A Little Wholesome Stupidity

There are two kinds of stupidity in the kid’s area – one that makes you facepalm yourself and go, “Who raised this one?” while the other simply makes your heart flutter because it’s too wholesome. Here’s an example of the latter.

A Little Wholesome Stupidity

The post’s author noticed a mom and her daughter staring at them. After a while and some encouragement from her mother, the girl walked up to them and asked a super important question about how they got help putting on their daily tattoos. Very cute indeed!

Let Him Be Pants!

Growing up, Halloween is a big deal. Not only do you get to dress up as whatever or whoever you like, but you also get free candy! If you’ve hosted Halloween functions at your place or even remember yourself knocking on doors on this eventful night, you would know the general outfits kids seems to love.

Let Him Be Pants!

Fairies, superheroes, robots, princesses, and more. But when you want to stand out, you have to go the extra mile. Like for example, be a pair of pants.

Fear the Tomato

Some kids seem to have this inexplicable fear of broccoli. It’s like the green spiral of demise. One kid had the same feelings, but for a different fruit. As the three-year-old was running into the basement with her parents to protect themselves from the tornado, she mixed the words up.

Fear the Tomato

Instead of a tornado, she thought of a “tomato.” Somehow, that scared her even more. We have all the reason to believe she watched Cloudy With a Chance Of Meatballs for her to be terrified of a tomato.

Comedy of Errors

One amazing thing about children – they can be super entertaining when they’re not nagging you or being difficult. We all broke the rules as children once in our lives. We tried literally everything so our parents wouldn’t ground us.

Comedy of Errors

This string of comedic errors has given us the giggles for days. This kid drew on his face with a marker and instead of taking his mom’s help to wash it off, he made himself into a mummy. Then he ran into a wall and almost passed out. You can’t not laugh!

Makes Sense to Her

If you’ve ever seen a lonely kid’s shoe lying on the road and wondered who it belonged to and why is a single one on the road, we have the answer for you. The post author is a single dad who has had it with his kids and their shoes.

Makes Sense to Her

He would specifically ask them to not take them off, especially for shorter trips. With that said, his daughter threw her show at the window in order to not make him mad. As strange as that sounds to us, it probably made sense in her little noggin’.

Some Big-Brain Energy

Now here’s a question with multiple interesting aspects to it. His mother informed him that he was wearing shoes on the wrong feet. Being six and having an inquisitive mind means that he would analyze it from a point we adults wouldn’t consider.

Some Big-Brain Energy

He promptly answered that he doesn’t have other feet, which is technically correct. His mother should have said he has mixed the shoes up in terms of left or right foot, but she surely wasn’t aware her son has a complex mind.

Almost There, Honey

Before anything, we would like to say that we genuinely like this kid. Isn’t it obvious why? Other kids would perhaps throw a tantrum as to why they hadn’t reached home after four long hours of driving. Not him, he kept patience.

Almost There, Honey

A kid as adorable as that surely deserves a trip to Disneyland for his birthday. Moreover, even after they reached it, he couldn’t completely comprehend what was going on. In fact, he was more worried about who would feed the cat. Little man hasn’t forgotten what’s important!

Take Advantage of the Dumbness

Parents, kids grow up fast. It’s important that you make the best use of this time. Parenting is definitely hard, but if you know your way around a few shortcuts, you can make life much easier. For instance, what to do when your kid is being unnecessarily stubborn?

Take Advantage of the Dumbness

“Toddlers are dumb. Take advantage of it” – one dad said. His toddler said they didn’t want butter on their toast. The solution wasn’t making them a new toast but simply flipping it around so they would now see the dry side.

It’s Pure Insanity

Growing up with siblings is a good thing – given the kids have their relationship built on love and respect. Take a look at these brothers who have been a rebellious pair from the start. As a child, Seth would ask his elder brother to put him inside a pillowcase and swing him around.

It’s Pure Insanity

This could get dangerous relatively fast so don’t get any ideas! The parent was only able to come forward with this story after both of them grew up and they couldn’t lose custody of their sons.

Wizardry and Witchcraft

One boy has been living under the impression that his mother is a witch, yet all could have been solved had he studied basic color theory.

Wizardry and Witchcraft

The mother helped him out with a simple coloring trick when the son used the wrong color. She didn’t deny it when he asked her if she was a witch. That’s some way to get your son to listen to you, we have to say.

We Only Need the Bag

Deceiving people is bad, but not when you’re doing it to feed your kids homemade food. Children can develop an unhealthy attachment to takeout. While it might taste great at first, in the long run, it isn’t good for the body – neither for adults nor children.

We Only Need the Bag

Little Alfie wouldn’t eat much unless it was Taco Bell. His parents found a way to make both parties happy! He gets his food in a Taco Bell bag and they get to feed him healthy meals. Deception: 100. Stealth: 100.

See You Later, Chicken

Children hear something for the first time and are introduced to a whole new world. Seeing them digest a new concept is always entertaining. Not to mention wholesome. A Redditor said the phrase “See you later, alligator,” to a four-year-old, and the child’s reaction was hilarious.

See You Later, Chicken

In complete bewilderment, the little one tried to decode the sentence. They realized that the Redditor had called them an animal, so they thought to reciprocate. Thus, the inception of the words “See you later, chicken.” Cute, right?!

The Destructive Duo

“911! I was vandalized!” Screams this dad as he looks into the mirror. Streaks of red paint across his face are drawn into weird patterns. After working overnight, he decided to take a brief afternoon nap to revitalize the body.

The Destructive Duo

He woke up and took his dog for a walk, as per usual. His neighbor pointed out weird lines on his face. Thankfully, he was able to catch the perpetrators. One of them kept blaming the other who couldn’t possibly pull the stunt off with four legs!

Hide and Seek

The sheer frustration of playing hide and seek where everyone occupies the good hiding spots can actually help your creative juices flow. We love how this kid chose an unconventional spot but maybe next time he’ll make sure it’s not see-through…

Hide and Seek

Given how small he is, this little guy could’ve easily fit into any crook or cranny of the house. However, he still chose to hide in plain sight. Another Redditor playfully commented about how the kid would go places, not to college, but places.

The Sun Has a Temper

Thanks to how skittish and dumb kids can be, it’s pleasingly easy to prank them. Not the I-will-burst-into-flames kind of prank, more like an I-will-scream-for-the-next-hour prank.

The Sun Has a Temper

A Twitter user’s daughter misheard the word sunscreen as “sunscream,” and she surely didn’t want the sun screaming at her. The mischievous mother pushed her outside and yelled at the sun to take her. It goes without saying that the young girl flipped out. Imagine the chaos!

Two in Two Days

One of the tougher aspects of having children around the house is constantly having to keep an eye on them. You remove your gaze for one second and they’ve somehow managed to develop a new bump, or broken their favorite toy, or set the kitchen on fire.

Two in Two Days

A kid swallowed a sim key one day. Instead of learning his lesson, he tried to replicate how that happened to his younger brother and swallowed a penny in the process. We’re worried for the kid and we haven’t even met him!

Mind-Blowing Information on Teams

There’s nothing better than opening up a child’s mind to new horizons. So, seeing how only the opposite team was getting to change their jerseys, a concerned six-year-old asked his father why their team had to stick to purple. It was now the dad’s turn to blow his son’s mind!

Mind-Blowing Information on Teams

Upon learning that they were going against a new team every week, the boy was completely floored. He probably never considered the possibilities of multiple rival teams existing for one team.

Why Would You Save It?

Mentally prepare a list of things you will never get back. Examples include your childhood, the time you spent in college reading a subject you never got to utilize in real life, or in this kid’s case, a fart. From all the laughs he experienced from being tickled, the boy accidentally let one rip.

Why Would You Save It?

The moment that happened, he started to scream and cry. His answer to why he was even crying was that he had been saving the fart for later. How and why would you even save a fart? You just gotta love kids!

Uncooked Mashed Potatoes

A lot of these “dumb kid” stories come from children who are under the age of 10, so to find a 12-year-old here with an incident like this is rather concerning. Though he was trying to do something good and we’ll give him that.

Uncooked Mashed Potatoes

He called up his parent and complained about how hard the potatoes were when he tried mashing them. He was quick to note that their mother must have had superhuman strength for always being able to do it with ease. The genius had forgotten to cook the potatoes.

“No Tag” Policy

All kids are born somewhat smart. They rarely have inhibitions, enabling them to solve a problem in a way that we adults would never consider. The author of this post shared an incident from their girlfriend’s school. She teaches the first grade.

“No Tag” Policy

The school doesn’t allow kids to play tag there. Interestingly enough, the children figured out that they didn’t need to touch each other to play the game. Why not cough near each other? Goes with the entire theme of 2020 and 2021. Modern problems require modern solutions.

Who Did it?

There’s a proverb that goes, “A guilty mind is always suspicious.” This means that a guilty person will always feel like they are being mentioned when there’s trouble involved. However, children aren’t the best at lying, which is great.

Who Did it?

A dad found drawings on the walls of his house one day and knew there was one obvious culprit. He simply called out his four-year-old’s name and he replied with, “I didn’t draw on the wall.” The child owned up to his crime a little too early…

A Successful Trade

It’s fascinating to see the lengths children will go to in order to get a sweet treat, especially if they come from strict homes that limit their allowance of sugary snacks.

A Successful Trade

This very weak exchange here meant that one kid walked away with a single Oreo, will the other scored a tablet that’s probably worth a few hundred dollars. Luckily, the kid with the winning deal has a responsible parent who is trying to rectify the situation.