20 Times Parents Disciplined Their Kids For Things They Were Secretly Impressed By

Parents are responsible for disciplining their kids when they do something wrong. However, the concept of "what is wrong" may vary from parent to parent. Sometimes, it's easy to figure out that their kid's behavior is inappropriate while other times, parents wonder if they should punish their children for their mischief when they are quite impressive. Recently, a Redditor asked, "What's something that your kid has done that you pretended to be angry about but secretly impressed or amused you?" The viral thread received many interesting stories from parents. Scroll below to read some of them. More info: Reddit

#1

Image source: JamAndDai I blocked YouTube on the Ipad. I was a little worried my kid might see some stuff on YouTube not intended for a 5 year old. My 5 year old found a work-around by starting up Angry Birds, clicking on the Angry Birds Cartoons, then browsing to his favorite YouTuber using the Voice Search function. I have to say, that's brighter than most adults I've seen. He dealt with bypassing Password protection and his own inability to write using the speech function. That's amazing!

#2

Image source: Intestinal_Hurry When my daughter was 6, a boy in school was bullying her. He was confronting her one day, in front of his buddies, and said, "I bet you don't have the nerve to kick me in the nuts." She did. We got a call from the school. My ex and I had to stifle laughter while making to the principal. We exploded once we were outside, then had to rein it in once we met up with our daughter. Heh. The kid who was bullying her left her alone after that.

#3

Image source: alwaysevolving1 My 3 year old dragged a chair from the lounge to the kitchen and climbed up to help herself to an icecream from the freezer, I caught her in the act and was prepared to be angry until I realized that before getting herself one, she had taken 2 out for her little brother and sister, unwrapped them and sent them out to the balcony to eat so they wouldn't make a mess. I decided she deserved the icecream.

#4

Image source: profoundly_me My son who was in first grade at the time was able to convince the school that he was diabetic and needed a morning snack and afternoon snack.. I got a call from his teacher asking me to come in for a conference. When I arrived there was the nurse, teacher,principal, and a social worker. They started off by saying they didn't call the welfare because I couldn't afford the snacks but because I was putting his life in danger by not informing them and arranging with the nurse to have his sugar tested....when I told them he was not diabetic they were dumb founded and at that point called the doctor. When the nurse got off the phone she told them to go get my son and she asked him why he lied and he said Anna told me she is diabetic and that's why she gets snacks twice a day so I thought I would give it a try. Then he said its not my fault you trusted a first grader..... I could not force myself to punish him because he was right..They shouldn't have taken his word . They should have called me immediately. After I explained it all to my husband we just started busting out laughing... And I thought damn this kid is clever. I then called the school and demanded an apology which they promptly gave me and I asked what his punishment was going to be and they said they would let me know soon as they could stop laughing..... He never did get that punishment...

#5

Image source: AMHRangel My daughter got in trouble in kindergarten for selling pencils to other kids. She was charging kids a quarter, the school charged 50 cents. I was pretty impressed.

#6

Image source: farmyard_meedy My 8 year old girl was being bullied by two boys at her school. So she took them both down. Put one in a choke hold (briefly) and the other kid ran. Surprise bi***es, she's being doing Brazilian jujitsu since she was five! Anyway she came home and told me she took both boys out. When I looked at her in astonishment she said "Don't worry though! I did it on the grass and not the concrete!" I was amused and hella impressed. A year later and she is now best friends with one of the boys. :D

#7

Image source: anon My nine year old son called me into his room because he had a monster in his closet. I tell him he's too old for that kind of thing and to go back to sleep. He pleads with me to check. I open the door and turn on the light, staring back at me is some scruffy looking thing with angry eyes and I scream. It was a mirror. I'm trying to see if I'm having a heart attack and he's laughing his troll a*s off. I'm proud of his cleverness but considered if he were too old to be left on someone's doorstep.

#8

Image source: anon I can speak for my mom by telling the story of my sister and I playing with her bright red lipstick. My sister and I were about 4 and 5 at the time, watching Peter Pan in our parents' room while they were watching TV or whatever downstairs. My sister and I had seen the movie a bazillion times before and would play along with the movie, singing the songs and just acting silly. I wanted to be Tiger Lily. I convinced my sister that to look like Tiger Lily, we could use our mom's lipstick to paint ourselves red (thank you, Disney racism). So we go into the bathroom and lock the door, which we were strictly forbidden from doing, and covered our entire faces in lipstick. Even our ears. We were thorough. Because we likely knew we would get into trouble for what we were doing, we were being really quiet. This was a red flag for our parents, and it wasn't long before our mom was calling up to us to ask what we were doing. Apparently responding, "nothing!" in unison is another red flag. Our mom came upstairs and tried to come into the bathroom, but we had locked the door, so she told us in her angry mother voice to unlock the door immediately. When we did, she couldn't even imagine what she was going to open the door to. She said years later that it took all her willpower to not laugh when she saw what we'd done and found out why.

#9

Image source: rogersimon10 I live with my dad and my 9 year old daughter. I sometimes go to the gym at night and tell my daughter to brush her teeth while I'm gone. When I get back she shows me a video on our tablet of her brushing her teeth as proof. A few days ago I realized that her hairstyle was slightly different in the video, and I figured out that she had simply prerecorded herself brushing her teeth in several different outfits. While I was fairly impressed at this, I kept a straight face and explained to her that when I was a kid, grandpa would beat me savagely with a set of jumper cables whenever I didn't brush my teeth. Since then she's been brushing several times a day on her own.

#10

Image source: M80IW, shawnanggg Last night while at a restaurant, she loudly sang a song she made up about her vagina.

#11

Image source: SigKapEA752, sebastiaan stam When my brother and I were teenagers, we got onto an argument one day when we were home alone. I was running up to my room to get away from him but by the time I got to my door and started to shut it, he had braced himself against the hallway wall and stuck his foot in my doorway so the door could not be shut all the way. I pushed and pushed until we heard a horrifying crack of a cheap hollow door. The crack was about a foot long. We looked at the clock and realized we had about an hour before my mother got home. They had recently taken a door out of the mud room, so we went to the basement (after writing and signing complete confessions of the incident incase we got caught so one of us couldn't flip it on the other), got that door, thanked sweet baby jesus the hinges were on the right side, and would have gotten away with it if she hadn't come home early. (Cue us looking super guilty holding while forcing a hinge screw in place). We did eventually finish. When she recounted the story to my father that night, he was like, "so wait, they stopped fighting and used teamwork to reinstall the door? I'm not grounding them! That's awesome!"

#12

Image source: Subwulfer It was actually my nephew, but a few years ago (back when he was in 2nd or 3rd grade), his class was learning about onomatopoeia and the teacher was asking the children if they knew any. Apparently, my nephew raised his hand and said "I know one!" and then he farted.

#13

Image source: Mr_Vorland Put a hole in the wall of my room. Repaired it by painting the back side of some photo paper and gluing it to the wall. My dad was fairly upset when he found it about 2 years later, but later admitted that my McGyver repair job was impressive.

#14

Image source: potatoisafruit, Kenny Eliason In sixth grade, my daughter was friends with a boy who had a lot of feminine characteristics. My daughter initially got to know him because the rule in their school was that they had to remain at the table they sat at on the first day. This boy had no friends and had been sitting at the end of their table. Gradually, the girls got to know him and he was taken into their group. While many were accepting of him wearing pink clothes and nail polish, some were not. One day, I got a call from the disciplinary superintendent at the school. He said "Mrs. Potatoisafruit, I want to preface what I'm going to say by telling you that I am obligated to call about any situation where physical violence is involved (my heart sank), but that I am by no means encouraging you to punish your daughter." He went on to tell me that one of the boys known for bullying this particular young man had pushed him down a small flight of stairs at the school. My daughter was so angry that she ran up to the bully and kicked him as hard as she could in the shin. She did have to apologize to the boy she kicked. We did talk about never lashing out physically, no matter how angry we were. But I was so proud of her for defending her friend.

#15

Image source: TallyWhackerLacker My 16 year old son and his buddies decided to call their dodgeball team "Snipe" so that they could "accidentally" stand in front of the whole school with their lettered t-shirts spelling out "Penis." Such a proud mom, I was!

#16

Image source: sillygirlsarah My son was three. My husband still laughs at this. I forget why I made the cake, I have a penchant for randomly making cake for folks or to practice my decorating skills to prep for making my sons inevitable fancy birthday cake each year. So I made a cake. And then had to go to the bathroom. I'm in the bathroom and we hear a :crash:! I come bolting out of the bathroom, my husband comes bolting out of the computer room, I stupidly presumed I had pushed the cake back far enough that the kid couldn't reach it. We step into the kitchen and see the cake and it's plate on the floor, and half of it gone, and no kid anywhere. NOWHERE. So we're freaking out. Searching all over. part of me pissed because I had spent all this time making this cake, decorating little marzipan chess pieces on it, etc etc and the little s**t had gone for it. My husband tells me he thinks he found him. Under the futon. I get down to my knees and look and there he is, this totally guilty look on his face and half the cake clutched to his chest, shoveling cake in his face as fast as he possibly can before we can think to take it away from him. It was hilarious in it's sheer cartoonish-ness. I was so so so pissed though because the cake was destroyed and I hadn't even taken pictures yet. But to this day we can't help but think of it now and then when he asks for cake - he's now almost 12 - and we tell him 'Sure, so long as you don't take it under the futon" He remains to this day, confused and we refuse to tell him.

#17

Image source: anon I overheard my dad saying he was secretly proud of something I did in school. It's school photo day and what happened is we go in small groups and have our picture taken then the wizard photographers put it all together, I got myself in two of the groups and ended up in the final photo twice.

#18

Image source: manapan, Tim Gouw My son was 2 years old when he got his first pair of eyeglasses. At first he resisted wearing them until he realized he could see properly for the first time in his life. A few days into wearing his glasses, I brought home a 5 pound bag of individually wrapped chocolates that I was planning on taking to the office in a few days. He had gone upstairs to his toyroom and he was being way too quiet for too long. I went up there and he was surrounded by wrappers, covered in chocolate. Half the bag was gone, and he was so proud of himself: "Mommy, I not need help to open them, so I not had to ask!" It was the first time he had been able to see where to pull to open the wrappers. I was so happy that he could finally see that I couldn't be angry. I had to tell him that he still needed to ask permission to take the candy, even if he didn't need help opening it anymore. The punishment was his bellyache. Kid's lactose intolerant.

#19

Image source: zombiebackflip Normal morning rushing around trying to get ready to go out for the day, I notice my daughter playing in her room and generally delaying getting ready for our days adventures. I shout through to her, " You'd better not be making a mess, I want everything off the floor please" i wasn't even mad when I saw her results...

#20

Image source: loki93009, Brittani Burns I was sending my daughter to bed and she was being difficult as four year olds do so I was using an angry but not quite yelling tone. She proceeded to inform me that she found my tone unacceptable and she would rather I not speak to her that way. I had to explain to her that she is four and if she feels I am hurting her feelings she should tell me but in a respectful way, but really I was kind of being an a*s cause I just wanted some goddamn quiet time and I was impressed she called me out on it.