18 People Share Stories About Kids Who Are Best at Checking Their Parents’ Patience

Most couples try to get ready to welcome a new member of their family in advance — they read books on parenting, ask for advice from their friends who already have kids, or read various blogs. But all these things only give you a slight understanding of what raising little ones is all about, because even toddlers who are just starting to walk can masterfully find new methods to test their parents’ patience.

We at Bright Side were astonished not only by the steel nerves, but also the sincerity, of our readers who collected the brightest stories about their kids’ peculiarities, as well as the memories about their own tricks.

• My daughter was 2 years old when she decided to try painting. She took a thick green marker, put it on the wall, and walked with it across the entire perimeter of the apartment: the mirror, walls, doors, and... an open closet where there were white shirts hanging on the lower bar. © Yana Yurakova / Facebook

• I always wear pants or jeans no matter whether I am at home or outside. Once, I took my son to my office, where I wear a skirt. My 5-year-old kept looking at me and then said, “Wow! Turns out, you are a girl!” © Inga Urgant / Facebook

• I was home alone with my 2-year-old son and was not feeling well. So I laid down and fell asleep. When I woke up after 30 minutes, my first thought was, “What a good boy! He didn’t make noise and let me sleep for a bit!” Right afterward, I found my son and almost had a blackout, seeing his bright-red face with greenish-blue smudges. Turns out, he opened the drawer with my cosmetics and put all the available shades of lipstick and eyeshadow on himself. © Elena Bogatyrenko / Facebook

• We went to a store to buy new furniture for our sitting room. We opted for furniture in a milky-white color and my 3.5-year-old daughter was taking an active part in the choosing process. I asked her whether she promised not to tear the couch, because she had already done it successfully with the previous furniture. She swore she was not going to do it again. Eventually, we bought the leather furniture in the milky-white color for $5,000. The next day she wrote the word “Mom” on the back of the couch with a black marker. When I started to scold her, she said, “Mom, but I didn’t tear it!” Later I tried to remove it in any way possible and using every possible detergent and my daughter was helping me. She is 15 now, but she still remembers this episode. © Olga Pushkina / Facebook

• Once, my brother and I scratched a dark polished wooden tabletop with a key and it turned white. I wasn’t sure our mom would like the new addition to the tabletop and I was right. The other time we decided to make a collection of very rare stamps. The stamps were printed in a book, so that’s why we had to cut them out of the book and glue them in our notebook so that we would have a collection. Our mother didn’t like the idea, again. © Mylla Yanovska / Facebook

• At the age of 5-6, my younger sister decided to refresh her doll’s wardrobe. The fabric for the new clothes was cut out from our mother’s dresses. I was 11-12 at that time and I was punished for not watching my little sister properly. © Elena Shrunshik / Facebook

• My mother-in-law asked me to open a jar with homemade mustard because it was closed too tightly. I’d been trying to open it for a long time, I tried various tricks, but it was still closed tight. Then I put the jar between my legs and started to unscrew the lid. Looking at me, our 3.5-year-old daughter, said, “Dad, I think you are going to make a big poo now.” I almost dropped the jar from laughter. My mother-in-law and my wife were laughing too. © Aleksei Osipov / Facebook

• All the tablecloths, bed covers, and curtains in our home had fringe when I was a kid. Once, as my mom was busy cooking in the kitchen, I cut off all the fringe in one room so I could make my own “salad.” Mom was upset but I wasn’t punished. Now I love to cook. © Alyona Sokol / Facebook

• At 7, I was attending courses to learn how to make stuffed toys. Once, when my parents were out, I decided to make a surprise for my mom’s birthday — a big stuffed dog. Mom was delighted, but she didn’t realize it was made from her old fur coat. © Natalya Nikolskaya / Facebook

• My son decided to make a tunnel in the wall between his room and his sister’s room. He quietly sat behind the door and started to remove the wall with a pin for a corkboard. Apparently, the presence of the door was not enough for him — he needed more, a tunnel. After some time, when he got tired, he decided to decorate the recess in the wall with a picture of space. © Anna Vladimirovna Andreeva / Facebook

• When our mom was at work, my sister and I were putting on her dresses and high-heel shoes and going to the balcony (we lived on the ground floor) to do a runway show for other kids. I also remember that we would throw the tomatoes out the window, that were lying on the windowsill for ripening, when we visited our granny. The reason was simple — they smelled bad to us. Also, we would try to find jam in canned food and would open every can because there were no labels on them. Once when we opened the 8th can and found out that there was stewed meat inside, we would collect all the fat and start to play catapult because we were disappointed. Horrible! My daughter is not like this, she is a good girl. © Galina Fadeeva / Facebook

• Last week, my son and I were walking along the beach. Since the weather wasn’t very hot, we didn’t intend to swim, but at some point my son changed his mind. When he got out of the sea, I dried him with his T-shirt (because we didn’t have towels) and put my white oversize sweater on him. As he was standing in this white sweater and looking at the sea, he said, “I feel like a god.” © Mika Khassenova / Facebook

• We bought a big 1.5 gallon bottle of vegetable oil and brought it home. As I was in another room, I realized it was suspiciously silent in the house. When I went back to the sitting room, I found my daughter engaged in a curious activity: she was clapping her hands on a puddle of oil that she had poured onto the carpet. The most interesting thing is that she managed to pull this huge bottle with oil across our entire home and all the contents turned out to be evenly spread all over the surface of the floor. We tried to wash the carpets but, in the end, decided to get rid of them. Our floor continued shining for the next month, it was impossible to remove all the oil. © Ekaterina Maslova / Facebook

What interesting things have your kids done recently? What methods did you use to test your parents’ patience when you were a child?