What light-hearted pranks have you played on your (or others') children?

[wanderings]

Told them that an Easter egg they accidentally spotted on a shelf was not for them. Actually, it was!

Got other family members (e.g. grandparents) to tell them things they won't hear from me.

Not telling them how I do certain magic tricks. I've told them how I make a coin swap hands, but I haven't told them how I push a glass through the table, although they've seen me do it many times. They think it's pure magic.

I put a load of blue food colouring in the milk on April Fool’s Day. Was quite funny.

When I was in uni my mates filled my umbrella with the holes from their hole punches. They laughed like drains when I opened it and they went all over me. Was a goth with daft birds nest crimped hair at the time so the bits took some getting rid of.

That food colouring one is a good one!

Covered a fresh dish sponge in nutella and presented it as "cake" for oh. Funny for a few seconds.

One I played on a much younger cousin. He begged and pleaded to play "hit the pot" (having played it at someone else's house), but I refused because I didn't have a present to put under it for him. He still insisted, so I relented and showed him the upturned saucepan, blindfolded him, and gave him a spoon. He happily crawled and tapped on the floor while I told him "cold", "warmer", "cold again". He couldn't see that I had the pot in my hands, moving it about to make him cold when I felt like it! He was enjoying it so much, it was nearly ten minutes before he started to get suspicious.

Last April Fools, DS came up with the idea of hiding all the loo roll from DH (who has IBS). Due to this, I told DH and saved one loo roll for him and hid it in the washing basket, but told him to take the Nutella to the bathroom and smear it over his hand before some over the top dramatics about missing loo roll. He didn’t disappoint, and DS’ face was a picture as he held out a toilet roll only for this brown, sticky hand to reach through the door. Still makes me laugh!!

Jumping out and scaring my boyfriend's DS. Backfired MAJORLY as it turns out he's much better at it than me!!! Unexpected adrenaline rushes are becoming a big part of my life now 😂

These (above) are horrible!

Mine was GLORIOUS....

Picked up DD and her BF from their club on the other side of the city in December (not 2018, was a few years ago. But the memory lives on!). Quite early in December. I'd driven them there.

Suggested we play "guess how many christmas lights we'll see on houses before we get home?"
I watched their little brains go tick-tick-tick as they replayed the journey TO the club in their heads. DD guessed 9. BF guessed 10. I guessed 20.

I then drove all around the city. At one point (after they'd both lost) DD said "mummy, is this the route we TOOK to club?" I was circling a housing estate at the time.

Laughed like a drain.

While they BELLOWED in outrage... "you are DISQUALIFIED" "YOU ARE CHEATING!!!!"

Funniest thing ever!!!!

I also used to live in a house where the light to the bathroom was a switch outside the door.
Used to love switching it off while DH was in there.

Actually surprised DD calls me "mummy". Thought she'd learn my name was "You bastard!"

Last year I made Royal wedding invites for my 2 dds. Beautifully made with gold edges cards inviting them to Windsor Castle and afterwards at the Pig and Whistle, Peckham High Street.
They didn't fall for it but appreciated the humour.
I also included some comment about dress code and the fact that Primark did decent frock.
The year before that I promised them brownies. When they opened the cake tin there was the letter E cut out of cardboard (Brown Es)and
I also did the blue food colouring in milk and told them we had blue whale milk.
Need some ideas for this year.

I slipped food coloured into the saucepan while teenaged ds was cooking pasta for the first time. He thought he had done something wrong and asked if the pasta was still OK to eat. I did it several more times over the next weeks, with different colours, and he had no idea that it was a trick until the day he cooked pasta when he was alone in the house

I never buy Coke, so when I presented my young dc with little bottles of Coke each, they were over the moon. But the Coke wouldn't pour...because I'd replaced it with jelly . They still had a lot of fun sucking jelly up straws.

As a child I fell out of a tree and onto a barbed wire fence and have a jagged scar on the side of my knee.

Fast forward to my having children and I told them it was a shark bite and as they got older I embellished the story of the size of the shark, the exotic location and my athletic prowess at shark wrangling.

They completely believed me but over the years the tale was mentioned less and then not at all.

Recently my daughter's boyfriend piped up and asked me, his voice in awe to ask me about my near death experience with a shark. My daughter will be 21 this year. It is hilarious to me that they still believe I actually got into fisticuffs with a shark in the sea and won!

Years ago, DS was scheduled to do a GCSE French exam in a week or so. The phone rang very early one school morning, about 45 minutes before ge normally got up so, as it was April 1, I told him it was the headmaster ringing to say the exam had been moved to that morning. He fell for it completely

Not a pranked I've played, but one my parents had on me. An April fools joke or two:

1. I received some post in the morning, I was only about 7 so I was excited to be getting this post, I opened it up and there was a headed paper printed confirmation of my place at boarding school far away from home starting from the following day. my parents then proceeded to pack me a suitcase while I sobbed my little heart out thinking I was going away forever.

2. Same concept but I think I was abit older and it was a letter for summer school. They told me I had to spend my summer holidays in a classroom learning maths and English every day. I was absolutely fuming.

My parents were cruel.

DH frequently hides somewhere and blasts DS with an air horn when he's not expecting it

He also thinks we're going to Disneyland Paris next year because we can't afford to go to Florida........ we're not, we're going to Florida and just not telling him until we get to the airport