Confess something weird you did as a child, that you don't know why.

[iloveeverykindofcat]

Inspired by the secret thread, which reminded me of this.

When I was about five I drew a house in biro on my parents' single piece of antique furniture. I have no idea why I did this. I was generally an extremely obedient, rule-abiding child, the sort that got nervous when other children were acting out. I was just suddenly overcome with an irresistble urge to draw the house. I still remember the feeling, and I don't know why I did it.

Did you ever do something inexplicable and out of character, that you still don't understand?

Jesus this thread is an excellent contraceptive.

@FrankensteinIsTheMonster

Jesus this thread is an excellent contraceptive.

isn't it?!

I used a potty because I couldn’t be bothered to use family loo 😂

@fucknuckle

i used to eat paper. all my books had the corners chewed off every page. i also used to ‘rub out’ some of the words with my fingernail, no idea why as it was only me who was inconvenienced by it.

i was a very weird child. i grew up in a horribly abusive environment and developed OCD quite early on. i had loads of rituals and always counted the syllables in sentences and songs off on my fingers. it was very important that they ended on a 5 or a 10. i always had words or phrases stuck in my head on endless rotation and never listened to the people around me as my brain was so busy. infuriated my mother.

i also used to chew the skin off my fingers, down to the first knuckle. literally flayed my fingers. it just made my mother furious and i was smacked for doing it. looking back, i was clearly a very troubled child (as an adult i live with mental illness including C-PTSD and BPD) but none of my adults cared enough to do anything about it...

Interesting! I have diagnoses of bpd, ocd and cptsd and behaved in similar ways as a child. Also in an abusive home. Nobody knew.

I remember once when I was small I had one of those little cubes that go over coat hangers with the size on. I used it to dip in the fish tank and then drink the water - yuck! I must have been about 4.

I used to 'sew' my fingers together with a needle and the top layer of my skin!

I also used to stick drawing pins in the bottom of my shoes to make 'tap shoes'

Me and my brother used to put whole packets of chewits in our mouths at once then take them out and look at the big chewy ball we'd created.... I was a weird kid!

I prised all of the jewels out of a big shiny brooch of my mum's. It was only costume jewellery, but she was really upset. I don't know what possessed me. I just felt an urge to pull them all out.

I pretended to go blind in P5. I was a good girl so the teachers believed me. My parents took me to the doctor where my sight miraculously came back. They all agreed that it was because I’d been staring at the fluorescent lights in the classroom but actually it was all bollocks.

HarebrightCedarmoon my sister used to do a similar thing. She was sent up to have a bath (quick one, not full on bubble bath) and would run the bath, splash her hands in it, get the flannel wet, sing a bit, the flipping works and then get dressed to go to bed. I never understood it, going to the trouble of running the bath, splashing your hands about etc, just get in it and do a quick once over 😂

Pretended I had a twin to my younger cousin. It went on for quite a while til she got older and clocked on I was totally making it up. I said we switched places in the bathroom and she could never see us together so I'd go in there and make weird noises and then come out like I was the 'twin'. Weird. Lol

I used to walk around with a mirror and pretend I was walking on the ceiling. I also drew a whole story on the wooden slats on my bunk bed.

@CustardGoodJamGoodMeatGood

DP used to pick his scabs and collect them on his shelf. He was heartbroken when his mum cleaned them all up, she thought it was loads of dust. He built a right collection apparently, for no reason.

I'm not a psychologist or an expert of any kind, but I imagine impulsive behaviour is just a normal part of development. I can look back on loads of weird things I did and as an adult I recognise it was my adhd, but that doesn't mean nt children can't ever experience it. You just tend to grow out of it or learn to control it easier. Ditto wanting to taste or eat strange things. Sure I did some incredibly dangerous things too and sometimes I wonder how I made it to adulthood in one piece, but the only difference between my thrill seeking and an nt child is that they tend to learn from it, rather than planning on how to do it bigger and better next time.

@helpmebeanadult

I told my mum the head wanted to see her straight away when she picked me up. Total lie and no idea why I did it. They had an awkward few minutes after the niceties, both a bit perplexed as to what the other one wanted.

😂

As a tiny child I convinced my parents that I was choking on a smartie tube lid. They rushed me to hospital. When my mum explained to the doctor that I'd swallowed the lid, I was very upfront back to the doctor with "no I haven't". ( it was croup, unbeknown to my first time parents).

Took my top half of clothing off at school in front of half the school. It was explained to me later this was not appropriate behaviour. I think I got it from a music video. I was seven. No idea why, apart from a friend was telling me not to, and I was trying to persuade her it was fine. It wasn't 😂.

I used to hide my packed lunch under my bed not realising the smell!
Also used to pop the bubbles on the anaglypta wallpaper

Another I remember, when quite young I was in trouble with my dad over something so I sulked off upstairs and went into his room where I saw money notes on the bedside table. Quite a lot. I tore them all up and threw them out the window I felt so awful for ages after this

Picked the wood chips out the wood chip paper. Massively satisfying

I used to chew pencils when I was at primary school. Nibbled them down to the centre. Stopped by time went to secondary school.

I also pretended to steal things. A way of harming myself and also crying out for help.

I put a hankie on top of my light to see what would happen. I was surprised when it caught on fire.
I once pretended I was Japanese at school. I had been there about two years at that point, was blonde and couldn't speak a word of Japanese.
I faked multiple sprained ankles and wrists at school- removing the bandages before I got home. I guess it was attention seeking and I imagine everyone else saw it as that as no one commented about me limping around or writing with the wrong hand and I carried on doing PE as normal
I was a strange kid thinking back!

@SlipperTripper

Picked the wood chips out the wood chip paper. Massively satisfying

At my parents holiday home in Cornwall, my sister and I had bunk beds and the room had a lowish artex ceiling. I used to love lying on top bunk and picking off the artex bits. Found it satisfying like bubble wrap.

Leaned out of the top bunk early one morning and wrote in red felt pen all over the top of the white chest of drawers next to the bed. When I realised it wouldn’t rub off I knew I was in proper trouble, so I altered the lettering to look more like my sister’s, who was a few years younger and fast asleep in the bottom bunk.
Had no hesitation grassing her up as the culprit, even though she’d barely woken up when my dad came in and saw it - and besides the fact my bed was exactly level with the top of the cabinet, I must clearly have been covered in red ink and panicking, so it was hardly the alibi of a criminal mastermind!
Got a good 1970s-style hiding for that one, more because I’d tried to frame my sister than anything else - absolutely no idea what possessed me to do it, either. I was never a naughty kid, it was just completely compulsive and once I’d started I couldn’t stop.

Snipped a fringe/ribbons all around the valance of my bed. No good reason other than it looked pretty.

Revved up one of those toys cars with spinning wheels and put it on my cousins beautiful long hair. I can vividly remember the urge to see what happened. What happened, was that she screamed a lot and had to have a big chunk of hair chopped out, and I got an absolute rollicking. Wasn’t worth the drama.

Another I remember was my best friends older brother, maybe about 15, breaking up with his girlfriend and being really stroppy with us. Obviously it didn't occur to us he wasn't in the mood to be a fun or help us out, and we got in trouble with her dad for something we'd done but felt he should have covered us for. Of course, we blamed him and unwound the mix tape his ex girlfriend made him as revenge. But then realised that unlike her dad that had punished us by making us wash up or similar, her brother was likely to kill us, we hid the tape by jamming it back in his Walkman, folding up the loose reel and eventually trimming the excess. Because to our reasoning of he would be far less angry when he eventually found it destroyed than if he'd just found it unwound but unharmed. I'm still not sure if her parents ever figured out why we spent the rest of the day following them around like shadows.

This thread is brilliant. I was an exceptionally quiet and well behaved child, my sister was the trouble maker. She cut my bum length hair to my ears because she wanted too once, as an example.
I can remember 3 out of my whole childhood that stand out for me and to this day I still don't know where they came from. I had this ritual, I had to recite every family members name in my head in a specific order, even the family members I never saw but knew existed (I'm looking at you Uncle Shane and your massive family in NZ!) imagine dolphins jumping over waves 4 times and my eyes had to move with each wave jump even though they were shut, tap 9 times and say "please" 3 times EVERY night before bed until I was about 14, or they would all die.
I used to peel the wallpaper off at my Gran's house in my room. Denied it every time.
The worst one I probably did was when nobody properly explained what death was to me, they described it as a new adventure etc. I became fascinated with it after my dog died, my sister was sad that the dog had died, so one night whilst she was asleep out of nowhere I decided to smother her with a pillow to kill her so she could go be with the dog. It's a bloody good job she knocked a lamp over and Mum came running in to see what's going on, I shudder to think what would have happened otherwise! I am not a psychopath, I feel guilty every time I think about it but in that moment, my childhood brain decided yes this was the best solution to her sadness. Oddly enough that was the same night we got separate bedrooms..