Tell us something awful you did as a kid.

[Friedchickenrocks]

Aged about 8 our grandad was staying with us and I hid his glasses. Nobody thought it was me but he knew. He was literally almost blind for a week and even went poking with his walking stick down the loo. "I know it's her. I just know it, little bitch" Eventually they magically re-appeared on the sideboard. I never did own up and my mum never thought it could possibly be her blue eyed girl.

Tied a girls shoelaces to the leg of her desk. Knots were so tight the teacher had to use scissors to cut her loose

My brother and I (actually my brother, but I was there) threw a mud bomb at some old ladies walking back from church.
They came and knocked at the door and my poor mother made us apologise. I have no idea why we did it.
Kids do stupid things and need to learn there are consequences.

When I was about 7 or 8 my older sister (she was around 14 at the time) was being horrible to me and generally being awful. Anyway, I thought it would be "funny" to plant a darning needle on the carpet grip on the entrance to her bedroom.

I was in the bathroom getting a wash and had forgotten about my heinous act, that was until I heard a massive scream! Yep, she stood on it! I remember my entire body being filled with extreme guilt, remorse and terror.

My mum managed to remove the needle which had gone in a LONG way, my mum felt so guilty saying "I must have dropped this at some point". Obviously I just went along with this narrative and deflected all blame onto my mum.

She didn't drop it, I planted it there! I learnt a lot that day!

I'm now 47 and my sister and I get on very well, I also like to think I am somewhat "well adjusted" lol.

I tried to admit it about a decade ago but nobody believed me.

As a child, I was an angel, well behaved & considerate to a fault. My mother always said so & meant it. I stood up for the vulnerable, organised & raised money for charity, & was often too understanding about the failings of others. However, the first signs of dissent appeared when I was about 6, when our tuck shop at St Josephs Convent in Kenilworth sold us soggy stale tasting potato puffs at break. I stood my ground and demanded my money back. The nun said there was nothing wrong with them. I pointed out they were out of date, & after handing the product around to those waiting in the queue, no-one wanted them, & we all wanted our money back. Later that week, they were served up for lunch. That was one of my early life lessons versus how people can be. Maybe they were just teaching us a lesson vs what us English did to the Irish. However, sometimes two wrongs don't make a right, you have to let things go, forgive and move on. With this in mind, what they should have done was apologise for the error, offer them at tuck at a discount price, along with the proceeds being given to charity & the message that they were still edible & many are starving out there short of food. I would then have done my penance willingly for a couple of days. My mum, backed me up 100%, complained, & responded to this event by sending me to another school. She said that a consumer must always vote with their purse & importantly, she was also concerned that they spent far too much time indoctrinating us with the Catholic faith, far too little actually educating us, & clearly were living in the lap of luxuary off our school fees. Later on in life, I have become much less understanding & considerate. Visit my house & thoughtlessly leave your stuff here, & yes I'll look after it, but no, I won't ring you next day to remind you that you left something & immediately rush round to deliver it back, or post it when you don't live far away & it could be returned when you next meet up. From people's responses, I understand this is not host etiquette, but as far as I am concerned, it can wait. A really bad thing I am sad to say I have done more than once, is go on about stuff being missing after a visit to a hotel or having visitors in the house, without checking well enough first, before I open my mouth.

I agree. This one is about your dad being awful; you tried to help an animal the best way you knew how. Would you do it differently now? Sure, but adults have a lot more resources than 10 year olds do; children are obviously much more dependent on the adults around them to do the right thing.

Not me but dp

He grew up with a sister who unfortunately developed battens disease (she died in 2000)

She was in a wheelchair and partly blind at this point (and had a form of dementia)

His mum,who is the most gentle soul I've ever met,lost her temper with him one day

(both claim they can't remember what he'd done)

So he threw a fork at her and it missed but landed IN his sisters forehead!apparently it sort of dangled

All hell broke loose that day

I got into trouble for something I didn't do

Many years ago,my parents had this shelving unit on the wall of the landing

It was full of alcoholic mini bottles-most where clear liquids

It was there for years and years until it just vanished one day

I came home from school (i would have been 11/12),and my mother was red in the face,cluching at least 5 small bottles,screaming and shouting at me that I'd drank the clear ones and topped them up with water

If I'd drank all that,before school,I would have been in hospital

Somehow,I'd got up,had my shower,got ready,had breakfast etc,drank the lot,sneaked into the kitchen,topped the the lot up (which would have taken at least 15 minutes with endless people coming and going through it) put them back-all in the right order (not an easy task even when sober),acted sober and gone off out of the door,acted sober at school and not vomited

I still get the blame to this day-but I didn't do it!

(Not a clue who did,but the sneaky fuckers let me take the blame)

Might not be popular opinion, but it’s clear to me a lot of the disturbing behaviour was the result of childhood trauma. Parenting was largely a lot more authoritarian then, smacking legal, kids left alone, locked in homes (!) shouted at, called names etc. It’s now known even “lesser” trauma still affects the developing brain negatively.

I took my nans teeth that she left by the side of her bed and took them home with me. My nan apparently was going mental trying to find them. Poor dog got the blame. My Nan spent days checking his poo for evidence. When I went again the next weekend I realised how much trouble I'd caused. I put them in grandads shed when I was playing in the garden. This caused a huge row when they were found as she accused him of hiding them so she wouldn't go to the pub.

Happy times lol

I think the most amusing thing about this thread are the people who keep coming back to be outraged. Will never not be funny

You know, I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know why I bother coming back to it. I guess I keep hoping the thread will die but then I just keep seeing it in trending, or even in the top five. And all I can think about is when I was 32. They gave me the surgery that was supposed to “help save my life” (hint: it obviously didn’t work, and in the process of getting sicker and sicker, I’ve lost everything). But a week after the surgery, I tried to walk up to the little market, and I just had to cross one street at the top of the tiny hill in front of my flat’s building that was buses only. And this woman was rushing back and forth for no apparent reason, just to see if she could SEE a bus coming, and knocked me clean off the raised median. It was a good foot and a half to fall. She didn’t do anything about it, didn’t apologize, and two men quickly lifted me under my arms and pulled me out of the street before I got hit by a bus or a tram. But what I remember? The sound of laughing. And it wasn’t little kids who thought it was like a movie. It was grown women in their 20s, actually pointing and laughing at another adult’s genuine pain. It was clear I was severely shaken and not okay. But they laughed. And I guess I’m really disappointed because I was a fool to believe there weren’t women like that on Mumsnet. Of course there are. And the fact of the matter is, if you’re still finding the idea of someone doing this stuff at 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, funny, then my fear is that you’re probably one of them. I don’t want to comment on a thread where I see you now. I don’t think you’re a bully, BUT I’ve been bullied enough in many life and it hasn’t even stopped when I’m dying and I can’t do it anymore. This thread has been kind of like an outing for the actual bullies of Mumsnet; yes, I’m going to be more wary if I see some of you on a thread and I won’t comment if you start one. And I’ve been clear - there’s a big difference between a lot of these (what you do when you’re 4 or 6 and hurts no one or was unintentional OR you regret vs. what you do when you’re 10+ and still think was funny). But the ones I feel most ridiculous about are the ones like you, who laugh at the feelings of others. Which is a shame because I recognize your name, and I’ve never thought anything ill of you before. I think you even maybe posted on the insomnia threads I started. So why this mean girl attitude? It doesn’t suit you.

I do think some older parenting methods didn't teach very much about WHY not to do certain things and more taught "don't get caught" but people do generally grow up and understand what they had previously done in a different context. I also think that children can typically see things in quite a transactional way; he was being mean, therefore, he deserves something bad to happen. They aren't really seeing the nuances that an adult might have in understanding that (whatever petty revenge) the child had enacted was out of proportion or might cause harm beyond the temporary "punishment", or amusement the child might have intended. And perhaps less so today, but I think often children have very little power or control and when they are struggling to cope with something happening in their own life (e.g. bullying, or an adult being unfairly strict, abusive discipline, or even something that isn't necessarily anyone's fault but is still difficult e.g. a house move, a new sibling, a family member's health issues) and they don't have any way of escaping from this, it can come out in other ways. I think the combination of this transactional thing and (especially older) situations being common where children have very little power against adults and are just expected to accept things without any explanation are probably why Roald Dahl stories have been very popular with children despite them being actually quite gruesome.

I thought the developmental info was really interesting. Remember as well it's not like a switch turns on at age 6 and children suddenly understand empathy, neither does the prefrontal cortex suddenly switch on at age 25 having laid dormant all the previous years; these are more gradual shifts. Even very young children use the prefrontal cortex but they are more often acting on instinct, out of impulse, or reacting to things or motivated by curiosity etc. It's just that age 25 is an average point by which it switches to the main part of the brain in use for the majority of people.

And also we understand different things based on our observation and experience up to that point. As others have pointed out, many adults will kill insects or small animals (rats, mice) considered "pests" without a second thought or moment of guilt. In America, it's common to circumcise newborn baby boys without anaesthetic. On a more removed scale, many people shop in high street stores well known for using child labour and modern slavery, or buy eggs from battery chickens (I think this isn't allowed any more, but when they were sold, people bought them). It was common until fairly recently to dock puppies' tails, basically for reasons of fashion, and I think it's still common to clip domestic birds' wings to prevent them flying away (I have no idea if this hurts them/is humane or not, I'm just including it as an example because someone talked about clipping ladybird wings, and I expect they borrowed the idea from birds).

I think it's not really as simple as saying "Children should know better if they are over a certain age" because the issues of what is right and wrong are not actually so black and white, even to adults, and children have much less experience and knowledge of the world as well as less ability to sort it all out in their mind and put things into context, resist impulses, understand the longer term impacts other than what they experience directly in the moment.

Doesn't mean you should just laugh it off if you're an adult in charge of a child who gets caught doing something "awful" - it's a useful learning moment for them to understand more of the wider context of their actions, but I do think, when the harm is basically far in the past and nothing can be done about it any more, it's understandable to laugh at some of the absurd/surprising elements of some of these stories. And it IS very human to laugh at slapstick, whether it's obviously fake (Tom and Jerry, Bottom) or a recording of an accident (You've Been Framed etc) or even a retelling of a story. There's probably research about that somewhere, but I don't think that laughing at slapstick automatically means a person is devoid of empathy or would react in the same way if they witnessed that happen in real time. Even though people have different levels of tolerance for it.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience at the bus stop, and I'm sorry if my post came across as insensitive that it came immediately afterwards - that wasn't intentional, as I didn't see yours until after I hit "post".

@BertieBotts it is really interesting how many of these examples involve blaming someone else, or taking another action, to avoid being physically hurt by adults. I vividly remember the fear of getting into "trouble" as a child. Nothing as an adult has ever compared to it, even though I have been in far more dangerous situations.

I also agree on the transactional nature. A few months ago, ds2 suddenly walloped ds1 for seemingly no reason when we were half way home from school. I obviously told him to apologise, but he wouldn't, because apparently in school, ds1 had said he was going to eat him when we got home. He was just getting in first and avoiding death by cannibalism it seemed!

I've never done this before, but by the time I got to the last word of your post, I literally blew coffee out of my mouth as I was bursting into laughter 😂😂😂😂

You are very welcome to take your triggered feelings out on me. Mine can take it. I don't hide behind name changes so should be easy enough. I'm sorry you're going through a hard time, I am as well. Life has a way of smacking you in the nads on occasion.

I'm not finding people's feelings funny. I'm finding it funny the way they keep coming back to read some more if it's that bad.

Repeatedly going back to something you know is upsetting you is a form of self harm. Hide the thread. It's not suddenly going to drop off the page because you and others want it to.

Or report it and the bosses might take it down.

I just want to say, whether we disagree on this issue or not, I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through a hard time as well, and I do hope it gets better.

It’s just my feeling that threads like this don’t represent the best in us. But not everything has to. Life can be different and a bit quirky. You’re right that it’s not for me, but since I respect what you’re saying, and I understand that other people are enjoying reading and sharing, perhaps other people who are going through hard times too, no, I would, of course, not report the thread, just because I disagree with it.

I don’t think I particularly thought I was triggered, but I suppose that some of these that veered too close to intentional, unrepentant bullying hit a bit close to home. But it was not my intention to take that out on you. I apologize.

@gamerchick Also, you are absolutely right. Coming back to a page to argue and ruin other people’s enjoyment that I don’t understand, and I admit I feel a bit disapproving of, when reading the posts hurts me, is a form of self-harm. I will not be returning to the thread, and I really appreciate the advice.

Yes. My mum told him off. He was a grumpy old bugger. His 3 daughters had him in turns of 3 months each but one wouldn't.

I saw this as I was about to leave this thread and just wanted to say, please don’t be sorry. Your point is a very good one (what adults do that is inhumane, versus what children mimic on a small scale that we consider “cruel”, but maybe we really should reframe it). I really wish I had read it before writing in this thread at all, because it makes so much sense.

I also think the comments about corporal punishment are very important. They’re probably right. So many of these stories involve the fear of getting caught or blamed. I’ve seen kids today and when they do things wrong, they (for the most part, if they have law-abiding parents) don’t have the same visceral fear I remember kids having when they did something wrong in my childhood. I hope that’s a good thing.

Myself and a friend spent an afternoon with an old copy of the Sunday Times (and magazine) subscribing a school classmate to a wide variety of publications, holiday and DIY catalogues, and information leaflets, as well as ‘no obligation quotes for double glazing and patio doors’ which meant he - or rather his parents - were visited by a variety of pushy salesmen over the next few weeks. I seem to remember free incontinence pads and life insurance quotes featuring there, as well as his phone number, so the persecution was extended.

We also subscribed him for 6 months to a (free) Norwegian language version of a Christian fundamentalist magazine called ‘The Plain Truth’ (he wasn’t Norwegian).

It got so bad his post was being delivered in a cardboard box at one point.

Project much

For some reason I decided to shove a DS game in the disc drive of our Nintendo Wii (which broke it) and blamed it on my severely autistic brother.

We had a really horrible teacher and after one particularly gruelling lesson at the end of the afternoon, I found out she would be taking the after school homework session in the same classroom which I didn't go to. I stuck down a few drawing pins with sellotape on her seat. Next day I found out that she had gone ballistic. She had the "unless the person responsible owns up you are all going to be on charge!" talk and they all ended up on charge (lunchtime washing up duty). I did feel rotten (although not for getting her back). I have never told anyone this until now.

I was aged about 9 and I very nearly caused another child ( same age) to drown.

School swimming lessons in an outside pool belonging to the local Grammar School. We got sorted into groups according to swimming ability. The non-swimmers were down at the shallow end and the rest of us were in different areas of the pool. I was a good swimmer.

Cue a small break in the 'lessons' near the end of our time there. I went up to one of the higher diving boards and another girl was standing on the edge of the board looking down. She kept saying she couldn't decide whether to jump in or not. She was faffing around and I got really impatient in the end and pushed her in - and jumped in after her.

The whistle went as I hit the water, so I swam over to the side and got out. Standing on the side while our teacher gave us a talk, I turned around and this girl was still in the water and her face was turning black. I didn't know what to do, but fortunately someone else noticed, dived in and rescued her.

Turned out she COULDN'T swim, was in the non-swimmers group and what on earth she was doing on the high diving board and saying she was trying to decide whether to jump in I still do not know.

I have never forgotten that and often think about what could have happened. That was a lesson to me not to take anything anyone says at face value, without considering things. It was a terrible thing to have nearly happened, even if the blame wasn't all entirely mine. I still get hot and cold when I think about it

We had a neighbour who was always out shouting at the kids for playing near his house, he was bald so one day I found an advert for a toupee catalogue in my mum's magazine and filled it out with his address and sent it off. It was a free trial thing before having to subscribe so he probably received one every month for six months.