My son was 3. We were leaving Target. He left my sight as I was adjusting my bags. Maybe two seconds, tops. Poof. He was gone. I try to act cool , but my true crime podcast obsession got the best of me. The store locks down. We are all looking for him. People are checking cars outside. I’m calling my son’s name louder than any intercom system. We were just about to call police.
And then my toddler slides out of the cart area and acts like,”’Sup?” He decided it would be a most excellent idea to shimmy underneath the carts and sit there as the world turns inside out searching for him.
I hugged him and yelled at him for a good 10 minutes, ugly sobbing.
100/100 grateful for my Target folks. We catered lunch for them as a huge thank you and sorry my kid is an a-hole.
I'm pretty sure I fit the bill for this one, but as a kid, not as the parent.
My dad was watching myself and my two cousins play SNES down in our den, and got up to pee. Somehow in the 2-5 minutes he was gone, we'd gotten one of my cousins on the treadmill, and got it angled into a downhill descent (pretty sure we're the reason treadmills no longer have these) and jerked the dial all the way to max speed. My dad came in just in time to watch my cousin and I launch our other cousin four feet through the air into the wall.
No worries, nothing broken, but trying to explain why my cousin had a big pump knot on her head got my dad in alot of trouble.
Our firstborn was about 18 months. Walking but not that agile. I was downstairs on the computer, wife yelled down she was using the bathroom and for me to watch him. We misunderstood each other so he was alone for about 3 minutes. She comes out asking where she is and he is no where to be found in the house. Thinking he's just hiding we start a full search only to notice the back patio door is slightly open after a few minutes hunting. Growing concern at this point but figuring he just snuck out back. A full search of the fenced/gated yard shows nothing. Now the heartbeat is going. Start running out and down the street. Find him two blocks down. He was heading to the park which would have required crossing 2 roads, one of which was a busy one. Nice neighbors found him and were walking him home as they'd recognized us from previous walks. Years later the little neighbor girl would remind us how he "saved his life". Needless to say child locks went on all the doors in the house after that.
Yo same thing happened to me lmao when i was 3 my grandpa was watching me while my grandma and mom went out. I somehow managed to get into the garage and open the garage door and walk like 7 blocks to the nearest park in like 5 mins while my grandpa was in the washroom. They ended up calling the police to look for me cuz they had no idea where i went after searching for a while and i got to drive in a police car which was cool
Went to the toilet, leaving the newborn asleep on a blanket on the floor (on top of a large fluffy carpet). 3 year old was watching tv nearby. Came back to find baby literally rolled up in carpet like a dead body, 3 year old sitting on top, with a cushion under him too. Still don’t know how he did it at all let alone so quickly, and how the baby was totally chilled and unharmed.
When my youngest was born, my third child had just turned 2. Our ped looked at me very sternly and said, “NEVER EVER leave them alone together, even for a second. They will drop a baby to see if they bounce, they will smother them trying to wrap them up like a doll. *NEVER* leave them alone.” I’m glad he told me that bc she totally would have done something nuts.
Am currently 1-2 weeks, if not days away from the birth of my son, and my daughter turns 2 on the 4th. Thank you for this warning, I am too trusting with her because she’s generally gentle.
Mine are 2 and 11 months and while we are gentle over here, too, sometimes toddler just gets a random urge (I guess?) and will throw a hard toy at the baby's head or just smack the shit out of her like banging her head like a drum. They can't be trusted but my baby is a champ because no one makes her smile like her sister.
those random urges dont go away when they age out of toddlerhood. i broke my arm when i was 11, and it was too high up my arm to get a cast so it was in a sling for 2 months. about a week after the break, my then 9 year old sister had an urge like that and threw a tennis ball right at the break to see what i would do. the answer was scream and cry, obviously
At a retail job ages ago, a girl had just broken her tailbone and was just going into the breakroom carrying her little doughnut cushion. Boy cashier thought it would be hilarious to kick her in the butt.
So, yeah, the random “what does this do? Will it hurt?” urges don’t even go away among adults.
I was riding the bus (it wasn't a public bus, but a semi-private one. Your company, school or yourself had to paid a yearly fee if you wanted to ride it, and most companies in the area did so their staff and families could ride it) to work as I normally do. A mom with 3 kids got on I hadn't seen before. The youngest was in a carriage. The other two were walking, mostly. The mother was either on her phone or preoccupied with the one that seemed to be the middle kid.
The oldest spent part of the trip trying to wrap her scarf (she had it on the carriage) around the youngest kids neck. Fortunately it was also looped around the part that held the canopy. Early on, the mother noticed once, told the kid to stop, then was preoccupied. The kid kept trying. At one point he got the little kid pushed up against the part the held the canopy and this other lady let the mom know. Who loosened it a bit, told the kid off, then went back to ignoring them. Instead of removing it or anything...
The kid looks at the lady who shakes her head "no", then went right back to trying to kill their baby brother.
I was about to intervene (and I think that lady was too) as the kid had tugged it tightly again, when their stop came up.
I was so certain I was going to have to stop a child from being murdered by his brother. I hope that kid lived.
I was the kid in this scenario. I was about 4 years old and wanted a carrot to snack on. Mind you, the carrot absolutely had to be peeled and no other way was acceptable to me lol. My mom was exhausted and laying down on the couch but didn't mean to doze off but hey, parenting is tiring and she did deserve that nap lol. Instead of disturbing her I decided to attempt to peel the carrot myself and sliced tf out of my thumb and freaked out. I remember the blood vividly. Lol she freaked out too but managed to stop the bleeding and doctored me up.
Thinking I learned my lesson because I was presumably a smart kid she laid back down after that incident. No...she should have known better. I proceeded to stick a pair of tweezers in the light socket of the kitchen while snacking on my carrot. Shocked myself good and blew the power out.
I had just moved into a new neighborhood on a cul de sac with my two young daughters (ages 5 & 2). I walked out to the community mailbox to grab my mail and met my next door neighbor while I was there. We chatted for a couple minutes when I heard my older daughter yelling from the front door “Hey Dad! Younger Daughter (YD) is naked!”. I look over at my house and YD is standing at the end of the driveway as naked as the day she was born. I locked eyes with YD, and with a laugh she turned around and started bolting the opposite way from me up the street.
I quickly said goodbye to the neighbor, tucked my mail under my arm, and started chasing her down the block. I ended up scooping her up with my other free arm a block later while she was laughing her head off. All of the other neighbors got a good laugh seeing me chasing her down. Couldn’t get mad at her as it was so funny, and was impressed she could get undressed so fast.
Some kids are just like that. They gotta be naked and run wild. My brothers would do that and run laps around our house until my mother could catch him. I'd be regularly collect the little neighbor kid from across the street, naked and wandering.
I was making dinner for my twin 18mo when boy twin starts to fuss, so I carefully put the knife about a foot away from the edge of the counter. I intentionally put it away from the edge because my girl twin is NOT to be trusted. I go change my boy and turn around and my girl is casually holding my large, sharp chopping knife. I had to get it from her like a hostage negotiator so she wouldn’t run away with it. I couldn’t figure out how she got it so I looked at the video and as soon as my back was turned she was grabbing the cutting board to pull the knife closer and then immediately skipped over the carrots and peeler to grab the knife. I was clearly correct in not trusting that feral child
That moment when they've got something dangerous and your instinct is to close the distance but you can't because then they're going to run with it. Fucking stressful as fuck.
Convinced my triplet siblings at 3 years old to climb up the ladder onto the flat roof while Dad ran inside to grab the water he'd prepared for us before going outside.
We moved into our new house on Halloween in 2001. Most of the heavy lifting was done, so the wife decided to begin unpacking the important stuff and I would take our 8 year old daughter out trick or treating. We stepped outside and I realized I left my phone.
Standing on the front porch I tell her..."Don't move, I have to get my phone. I'll be right back. Do not move."
Narrator: She moved.
New neighborhood. Kids and parents everywhere. I'm running up and down the street frantically and after about 15 minutes later I spot a family, mom and dad and a handful of rugrats...with mine in tow.
They had a good laugh telling me they just turned around and there she was, having appeared out of nowhere. Decided to stay close assuming some hysterical parent would eventually come running.
Edited to thank the kind awarding folks!
Husband reading a sign about watching your children on the trail at Gooseberry Falls in MN. Looks up to see middle child heading to the edge of trail. People fall every year. Some die. I was further down the trail with the youngest.
He kept a firm grip on her for the rest of the walk.
Not me but my wife. Our two younger kids are 14 months apart. When our daughter was around 3 and our son was 2, my wife went into the garage to grab a frozen pizza out of the deep freezer and one of the kids, not sure which one, shut the door and locked my wife in the garage. She was banging on the door and could hear the little boogers in there laughing at her. My wife was not amused, she got a flathead screwdriver from my toolbox and manage to unlock the door. This all took 15 minutes or so, when she got in the house they were in their room watching cartoons and eating cookies they manage to steal. They would’ve left her out there all night. Its funny now 10 years later but my wife was scared shitless. We have kept a spare key hidden in the garage ever since.
One of my uncles locked Grandma out of the house once when he was a toddler. She heard him singing, "flour, sugar, coffee, four, sugar, coffee, flour, sugar..." Sure enough, when she got back in, there was a pile on the floor of flour, sugar, and coffee that he'd scooped out a spoonful at a time. She said it was worth cleaning up the mess that she knew exactly what he was up to the whole time she was outside.
Hah! This reminded me of when my twins were little. I was in the kitchen making dinner. One of the boys was with me in his little wheelie walker thingie. We had the coffee canister and creamer on a cart. My kid, for seemingly no reason, made a wide arm sweep through everything on the cart. Coffee grounds everywhere, so he naturally started rabidly wheeling through it all. It was hilarious and also a pain in the butt to clean. lol
My little sister locked me out of the house when I took the garbage out. Had to go round back to the deck sliding door because she said she didn’t know how to unlock the front door. She was maybe 4 or 5.
When I was 4 or 5, my room had a lock on it that, to use, you had to push the knob in and twist it to the side. You know, like those child proof medicine bottles.
Safe to say one day I accidentally locked myself in my room and the "childproof lock" stopped me from opening it.
When I can't open my child-proof bottles, i give them to my 4 y.o. Grandson.
He' been able to open them for nearly 2 yrs now.
So we had to really hammer home about taking anything without asking first.
Of course he's always supervised for that, but one never knows.
He's a quick learner.
Not sure why, but in the house we lived in in Tennessee, one of the bedrooms had the lock on the door on the wrong side, so you could lock someone in the room. I came home from work one day to find my wife and three kids locked in the room because my son had locked the door from the outside, then went in and shut it.
Not my kid, but about 20 minutes ago a toddler just kinda... wandered into my apartment. I had the door unlocked so maintenance could come in and out while working on something. My daughter and I heard the TV go on and sure enough some little blonde girl with cute pigtails is just plopped down watching cartoons. Lol. Her parents were probably shitting bricks.
We got too attached to return her, but I'm not sure what to name her yet.
Haha, I wasn't sure where to start. She didn't look like any of the neighbor kids in my building. My daughter and I were in my room goofing around for a couple hours at least. Over her usual... loud, cheery self and the music we had on the kid was probably there for a good while.
Didn't wanna make a huge situation and get the police involved so I ended up just calling the landlord. She was next door anyway and familiar with a lot of the tenants/their kids. Ended up being a lady I sometimes chat with while getting my mail. It's a big complex though, so she must've wandered pretty far. She only looked to be around 2 I'd guess.
Yeah, it sucks how easy something as simple as helping a little kid home can get misinterpreted to that extreme. I for one would be pretty damn thrilled if someone took the time to bring her home because after being a parent for long enough I know how easy it is for the younger ones to seemingly blip out of existence the moment you look away. And I strongly prefer my daughter to be, you know, alive instead of walking into traffic or something
My daughter was 18 months old. Standing in between my husband and me in the kitchen, arm distance from both of us. She slipped, fell and broke two front teeth.
God I wish more parents admitted to shit like this happening.
I'm an early childhood teacher and shit like this be happening at home while at the centre a kid intentionally runs smack into a wall for no reason and gets a tiny wee bruise and parents want to get the cops involved.
I would 100% believe you that my child ran into a wall. That would not even be questioned in my head. My 2 yr old runs into walls in our house all the damn time. I can't tell you how many times I say, "Watch where you're walking" in a day. It's ridiculous. He gets distracted and doesn't look at where he's going and ends up running into a wall, door frame, fridge, table, etc.
ETA: Since I've gotten a few concerning comments, I do want to add some info. He is our second kiddo so not our first rodeo. We have noticed that he does it more than our daughter did. So, last week at his 2.5 yr appointment I brought it up to the pediatrician. They checked his eyesight and he did well. They are not concerned as of right now. My husband has ADHD and so does my mom. So, with how much he does get distracted and has some focus issues while doing every day things, we are keeping that in mind. But also, he's 2. He's not expected to focus for more than 2 minutes on anything right now.
Thank you for your concerns. It is a good thing to keep on our radar and we will continue to do so.
My oldest did this at 20 months! Except she broke one tooth. The dentist didn’t want to believe my story and kept trying to get me to change it. I was terrified he was going to call CPS on me for a frickin’ accident.
Two years later she fell at my feet and broke an arm. I joked that she was safer unsupervised...
I had been drinking scotch one evening while doing dishes. So I'm standing at the sink. I hear my 3 year old stumble into the room, pull a chair out from the table and climb up. I'm not thinking anything of this until I hear a small voice say "Juice!" as I turn to watch him dump about 1/2oz of single malt into his mouth. This was immediately followed by a gasp, then he turned bright white, then bright red.
He went to bed early that night.
My sister was 4 when she had her first root beer float. One of the dads in the group left a bottle of beer in the kitchen, which inadvertently got mixed into my sister’s root beer (bottles looked similar). Her immediate response was “I don’t like this”, promptly followed by everyone telling her root beer floats were great and to “keep trying it”.
She quit a third of the way down the tall glass, after which my mom came over to taste it and show her “how great” root beer floats were. Mom screamed “this is beer!” My sister couldn’t walk straight and had to be carried upstairs to bed.
My sister got roaring drunk at the family dinner table on her birthday. Italian family in the late 70’s so the kids would have a half glass of wine with dinner on special occasions. Anyways, the conversation got heated as the family started in on “how older sister is a failure” (me) and no one was paying attention to her. She had helped herself to quite a bit of the wine before someone noticed. She had just turned 8.
Same family couple years and I am drinking the spiked punch on Christmas Eve with permission. They laughed hysterically as I bounced off the walls to bed. Told me I needed to learn how to handle my booze better or I would never be able to “catch a man”. I was 12.
When I was about 12, I was at a neighborhood Christmas party. There was eggnog, which I was unaware often has brandy in it. I drank several glasses, spent to rest of the evening stupidly drunk, and ended the night vomiting in the bathroom. My parents, quite drunk themselves, somehow didn’t notice at all. The experience definitely deterred me from drinking, at least for a couple years...
When my daughter was little, probably about 3, she went with me to shop for some tools. I turned away to look at something and heard behind me "Daddy, what's this?" "Uh, honey, that's an axe. Please give it to me." She did, and all was well, but I'm glad my wife wasn't there--she would have panicked.
That moment when you see your kid holding something sharp and/or dangerous and you have to stay super calm so they don't make any sudden movements. Turning around and seeing a toddler holding a steak knife, you might as well be face to face with a bear.
Reminds me of my favorite story from my stint in preschool (as a teacher). A kiddo comes up to me with a band-aid on his index finger and sadly tells me he has a boo-boo. I started to say something like, "aww, honey, I'm sorry!" but my lead teacher was behind him and interrupted and said, "yeah, tell her how you GOT the boo-boo!"
Kid breaks out in a huge shit-eating grin and proudly says, ***"I'm*** not ready for ***steak knives!"***
That reminds me of my brother. When we were toddlers, he got his hands on a butcher knife and deeply cut his finger when my mom had her back turned. On the way home from the ER while my mom was driving, my brother and I managed to get all the bandages off. So she had to turn us back around and get laughed at by the ER staff (who used a lot more tape and layers of bandages to attempt to double toddler proof it).
I've never seen a child with two panicky parents. There's always at least one stone-faced problem solver while the other blathers helplessly from the side. God help any kids without calm parents.
I have always been worried about becoming a helicopter parent (I'm naturally a worrier), but it turns out I'm the calm one when stuff hits the fan.
Stepkid got glow stick liquid to the eye while camping. Grab water, begin flushing, calling poison control, but her dad was kinda stuck in a loop of "what do we do." Pretty proud of how I handled it.
I have Anxiety and at also a Chronic worrier, I also work in the medical field, I’m the calm one when it comes to Shitshow Situations. I always get asked “how do you stay so calm?” No cap I’m just freaking out quietly.
I glanced at the salt, and toddler daughter grabbed a whole new potato off my plate and shoved it in her mouth. She then tried to swallow it and choked. Longest 15 seconds on my life getting it out of her. Learn child first aid people! They are suicide machines as toddlers.
*edit - thanks for the awards kind strangers!*
My mother has no clue that at the ripe old age of 14 I was nearly hit by a train (and would have definitely died on impact). I think about it a lot and how the news probably would’ve killed her, sending her straight to the after life to whoop my ass
So we took the kids (7, 3, 3 and 3) to a water park. One of us would stay in the kiddie area with 2 of the triplets and the other parent would take one of the 3 year olds and the 7 year old on a ride. It was working pretty well.
Note, the kiddie area was mostly contained, but there was no gate or anything. At one of the swaps, we blinked for a second and our adventurous 3 year old was gone. Instant oh fuck panic. Get security there, staff is looking, I'm running around looking.
Anyway, we eventually found him. He had ridden a waterslide with my wife earlier, and decided "That was fun, I'm gonna do it again" The 3 year old had gone back to get in line for the waterslide by himself, and they found him about 2 from the front of the line.
I had this happen with my kids, 18 months and 4 years old. We were in the kiddie area, which was gated up, while my wife was checking out of the hotel that was attached to the water park. I was standing right next to the baby, and kept swiveling my head back and forth between the two kids. I turned back to check out the older kid, and he was gone. I pick up the baby and start looking, because it turns out that most blonde-haired white kids in swim trunks look very similar. I realize he's gone about the same time that my wife gets back. We grab an employee, who immediately gets on their walkie-talkie to report a lost toddler. Within seconds we hear a lifeguard doing a short burst of whistles. My four year old had wandered into the entrance for the lazy river, but another guest, seeing an unattended child with no tube, stopped him and got a lifeguard's attention. When I asked him what he was thinking, he told me that he'd said that he was going to the lazy river, and I didn't tell him no. I never heard him ask, and am still irate at whatever adult had either opened the gate for him or didn't close it behind them, because he physically couldn't have done it himself.
Ah. I got left behind at a bowling alley once because both my parents thought they had me. I had asked my mom to go pretend to play the arcade games and I guess thought she said yes.
My elementary school teacher told me we could go back to some wind chime in a park we vsisited before leaving. Apparently there wasn't any time left and th teachers herded us to the bus. I was promised I could watch the wind chime, though, so I stayed in front of it. They lost me, but luckily they had pinned one teacher's phone number onto every kid's jacket, so some lady called them when she saw I was lost.
BROOOO.
My five year old had a drawer of plastic cups that were always accessible to him. He could get a cup, fill it at the sink, and get a drink of water whenever he wanted. It was great. He had been doing it since he was three.
Anyway. One day, he decided he wanted a *glass* glass of water.
So, we are eating breakfast. I got up to pee.
I was away for *literally a second.*
He pulled out a chair.
He moved the chair to the kitchen counter.
He climbed the chair.
He used the shelves as grips and foot supports to climb up to the glasses.
I came out of the bathroom.
I walk back into the kitchen *the moment that the top shelf broke.*
He fell backward.
I dove forward.
I caught my son in midair, moments before his back landed in a pile of shattered pint glasses.
My forearms, hands, and wrists were all embedded with broken glass.
Ironically, he literally put the chair directly in front of his little drawer full of child-safe cups.
The glasses that were broken were among some of my prized possessions. So many unique pint glasses from Disney world, ski resorts, out-of-the-way American towns, the super cool ones that had been stolen from countless bars, grills, and restaurants (my wife has a compulsion), and even my PBR pint glass that my grandpa gave me (he stole it, too).
Anyway. It was quite a day.
My toddler at the time grabbed a stick of butter out of the fridge and tossed it into the fish tank. Minutes later all the fish were floating dead in the fish tank. Last time we owned fish
My dad had a 65 gallon tank when I was a kid.
I didn't drop anything into it...well, except for myself when I just decided to take a swim in it one day.
We did not have a fish tank for long after that.
My daughter and my niece decided to feed my fish once without asking. They poured every single morsel of fish food I owned into there. Huge tub of flakes, even huger bag of pellets, dried bloodworms... It was anarchy. Caught it early enough that the fish didn't die, they must have just thought they were in heaven. But what a pain in the arse to clean.
I'm not the parent in this scenario, but I'll share the story anyway. I was in college, and had a club meeting. Some of the people involved were non-traditional students with a toddler, and they had the kid there at the time. OK, no big deal, he was pretty much entertaining himself. The parents were trying to pay attention to what was going on, much like the rest of us, when this one guy jumps out of his chair with a yell and grabs the kid. Turns out the kid had been playing with his dad's keys and was headed for the electrical outlet with them.
I mean, you give them toys where you put shaped blocks into the holes that match. They see an outlet with a slit and hold an object that might fit so they have to try just like the toys they played with.
I had taken my four year daughter into a public toilet in France, which was next to a main road. As we left, I let go of her hand for a split second as I looked away to close the door behind us. When I looked back she was running into the main road as she'd seen her Mum on the other side. From where I stood, my view of the road was obstructed so I couldn't see if any cars were coming, and she had gone too far for me to catch her. By a complete miracle, she got safely over the road. It sends shivers down my spine remembering the helpless terror I felt when I saw her in the middle of the road.
My mother was standing by the side of the road with me (8) and my brother (5). She let go of my brother’s hand for just one second while she searched in her handbag for the keys to unlock the car.
My brother raced into the road in front of a car. I can’t remember if it was my mother or if I grabbed him, (this was nearly twenty years ago, now!) but luckily one of us hauled him back so he didn’t actually get hit.
My mother was so shaken after that I don’t think she let go of my brother’s hand near roads until he was in his early teens - which went over so well with a boy his age!
She’s been joking ever since that he’s not allowed to cross the road by himself until he’s 30.
Having two young kids is such a juggling act.
I was leaving the store with my three year old holding my hand and my infant in a baby carrier on my chest. Three year old pulls away and starts to run, and my reaction to lean down and grab her before she could get into the street almost dumped the baby out of the sling onto his head.
Once I had my daughter by the hand again I sat on the curb and CRIED. They were both fine, but I was wrecked.
I actually tripped while wearing my then infant son and almost cracked his skull open on the edge of a stone stair (I live in a very old city by American standards so the sidewalks are very uneven in some parts of the city). I tore my knees up badly but by some miracle managed to stop my momentum millimeters before his head got smashed. I literally sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and bawled while my son looked at me baffled. He had no idea how close he came to being seriously injured that day and it chills me just thinking about it.
That's so scary!I work in childcare and for a long time worked in an infant only classroom (I know work with a mixed group of 0-3 year olds). One time I was carrying a 6 week old across the room to his crib and the rug slipped out from under me. I fell straight to the floor. There was another infant on the floor nearby so I was trying to hold onto the 3 week old with one hand, catch myself with the other, and not fall on the 6 month old nearby. I have no idea how I did it but I managed not to drop the baby and the only injury was a bump on my head from hitting a shelf on my way down. I sobbed so hard that my boss had to come relieve me from the classroom for a few minutes (she saw what happened on the classroom cameras and came to check on us)
Another time an infant crawled behind me (I should have expected it because he was always behind me) and I took a step backwards and stepped on his arm with my full weight. He was perfectly fine (not even a bruise) and didn't even cry but I held him for easily fifteen minutes sobbing because I'd hurt him. He just looked at me so confused for the entire time.
This is why I didn't laugh when my best friend 'leashes' her troublemaker 3 y.o child in public. He did this one too many times and she was just 'fine, band around our wrists it is then'. I actually don't think it's bad either, reading this thread. Must be super scary.
My mother used to put a leash on me when I was a toddler. I think I ran away from her one too many times in public. She told me people used to look at her like she was a monster.
I liked to hide under clothes racks in stores, so my mom used to have to leash me as a toddler. She definitely got some mean comments. I was perfectly happy, so I don't get why other people felt it was their business to be upset about.
Omg my son did this when he was small. I was frantically looking & shouting for him when I hear him giggling his ass off in the middle of a circular clothes rack.
I was the child in question, two years old at the time. We were at the beach, where about two feet into the sea there's a shelf where it suddenly gets twice as deep. My parents were distracted by my brother, so didn't notice me wander into the surf. When they next looked up, all the could see was my hat away floating on the water. Panic set in, and my dad sprinted into the sea. Discovered that I was still wearing the hat, and was somehow floating completely vertical with just the hat showing above the water.
Edit: Turns out this is not that uncommon! Remember, when you're near a body of water, *never* stop watching the kids.
My sister baked some cookies to share at work, and when her 3 year old daughter seen them on the plate on the counter she asked for one. Instead of explaining she wasn’t allowed to have one, my sister lied and said they were “yucky”, implying it was a bad batch.
My sister, confident that her lie was successful turned her back to finish cleaning up. She heard the plate being removed from the counter and turned around just in time to see all the cookies slide off the plate into the garbage.
Her daughter smiled and just said “yucky”.
See, the best way to approach feeding the starving is a little at a time. Tell her to try feeding bits next time, instead of jamming the whole sandwich in.
I work from home. My son is usually with me while I work in the evening. One night I take a call, he was sitting on the floor next to me playing with his cars (he's three). The next minute, I look over and watching him as he is flying through the air next to me. He had climbed up on our table and just launched himself off! I always mute myself when I'm not speaking when he's home so thank god the customer didn't hear my OH MY GOD as i caught him lol
I was round at my buddy's place, he had kids about 7 and 5. Both super nice kids, nice family. We were sitting in the garden with a beer.
The eldest had a foam-covered baseball bat that he'd been hitting foam balls with. Out of nowhere, he calmly walks up behind his dad and takes a full home-run swing at his head. Fucking clobbers him. This bat is coated in foam but it's still wood beneath it, so it's basically mid-level assault, maybe attempted murder. Dazed, the dad turns round to defend himself, at which point the 5-year old sees his opportunity and grabs the beer from the table and starts chugging it.
Not just drinking it, full on frat boy chugging it out of nowhere. In the three seconds it takes me to recover from the shock and reach across the table to stop him, the kid's drank about 2/3rds of the bottle. Not much for an adult, but a fucking skinful for a kid weighing about 1 stone.
Within about 3 seconds, we went from nice family BBQ to concussed adult, domestically abused by a psychopathic 7 year old, and a wasted 5 year old. Went real dark real quick.
I catered a funeral about a decade ago. It was outside in the family's yard. At some point, we began to notice that one little girl - maybe 4-5 - was walking from table to table and drinking from various cups.
Little girl was TRASHED. She just starts having the best time. Running, screaming, spinning in circles... I assume you all know where this is going. She eventually turned into a fountain of vomit.
My 4 year old at the time (she just turned 17) grabbed a freshly made margarita I had just set down on the coffee table and chugged it. It was one of those pre-mixed margaritas that come in a jug at around 14% alcohol, but of course I had added an extra shot or so of cheap tequila to the glass. I didn't know what the fuck to do with a drunk toddler, but I sure felt like a shitty dad
Generally you give them a cigar and then put them down for a nap.
Seriously though, you're fine. My mom once accidentally let me eat, EAT a whole pack of cigarettes. Accidents happen.
Edit: Since this got so many upvotes, I should add that cigarettes are very dangerous and if your kid eats one call poison control.
I ate half a book of matches when I was little
Mom went to grab a camera to take a cute picture of the baby next to the jack o' lanterns, came back, took a picture because I had a funny look on my face. A split second after she got the picture, she realized *why* I had a funny look on my face, panicked, got me to spit out the rest of them, and immediately called poison control who laughed and said I'd be fine
My father was also blind, though my drug of choice were all the readily available cigarette butts in the ashtrays. He'd have to call for my mom because he could hear me spluttering somewhere and not be able to find me. It's sort of amazing I made it through early childhood, tbh.
At four years old, a friend of mine woke up from a nap and asked for a drink. Her mum told her to get the juice from the fridge. She drank about half a bottle of wine before anyone noticed the problem and was quite impressively vomity. She's 40 this year and she still doesn't drink - you might just have turned your daughter into a more responsible citizen!
Honestly sounds like the kids planned it. Maybe 5 year old lost a game and had to do a dare.
7 year old to 5 year old: I dare you to drink dads beer.
5 year old: He won't let me just take it.
7 year old: I'll distract him, but you have to chug it fast before u/Black_Sky_Thinking can take it.
7 year old and 5 year old: Ready, Set, GO!!!
I'm surprised the kid kept chugging after tasting it! One time my dad was drinking a dark beer out of a glass and I asked him for a sip of his "pepsi". My father grinned and handed me the glass. I threw up and never asked for a sip again!
I can confirm that this happened to me when I was a kid, my dad had these Budweiser tall glasses and I always use them for my drinks, I filled mine with apple juice and just came in from running around outside, I picked one up and chugged it and only tasted it 2/3 of the way through, but it was disgusting to 7 year old me and that's only the second worse experience I've had with beer as a kid lol
Yeah it was pretty impressive. You’ll have to take my word for it that I’m not exaggerating, but it was like, full bore vertical-bottle-open-gullet spring break drinking.
Unless he had some drinking problem we didn’t know about, the kid just randomly did it out of nowhere.
Kids are like dogs. Once they get their mouths around something, it's gone. I still remember eating a random tylenol and feeling AWFUL for the rest of the day. It was an EZ tab so I thought it was candy. Or when I was 12 and I ate like a prisoner, hunched over my food and inhaling everything in minutes.
I swear babies that can't even flip over yet can teleport short distances when no one is observing them. You put that thing down in one spot, turn your back on it for *one second* and then it's moved a few feet away.
They can do this because they don't understand how it's impossible. When babies learn enough about physics and object permanence to be able to move and navigate they lose the ability to teleport, because then they know enough to figure out it can't be done.
Mine was so bad about this, though we knew from the start he was rolling. Literally had just been born, put in the clear plastic crib thing, and I just watch this newborn baby roll over to his stomach.
Nurse comes in, doesn't believe me, flips him and he rolls over again.
Heard "he shouldn't be able to do that" about fifty times.
I know what you mean! I'm so thankful my husband was there to help, because we literally could not put him down without him trying to roll onto the floor. :,D One of us had to hold the kid the entire time.
He was a few weeks late, had to get evicted via induction, but not quite that late lol.
And it was wild! He was so active right from the start, just constantly trying to move and kick. The videos I have of him are honestly bizarre because of how small he was compared to how he moved. Little gremlin wouldn't even let me hold him all that much the first few months unless he was tired because he wanted to be wiggly.
He's 3, almost 4, and still crazy active. Strong and big for his age, and honestly on energy alone more of a handful by himself than most multiples I've watched over the years. He's more cuddly now, but it's like holding a very wiggly hyperactive dog lol. Honestly it's fun, but I'm glad he's my only, I could not handle the literally never-ending energy from more than one kid.
“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a baby should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The baby, of course, flies anyway because babies don't care what adults think is impossible.”
Not a parent, but when I worked childcare I lost a child.
We didn't have enough workers scheduled, just me and one other, for an event. The policies for the place were horrible and for this event we had to accept any kids that parents wanted to drop off. So we had about 20 kids, around 12 toddlers, 4 kids who were too old to be in the nursery (4-6 years old), and four infants.
Well, we should've been in the same room as we only had two workers, but we knew the toddlers would end up hurting the infants if we did that. So we split up. I had the 16 kids, the other worker had the four infants.
One of the toddlers had to use the restroom (attached), he went on his own and after he needed help buttoning his pants again. So I turned my back to the room, fixed his pants, directed him to the sink to wash his hands, and then turned back into the room. I immediately performed a head count, and realized I was off by one.
So I counted again. And again. Then I started frantically checking the closet, and mentally figured out who I was missing.
I was freaking out. Told the other worker and they're freaking out. We don't know where the kid is. Mentally I'm thinking I have to call the cops now and it's going to be a huge deal.
The other worker calls the churches pastor (church event) and they call the child's parents.
They had picked up their child. In the 10 seconds I had my backed turned the child's father had walked up to the half door, the child saw him and ran to the door and he just picked them up and walked away. Didn't sign the sign out sheet. Didn't see an adult. Didn't do anything but walk up and carry their kid away.
We were absolutely pissed and now that I'm older I wouldn't work an event like that or I'd turn away kids once we got to the point we couldn't take care of them. I wouldn't be in that situation again.
Left my son at the kitchen counter while preparing pancakes. One minute he’s there, the next thing I know he’s successfully empties the syrup bottle All. Over. The. Couch. I mean puddles of syrup in our cushions and pillows. First time as a parent I remember calling my mom crying because I was at such a loss for how to clean it all up.
Getting ready for my first Christmas party at a company. It's a family affair. We all looked great. Hubby was already in the car, ran to the bedroom for something I forgot, we were running a little late. Ended up going to to the party with my 3 year old looking like a smurf because he thought my blue nail polish was "just like mommy's makeup". Still to this day don't know how he got the cap unscrewed because he's 10 now and can't open an already cracked bottle of water to save his life 🤷♀️
Not a parent but the kid in the story. I have 2 younger sisters. They are twins and only 12 months younger than me. When I was 3 and they were 2, me and sis 1 put sis 2 in the washing machine while my mom went for a pee. She came back right in time because we were already playing with the buttons.
The horrifying thing about this for me is that I have no idea how to open a washing machine once it's started. And a good amount of them are installed under a unit where you can't quickly get to the plug and disconnect them...
I think there's usually a reset button on washer. I have a rather inexpensive washer. The button I push to start also has the option that when held for 3 seconds will stop the load and unlock the lid.
I was the kid in this situation, but when I was about 3, (16 now) my mom was helping me out of the shower and she turned around to grab a towel, turned back mere seconds later, and I was standing in the same spot but my face was covered in blood. I somehow managed to fall onto the rail for the sliding door and shoot back up to my feet instantly. I passed out shortly after and went to the E.R. 17 stitches in my forehead, major concussion. I was lucky to survive tbh
I was sitting in a high chair, climbed out of it, onto the counter, and stole my mother’s coffee.
All she did was to put her shoes at the door, 3 feet away
Found my baby boy had climbed to the top of a 4 ft tall dresser after stripping naked and covered his entire body face and hair with diaper cream. He performed this act in less than three minutes.
I swore I would never tell this..
At 19, I have a 9 month old baby. I leave her on the bed to go pee. A beautiful spring day, windows open,
Cleaning. I come back. She’s gone. Yet I can hear her! I AM FRANTIC, ALONE, AND LOSING IT.
I check under the bed, in between the bed and the wall, everywhere. Until I look up and realize the screen is out. She fell out the Window into a bush outside and was laughing hysterically. NOT ONE SCRATCH ON HER.
She’s 17 now and I haven’t ever shared that story with her or anyone but my therapist until today.
I'll tell one on my mother's behalf. When I was three or so, we lived in an apartment with an arched set of monkey bars out back. A standard rule was that I shouldn't play on them when she wasn't around to supervise. Well one day I was playing on them when the phone rang, so she ran inside to answer it, but not before ensuring that I'd gotten off the monkey bars and repeating her usual warning.
One of the things she never allowed was for me to try and *walk atop* said monkey bars, and already being primed to play on them, I seized the opportunity. I'd made it to about the middle before I lost my balance, and fell through the bars, wanging my head on them as I passed and then landing more or less head first onto hard, packed dirt.
Had a stutter for years after that, and I suspect the process of getting over that is why I don't speak as if I grew up where I actually did.
This was one of many, *many* times that I got hurt the instant I chose to disregard her warnings. Also included are the time I crushed my finger in a dumpster (The warning being to come and get her should I find the lid closed; my sister and I judged that she could toss it open and I could just time throwing the trash inside. We were mistaken.), the time I was impaled on a tree (I was told to not climb cedar trees, especially the one that I climbed and then promptly slipped out of only to be helpfully caught by a branch through the groin on the way down), a number of bicycle wrecks and pseudo-fencing accidents, and...well...You get the idea.
I looked away for 1 second and my son (1yr at the time) ate my pack of cigarettes that I thought he couldn't reach. Called poison control and they told me he'd be fine, and he'll probably throw up. When he did throw up, noticed he only ate a little bit if the tobacco, no filters or anything. I quit soon after that.
My daughter (5 at the time) was very defiant. I was four weeks post partum, dressed in sweat pants and a nursing tank. No shoes. She wouldnt get out of the car in the kiss and drop lane. I hopped out to open her door, not thinking about what would happen next. She locked the doors. Here I am, lactating, blocking the line, ready to either collapse in an emotional sobbing heap or break the windows out of the car. This escalated to the entire parking lot being rerouted before my neighbor showed up with spare keys. When DD saw her with the keys, she hopped out of the other side, yelled "Have a good day" as she ran into the school.
My husband was watching our kids (2 and \~6 months at the time) in the bath and swears he looked down at his phone for just one second and then looked up just in time to see the 6 month old putting a pea into his mouth and eating it.
Where did he get a pea in the bathtub, you might ask?
From the stealth poop he did in that one second.
when my sister, brother and I were young, probably 2, 4 & 5 or thereabouts...my mom left the room for 2 minutes and in that time we had managed to spray an entire container of baby powder around the room. She said it looked like it had snowed in there.
Growing up we had a shed with our laundry room attached to our porch. My mom had me sitting on the floor of the porch playing with some toys (I was about 2), while she was doing laundry. I was just out of her eyeline for the time it takes to start a load of laundry, but by the time she turned around I had somehow managed to find a snake and had picked it up and was playing with it.
Went to pee , put my kiddos in there room with the door open and the gate up. I also had the bathroom door open...come out to find a dozen eggs cracked on the kitchen floor and into the butter and my youngest covered in peanut butter naked. My now ex husband was sleeping...I walked into our room woke him up and tagged out..my brain was fried at that point. To this day I have no clue how they escaped, they are 16&18 now.
My siblings did something like this when I was still too little too join in, we jokingly call it the great butter incident of 99. My oldest sister was sitting on the counter in undies with a tub of margarine and a whisk dipping the whisk flinging the butter on the kitchen floor my other two sisters were butter skating and getting that butter wherever their tiny fingers could get it. We didn't pass the military housing cleaning inspection when we left cause my mum couldn't get all the butter out of there.
*TL;DR: Infant son rolled off the couch, cracked his skull, and had to have brain surgery.*
I had just finished changing my six-month-old son's diaper, with him lying on the couch, with a changing cloth underneath. I turned to throw the diaper in the trash right next to the couch, and in the two seconds I didn't have my hands on him, he rolled of the couch—he'd never even rolled over before. He hit the ottoman, which spun him back the other way, and he smacked his head on the hardwood floor. He cried, but calmed down after a few minutes. There was no sign of swelling, no blood, etc.
We were worried about a possible concussion, so we kept a close eye on him the rest of the day. When it was time for us to go to bed, we decided to stay up and watch a movie instead, and I went in and checked on him partway through the movie while my (now ex) wife went to make some popcorn. I changed his diaper, and he woke up a little. One of his pupils was overdilated, and the side of his face had started to droop like he was having a stroke.
We immediately grabbed our diaper bag, jumped in the car, and drove to the hospital, which fortunately was only ten minutes away. I walked into the ER carrying my son and told the nurse that I thought he was having a stroke. She checked him, took us to a back room, and within minutes the room was swarming with medical personnel. A doctor informed us that it looked like our son had cracked his skull internally, and there was swelling in the brain. They would need to perform open-cranial surgery immediately to relieve the pressure on the brain. The doctor told us that they weren't sure he would survive the surgery, but it was the best option.
We were whisked into another room, separated, and asked questions about exactly how the injury had happened. They wanted to make sure it wasn't due to abuse, because they said that falling off the couch onto the floor shouldn't have had the force to crack an infant's skull. At this point, his mom and I were both sobbing, just trying to figure out what was going on and whether our son was going to be OK.
When they finally finished interviewing us, they brought us into a waiting room. I called my parents to tell them what was happening, and then another doctor came to tell us that the surgery had gone well, but that they'd had to remove around 2/3 of his brain tissue due to the blood saturation damage. He showed us an X-ray or MRI they had done just before actually beginning cutting that showed what looked like a crescent moon of gray matter clinging to the left edge of the interior of the skull, with the rest of the image filled by blackness, which the doctor told us was blood. He advised us that even if he survived the rest of the night, our son would likely never learn to walk or talk.
When the surgery was done, they brought him to us. He was still groggy from the anesthesia, but other than being (very understandably) fussy, he seemed otherwise like his normal self. (Of course, there was also a large incision wound, stitches, and tubes coming out of his head to drain off the excess fluid.) It was around 2 a.m. at this point but I called our religious leader—who I was also good friends with—to tell him about the situation. He came and prayed with us, and offered a blessing for our son, just that he would make it through the night.
This story is already getting much longer than I want to type on a Reddit comment, but he survived the night. He survived the next week, and the next month, and every time the doctors saw him, they said it was a miracle that he was alive. He had mild seizures for a few months after the operation, and when he first started to crawl, he would sometimes just stop and freeze for a second or two for no apparent reason, but remarkably, the 1/3 of his brain matter that they left grew to fill the rest of his brain cavity. The blood vessels from the left side of his brain spread and grew all the way across to cover the right side where the original vessels had been destroyed. He learned to talk and walk within the regular timeframes, and has had no noticeable residual effects of his traumatic injury.
When we took him back to the hospital six months later for his final post-op check-up, every one of the nurses said it was a miracle that he was even alive, much less talking and moving around like a normal one-year-old.
*Edit: Added TL;DR at the start*
Edit - Tl;dr - my brother snorted a crayon while my mother looked away for 1 second. Our crayon privileges got revoked.
Not mine, but my mother's
My brother and I were little, and he must have been around 2 years old. We were sitting in the living room colouring and mum left for the kitchen for 2 seconds. Within that time frame, my brother SNORTED A CRAYON. It was stuck in his nose and he then proceeded to cry hysterically.
My mother obviously freaked out (here on out I remember everything). But she is a superhuman and had her brain still working. She got hold of a pair of forceps to try and pull out the crayon out of my brother's nose. The crying was NOT helping since everytime he gasped for air the crayon would go further in (the other nostril was open). Finally, in what seemed like forever, my mother managed to pull out the crayon.
All our crayon rights were revoked immediately until we got FAT crayons that would not enter any body cavity lol.
On more than one occasion my daughter jumped into her bath fully clothed. I was turned around to get the bubbles or her toys or something and then SPLOOSH. She was like 2. Lol
Most recently I was sitting down after finishing some chores and she walked up to me really proud with a chunk of her hair. "Look mama, I cut my hair!" She just turned 5...
At 2yo, I cut my hair with my mother's 12-inch/30.5cm long sewing shears. Big-ass, super sharp, metal scissors that could probably have cut right through my little fingers.
I'm now in my early 40's and have been giving myself fucked-up haircuts ever since.
My son is in 1st grade this year, and we've been doing virtual learning. He's also on the spectrum, but he's able to do normal classes so far.
I have a desk and his computer set up in his room. While his lesson was going on, he accidentally spilled some water on himself and his desk. I'm just like, "it's ok! Hold on a second! I'm going to get you a towel!" So, I run downstairs to get him a towel. I'm gone for 10 seconds. I come back upstairs, he took off his shirt and his pants, and was searching his drawer for dry clothes in his underwear... while on camera. I feel like I did the slow motion action movie, "nooooooooo!!!!" When I went to turn the camera off.
I'm pretty sure his teacher at least saw him stripping down to his underwear, but she didn't say anything. Lol.
As someone who works closely with kindergarten and first graders, I have to be really careful about how I phrase things because a kid will have an accident and I'll tell them "okay go change your pants" and next thing I know the kid is naked in the middle of class. This year alone (we're in person) it has happened 3 times off the top of my head with different kids. This is such a normal occurrence for teachers...
I had a kid in pre-k once who had an accident, and had to change. He did that just fine, shoes and everything, except his pants were backwards. I told him he did great, but to make sure the button was in the front. He said “okay!” and vanished back into the bathroom.
Maybe 5 minutes of shuffling later, he comes out of the bathroom butt naked, with only his shoes and socks. “I couldn’t do it!”
My year-18 month old son was playing with his toy trains. I turned on my computer to play my new game diablo. While it was loading my son came up to me with what looked like chocolate on his hands. I said to myself where did he get chocolate and sniffed it. It wasn’t chocolate. I turned around to see the most horrible site of poop smeared over everything. It was a shit storm, Randy.
The floors were the worst. We lived in an old farm house and the cracks between floorboards were like a centimeter wide and poop was pressed deep into them. I had to use a toothpick to scrape it out. I learned a lesson that day.
Obligatory not a parent: I was watching my sister's kids and told them we would grill for dinner and have pie. I went to the bathroom, came back, and the pie was ALL OVER the living room. When I asked them what happened, they told me it was daylight savings time, so dinner was now. I couldn't help but laugh.
Edit: pack to back. Don't type before coffee, kids.
This happened last year as we were in Lockdown. My 2 children (8&2) we're jumping on the bed. I walked in, scolded them and they stopped. Not 2 steps out of me leaving the room, i hear the springs again and the worst scream in the world. Evidently, eldest pushed youngest in excitement, a bit too hard, and youngested hit her eyebrow hard against the side cupboard. It was bloody anarchy! Rush to the emergency room with screaming from baby the entire drive. And only one of us could go in. Ended up needing plastic surgery and lucky to have full eyesight with her crushed in skull.
Edit: word.
My mom told me a story about me when I was 3-4 years old. She went to the kitchen for something and I got oddly quiet. Somehow my super speed powers activated and I was all the way in the bathroom, climbed into the sink and got my dads razor. She walked in on me shaving my face, I looked like a baby vampire that discovered blood for the first time, face just gushing with blood, I’m smiling and giggling and my mother was absolutely mortified. I’m in my mid 20s now and still have scars on my face from this.
Edit: I am a girl so it’s kinda funny to say that I got a scar from shaving my face
Sorry to drop a tragic story, but here goes.
It wasn’t me, but someone who worked right across the hall from. They had a bed at window height. Young baby was on the bed and the window was open. He turned away for a second to address his other kid. Baby is missing. Baby fell 2 or 3 stories out the window and died in impact.
Needless to say the dad took quite a bit of time off worm after that and wasn’t the same after. I didn’t even know how to talk to him anymore, it that we were ever closer, but it’s always at the forefront of your mind even when making small talk
When I was 5, my friend that lived a few doors down went on holiday with his parents. They were staying on a resort that had a cabaret / entertainment bar. His parents went up to do a karaoke duet one evening and left him with the group of friends they had made whilst on holiday. In the time they were singing the song he'd wandered off. They found him 10 minutes later in the resort pool, drowned.
It was ages before my Mum told me the true story; she initially just said that he had to go live with some relatives to be near his new school.
Edit: Thank you for all the kind words. That was almost 40 years ago, and I’ve not thought much about since my Mum told me the truth. But, thinking back I can remember my Mum being really insistent that me and brother learn to swim and she has paid for all the swimming lessons for my 4 kids ( now all teens and excellent swimmers). It appears it certainly affected my Mum much more than me.
When I was maybe 7 my friend and I were watching a small tv that was on top of a dresser in her parents room. She was always really anxious about using the tv and eventually she told me why. When my friend’s cousin was about 4 she opened some drawers in her parents dresser to climb up (as kids sometimes do). The dresser fell over and crushed the cousin killing her. That always stuck with me as a child.
I think it's good to share stories like that one. So many children die because they get into mischief when an adult looks away for a moment. If the parents affected realized how common it is, it might make continuing life afterward slightly easier.
A friend I've known since the 7th grade had a toddler drown in a 5 gallon bucket. Before that she was a picture-perfect suburban housewife, happy as a lark. Wound-up running off to Alaska and living in remote cabin for a few years, then she came back to the lower 48 and seemed to be doing better, but then joined a cult and cut herself off from her family. At age 48, she has recently emerged from the cult and rejoined her family, but her sister tells me that she could fall off the ledge again at any moment.
Losing a child is often listed as the one worst thing that can happen. Losing a child to something that could have been preventable... that's an amount of grief and guilt that can break a person.
When I was a kid my mom was watching me play while hanging laundry. When she turned to hang a garment I discovered a “bouncy spot” in the grass and fell down a 100ish year old abandoned well. She said that day took years off her life.
Edit: So much Reddit attention. I’m blushing and my hands are sweaty. I have social anxiety and now I feel like everyone is LOOKING AT ME. I’m trying to answer everything I can!
Yes the fire department eventually showed up (this was pre-911 and my mom told my sister call the fire dept but she was 5 so she hid under the bed instead) after my mom called them. They ignored all safety protocols to get me out before their supervisor showed up and made them do it the “safe way” which I’m told would have taken a really long time. Instead they just tied a guy to some ropes and lowered him in.
Edit: Some of you might find it interesting but 20 years later (almost to the day) I ended up meeting my rescuer completely by accident at a work event for our local fire department. I asked if I could try the boots on, and when they asked why, I explained that boots (and worms) were most of what I remember about the whole experience of falling down a well. Turns out the story had been told around the firehouse a bunch, and the actual rescuer was standing 15 feet away from me. I got to shake his hand and everything.
Telling it on my dad's behalf. On a fishing trip and I fell in a rapid while playing on the rocks. Never a strong swimmer, just kinda started my travel to the sea. He barely caught me by the arm.
He was playing outside in the sand box just 10 feet from me. I had the window and door open and could hear him playing. Suddenly I was aware that he wasn't making any noise. I couldn't find him. I searched the yard, I asked strangers on the street and made a larger and larger circle and met my neighbors. 10 long minutes and he was nowhere. He had curled up in his stroller and was asleep.
My son was 3. We were leaving Target. He left my sight as I was adjusting my bags. Maybe two seconds, tops. Poof. He was gone. I try to act cool , but my true crime podcast obsession got the best of me. The store locks down. We are all looking for him. People are checking cars outside. I’m calling my son’s name louder than any intercom system. We were just about to call police. And then my toddler slides out of the cart area and acts like,”’Sup?” He decided it would be a most excellent idea to shimmy underneath the carts and sit there as the world turns inside out searching for him. I hugged him and yelled at him for a good 10 minutes, ugly sobbing. 100/100 grateful for my Target folks. We catered lunch for them as a huge thank you and sorry my kid is an a-hole.
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure I fit the bill for this one, but as a kid, not as the parent. My dad was watching myself and my two cousins play SNES down in our den, and got up to pee. Somehow in the 2-5 minutes he was gone, we'd gotten one of my cousins on the treadmill, and got it angled into a downhill descent (pretty sure we're the reason treadmills no longer have these) and jerked the dial all the way to max speed. My dad came in just in time to watch my cousin and I launch our other cousin four feet through the air into the wall. No worries, nothing broken, but trying to explain why my cousin had a big pump knot on her head got my dad in alot of trouble.
Our firstborn was about 18 months. Walking but not that agile. I was downstairs on the computer, wife yelled down she was using the bathroom and for me to watch him. We misunderstood each other so he was alone for about 3 minutes. She comes out asking where she is and he is no where to be found in the house. Thinking he's just hiding we start a full search only to notice the back patio door is slightly open after a few minutes hunting. Growing concern at this point but figuring he just snuck out back. A full search of the fenced/gated yard shows nothing. Now the heartbeat is going. Start running out and down the street. Find him two blocks down. He was heading to the park which would have required crossing 2 roads, one of which was a busy one. Nice neighbors found him and were walking him home as they'd recognized us from previous walks. Years later the little neighbor girl would remind us how he "saved his life". Needless to say child locks went on all the doors in the house after that.
Yo same thing happened to me lmao when i was 3 my grandpa was watching me while my grandma and mom went out. I somehow managed to get into the garage and open the garage door and walk like 7 blocks to the nearest park in like 5 mins while my grandpa was in the washroom. They ended up calling the police to look for me cuz they had no idea where i went after searching for a while and i got to drive in a police car which was cool
Went to the toilet, leaving the newborn asleep on a blanket on the floor (on top of a large fluffy carpet). 3 year old was watching tv nearby. Came back to find baby literally rolled up in carpet like a dead body, 3 year old sitting on top, with a cushion under him too. Still don’t know how he did it at all let alone so quickly, and how the baby was totally chilled and unharmed.
When my youngest was born, my third child had just turned 2. Our ped looked at me very sternly and said, “NEVER EVER leave them alone together, even for a second. They will drop a baby to see if they bounce, they will smother them trying to wrap them up like a doll. *NEVER* leave them alone.” I’m glad he told me that bc she totally would have done something nuts.
Am currently 1-2 weeks, if not days away from the birth of my son, and my daughter turns 2 on the 4th. Thank you for this warning, I am too trusting with her because she’s generally gentle.
Mine are 2 and 11 months and while we are gentle over here, too, sometimes toddler just gets a random urge (I guess?) and will throw a hard toy at the baby's head or just smack the shit out of her like banging her head like a drum. They can't be trusted but my baby is a champ because no one makes her smile like her sister.
those random urges dont go away when they age out of toddlerhood. i broke my arm when i was 11, and it was too high up my arm to get a cast so it was in a sling for 2 months. about a week after the break, my then 9 year old sister had an urge like that and threw a tennis ball right at the break to see what i would do. the answer was scream and cry, obviously
At a retail job ages ago, a girl had just broken her tailbone and was just going into the breakroom carrying her little doughnut cushion. Boy cashier thought it would be hilarious to kick her in the butt. So, yeah, the random “what does this do? Will it hurt?” urges don’t even go away among adults.
Wow that's really fucked up. I've broken mine and it is no joke.
I was riding the bus (it wasn't a public bus, but a semi-private one. Your company, school or yourself had to paid a yearly fee if you wanted to ride it, and most companies in the area did so their staff and families could ride it) to work as I normally do. A mom with 3 kids got on I hadn't seen before. The youngest was in a carriage. The other two were walking, mostly. The mother was either on her phone or preoccupied with the one that seemed to be the middle kid. The oldest spent part of the trip trying to wrap her scarf (she had it on the carriage) around the youngest kids neck. Fortunately it was also looped around the part that held the canopy. Early on, the mother noticed once, told the kid to stop, then was preoccupied. The kid kept trying. At one point he got the little kid pushed up against the part the held the canopy and this other lady let the mom know. Who loosened it a bit, told the kid off, then went back to ignoring them. Instead of removing it or anything... The kid looks at the lady who shakes her head "no", then went right back to trying to kill their baby brother. I was about to intervene (and I think that lady was too) as the kid had tugged it tightly again, when their stop came up. I was so certain I was going to have to stop a child from being murdered by his brother. I hope that kid lived.
I was the kid in this scenario. I was about 4 years old and wanted a carrot to snack on. Mind you, the carrot absolutely had to be peeled and no other way was acceptable to me lol. My mom was exhausted and laying down on the couch but didn't mean to doze off but hey, parenting is tiring and she did deserve that nap lol. Instead of disturbing her I decided to attempt to peel the carrot myself and sliced tf out of my thumb and freaked out. I remember the blood vividly. Lol she freaked out too but managed to stop the bleeding and doctored me up. Thinking I learned my lesson because I was presumably a smart kid she laid back down after that incident. No...she should have known better. I proceeded to stick a pair of tweezers in the light socket of the kitchen while snacking on my carrot. Shocked myself good and blew the power out.
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I had just moved into a new neighborhood on a cul de sac with my two young daughters (ages 5 & 2). I walked out to the community mailbox to grab my mail and met my next door neighbor while I was there. We chatted for a couple minutes when I heard my older daughter yelling from the front door “Hey Dad! Younger Daughter (YD) is naked!”. I look over at my house and YD is standing at the end of the driveway as naked as the day she was born. I locked eyes with YD, and with a laugh she turned around and started bolting the opposite way from me up the street. I quickly said goodbye to the neighbor, tucked my mail under my arm, and started chasing her down the block. I ended up scooping her up with my other free arm a block later while she was laughing her head off. All of the other neighbors got a good laugh seeing me chasing her down. Couldn’t get mad at her as it was so funny, and was impressed she could get undressed so fast.
Some kids are just like that. They gotta be naked and run wild. My brothers would do that and run laps around our house until my mother could catch him. I'd be regularly collect the little neighbor kid from across the street, naked and wandering.
I was making dinner for my twin 18mo when boy twin starts to fuss, so I carefully put the knife about a foot away from the edge of the counter. I intentionally put it away from the edge because my girl twin is NOT to be trusted. I go change my boy and turn around and my girl is casually holding my large, sharp chopping knife. I had to get it from her like a hostage negotiator so she wouldn’t run away with it. I couldn’t figure out how she got it so I looked at the video and as soon as my back was turned she was grabbing the cutting board to pull the knife closer and then immediately skipped over the carrots and peeler to grab the knife. I was clearly correct in not trusting that feral child
"What do you have?" ["A Knife!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pjpQot6J7k)
This is my kid in a few years🤦♀️
That moment when they've got something dangerous and your instinct is to close the distance but you can't because then they're going to run with it. Fucking stressful as fuck.
Woke up once and my two sons had climbed out of a window onto a flat roof. They were 1 and 3. I still don't know how they even got the window open.
Convinced my triplet siblings at 3 years old to climb up the ladder onto the flat roof while Dad ran inside to grab the water he'd prepared for us before going outside.
We moved into our new house on Halloween in 2001. Most of the heavy lifting was done, so the wife decided to begin unpacking the important stuff and I would take our 8 year old daughter out trick or treating. We stepped outside and I realized I left my phone. Standing on the front porch I tell her..."Don't move, I have to get my phone. I'll be right back. Do not move." Narrator: She moved. New neighborhood. Kids and parents everywhere. I'm running up and down the street frantically and after about 15 minutes later I spot a family, mom and dad and a handful of rugrats...with mine in tow. They had a good laugh telling me they just turned around and there she was, having appeared out of nowhere. Decided to stay close assuming some hysterical parent would eventually come running. Edited to thank the kind awarding folks!
You gotta really wonder what's going on in a kid's brain to interpret "don't move" as "wander off with this whole-ass family you've never met before".
It was candy, pure and simple.
They don’t think. Like, at all. Kids just do and don’t think.
Husband reading a sign about watching your children on the trail at Gooseberry Falls in MN. Looks up to see middle child heading to the edge of trail. People fall every year. Some die. I was further down the trail with the youngest. He kept a firm grip on her for the rest of the walk.
Not me but my wife. Our two younger kids are 14 months apart. When our daughter was around 3 and our son was 2, my wife went into the garage to grab a frozen pizza out of the deep freezer and one of the kids, not sure which one, shut the door and locked my wife in the garage. She was banging on the door and could hear the little boogers in there laughing at her. My wife was not amused, she got a flathead screwdriver from my toolbox and manage to unlock the door. This all took 15 minutes or so, when she got in the house they were in their room watching cartoons and eating cookies they manage to steal. They would’ve left her out there all night. Its funny now 10 years later but my wife was scared shitless. We have kept a spare key hidden in the garage ever since.
One of my uncles locked Grandma out of the house once when he was a toddler. She heard him singing, "flour, sugar, coffee, four, sugar, coffee, flour, sugar..." Sure enough, when she got back in, there was a pile on the floor of flour, sugar, and coffee that he'd scooped out a spoonful at a time. She said it was worth cleaning up the mess that she knew exactly what he was up to the whole time she was outside.
Hah! This reminded me of when my twins were little. I was in the kitchen making dinner. One of the boys was with me in his little wheelie walker thingie. We had the coffee canister and creamer on a cart. My kid, for seemingly no reason, made a wide arm sweep through everything on the cart. Coffee grounds everywhere, so he naturally started rabidly wheeling through it all. It was hilarious and also a pain in the butt to clean. lol
My little sister locked me out of the house when I took the garbage out. Had to go round back to the deck sliding door because she said she didn’t know how to unlock the front door. She was maybe 4 or 5.
When I was 4 or 5, my room had a lock on it that, to use, you had to push the knob in and twist it to the side. You know, like those child proof medicine bottles. Safe to say one day I accidentally locked myself in my room and the "childproof lock" stopped me from opening it.
When I can't open my child-proof bottles, i give them to my 4 y.o. Grandson. He' been able to open them for nearly 2 yrs now. So we had to really hammer home about taking anything without asking first. Of course he's always supervised for that, but one never knows. He's a quick learner.
Not sure why, but in the house we lived in in Tennessee, one of the bedrooms had the lock on the door on the wrong side, so you could lock someone in the room. I came home from work one day to find my wife and three kids locked in the room because my son had locked the door from the outside, then went in and shut it.
Not my kid, but about 20 minutes ago a toddler just kinda... wandered into my apartment. I had the door unlocked so maintenance could come in and out while working on something. My daughter and I heard the TV go on and sure enough some little blonde girl with cute pigtails is just plopped down watching cartoons. Lol. Her parents were probably shitting bricks.
What happened? Did you find the parents or did she just leave?
We got too attached to return her, but I'm not sure what to name her yet. Haha, I wasn't sure where to start. She didn't look like any of the neighbor kids in my building. My daughter and I were in my room goofing around for a couple hours at least. Over her usual... loud, cheery self and the music we had on the kid was probably there for a good while. Didn't wanna make a huge situation and get the police involved so I ended up just calling the landlord. She was next door anyway and familiar with a lot of the tenants/their kids. Ended up being a lady I sometimes chat with while getting my mail. It's a big complex though, so she must've wandered pretty far. She only looked to be around 2 I'd guess.
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Yeah, it sucks how easy something as simple as helping a little kid home can get misinterpreted to that extreme. I for one would be pretty damn thrilled if someone took the time to bring her home because after being a parent for long enough I know how easy it is for the younger ones to seemingly blip out of existence the moment you look away. And I strongly prefer my daughter to be, you know, alive instead of walking into traffic or something
My daughter was 18 months old. Standing in between my husband and me in the kitchen, arm distance from both of us. She slipped, fell and broke two front teeth.
The first kid is for practice. That's why my big sis has more scars than me.
As the older sibling I can confirm. Several scars AND front teeth broken out (but the ones that stay)
God I wish more parents admitted to shit like this happening. I'm an early childhood teacher and shit like this be happening at home while at the centre a kid intentionally runs smack into a wall for no reason and gets a tiny wee bruise and parents want to get the cops involved.
I would 100% believe you that my child ran into a wall. That would not even be questioned in my head. My 2 yr old runs into walls in our house all the damn time. I can't tell you how many times I say, "Watch where you're walking" in a day. It's ridiculous. He gets distracted and doesn't look at where he's going and ends up running into a wall, door frame, fridge, table, etc. ETA: Since I've gotten a few concerning comments, I do want to add some info. He is our second kiddo so not our first rodeo. We have noticed that he does it more than our daughter did. So, last week at his 2.5 yr appointment I brought it up to the pediatrician. They checked his eyesight and he did well. They are not concerned as of right now. My husband has ADHD and so does my mom. So, with how much he does get distracted and has some focus issues while doing every day things, we are keeping that in mind. But also, he's 2. He's not expected to focus for more than 2 minutes on anything right now. Thank you for your concerns. It is a good thing to keep on our radar and we will continue to do so.
I had a child in my care walk into a wall last week and when i asked what happened, they responded "I forgot to look where I was going"
My oldest did this at 20 months! Except she broke one tooth. The dentist didn’t want to believe my story and kept trying to get me to change it. I was terrified he was going to call CPS on me for a frickin’ accident. Two years later she fell at my feet and broke an arm. I joked that she was safer unsupervised...
I had been drinking scotch one evening while doing dishes. So I'm standing at the sink. I hear my 3 year old stumble into the room, pull a chair out from the table and climb up. I'm not thinking anything of this until I hear a small voice say "Juice!" as I turn to watch him dump about 1/2oz of single malt into his mouth. This was immediately followed by a gasp, then he turned bright white, then bright red. He went to bed early that night.
What do you do with a drunken toddler? What do you do with a drunken toddler? What do you do with a drunken toddler midway through the evening?
Tuck him into bed for the nighty, Tuck him into bed for the nighty, Tuck him into bed for the nighty, Midway in the evening
Way hay and up he chucks it, Way hay and up he chucks it, Way hay and up he chucks it, On the fucking carpet.
Oh shit, the kid’s hungover, Oh shit, the kid’s hungover, Oh shit, the kid’s hungover! Guess we’ll just skip Grandma’s.
What do you do with a drunken toddler? what do you do with a drunken toddler? what do you do with a drunken toddler? Midway in the evening!
My favorite r/redditsings by far
My sister was 4 when she had her first root beer float. One of the dads in the group left a bottle of beer in the kitchen, which inadvertently got mixed into my sister’s root beer (bottles looked similar). Her immediate response was “I don’t like this”, promptly followed by everyone telling her root beer floats were great and to “keep trying it”. She quit a third of the way down the tall glass, after which my mom came over to taste it and show her “how great” root beer floats were. Mom screamed “this is beer!” My sister couldn’t walk straight and had to be carried upstairs to bed.
Peer pressure to drink started early for her.
My sister got roaring drunk at the family dinner table on her birthday. Italian family in the late 70’s so the kids would have a half glass of wine with dinner on special occasions. Anyways, the conversation got heated as the family started in on “how older sister is a failure” (me) and no one was paying attention to her. She had helped herself to quite a bit of the wine before someone noticed. She had just turned 8. Same family couple years and I am drinking the spiked punch on Christmas Eve with permission. They laughed hysterically as I bounced off the walls to bed. Told me I needed to learn how to handle my booze better or I would never be able to “catch a man”. I was 12.
When I was about 12, I was at a neighborhood Christmas party. There was eggnog, which I was unaware often has brandy in it. I drank several glasses, spent to rest of the evening stupidly drunk, and ended the night vomiting in the bathroom. My parents, quite drunk themselves, somehow didn’t notice at all. The experience definitely deterred me from drinking, at least for a couple years...
Little Jimmy, age 3. Alcoholic. ;-;
Hi Jimmy!
"Dammit, not the Ardbeg, you're not ready for that one yet. I told you to start on the Speyside!"
When my daughter was little, probably about 3, she went with me to shop for some tools. I turned away to look at something and heard behind me "Daddy, what's this?" "Uh, honey, that's an axe. Please give it to me." She did, and all was well, but I'm glad my wife wasn't there--she would have panicked.
That moment when you see your kid holding something sharp and/or dangerous and you have to stay super calm so they don't make any sudden movements. Turning around and seeing a toddler holding a steak knife, you might as well be face to face with a bear.
Reminds me of my favorite story from my stint in preschool (as a teacher). A kiddo comes up to me with a band-aid on his index finger and sadly tells me he has a boo-boo. I started to say something like, "aww, honey, I'm sorry!" but my lead teacher was behind him and interrupted and said, "yeah, tell her how you GOT the boo-boo!" Kid breaks out in a huge shit-eating grin and proudly says, ***"I'm*** not ready for ***steak knives!"***
That reminds me of my brother. When we were toddlers, he got his hands on a butcher knife and deeply cut his finger when my mom had her back turned. On the way home from the ER while my mom was driving, my brother and I managed to get all the bandages off. So she had to turn us back around and get laughed at by the ER staff (who used a lot more tape and layers of bandages to attempt to double toddler proof it).
At least the bear is more predictable
I've never seen a child with two panicky parents. There's always at least one stone-faced problem solver while the other blathers helplessly from the side. God help any kids without calm parents.
I have always been worried about becoming a helicopter parent (I'm naturally a worrier), but it turns out I'm the calm one when stuff hits the fan. Stepkid got glow stick liquid to the eye while camping. Grab water, begin flushing, calling poison control, but her dad was kinda stuck in a loop of "what do we do." Pretty proud of how I handled it.
I have Anxiety and at also a Chronic worrier, I also work in the medical field, I’m the calm one when it comes to Shitshow Situations. I always get asked “how do you stay so calm?” No cap I’m just freaking out quietly.
I glanced at the salt, and toddler daughter grabbed a whole new potato off my plate and shoved it in her mouth. She then tried to swallow it and choked. Longest 15 seconds on my life getting it out of her. Learn child first aid people! They are suicide machines as toddlers. *edit - thanks for the awards kind strangers!*
I’m only four years into this parenting gig, but so far it seems like the #1 job responsibility is “stop child from intentionally dying.”
That’s pretty much all you do until they are about 8 or 9. She made it to 18 last week, I do wonder sometimes how? :)
My mother has no clue that at the ripe old age of 14 I was nearly hit by a train (and would have definitely died on impact). I think about it a lot and how the news probably would’ve killed her, sending her straight to the after life to whoop my ass
So we took the kids (7, 3, 3 and 3) to a water park. One of us would stay in the kiddie area with 2 of the triplets and the other parent would take one of the 3 year olds and the 7 year old on a ride. It was working pretty well. Note, the kiddie area was mostly contained, but there was no gate or anything. At one of the swaps, we blinked for a second and our adventurous 3 year old was gone. Instant oh fuck panic. Get security there, staff is looking, I'm running around looking. Anyway, we eventually found him. He had ridden a waterslide with my wife earlier, and decided "That was fun, I'm gonna do it again" The 3 year old had gone back to get in line for the waterslide by himself, and they found him about 2 from the front of the line.
At least you didn't have to describe him to security, just point at another one.
"We're looking for a child that looks just like this one." "Ma'am, you mean the one right next to you?" "Oh no, there's a third."
Keep it simple: “There are less of these than there should be”.
“This is getting out of hand. Now there are three of them!”
Biggest question, did he get to have his turn
I had this happen with my kids, 18 months and 4 years old. We were in the kiddie area, which was gated up, while my wife was checking out of the hotel that was attached to the water park. I was standing right next to the baby, and kept swiveling my head back and forth between the two kids. I turned back to check out the older kid, and he was gone. I pick up the baby and start looking, because it turns out that most blonde-haired white kids in swim trunks look very similar. I realize he's gone about the same time that my wife gets back. We grab an employee, who immediately gets on their walkie-talkie to report a lost toddler. Within seconds we hear a lifeguard doing a short burst of whistles. My four year old had wandered into the entrance for the lazy river, but another guest, seeing an unattended child with no tube, stopped him and got a lifeguard's attention. When I asked him what he was thinking, he told me that he'd said that he was going to the lazy river, and I didn't tell him no. I never heard him ask, and am still irate at whatever adult had either opened the gate for him or didn't close it behind them, because he physically couldn't have done it himself.
Ah. I got left behind at a bowling alley once because both my parents thought they had me. I had asked my mom to go pretend to play the arcade games and I guess thought she said yes.
> pretend to play the arcade games I'm glad i'm not the only one who did this lmao. My parents would never give me money for games.
My elementary school teacher told me we could go back to some wind chime in a park we vsisited before leaving. Apparently there wasn't any time left and th teachers herded us to the bus. I was promised I could watch the wind chime, though, so I stayed in front of it. They lost me, but luckily they had pinned one teacher's phone number onto every kid's jacket, so some lady called them when she saw I was lost.
BROOOO. My five year old had a drawer of plastic cups that were always accessible to him. He could get a cup, fill it at the sink, and get a drink of water whenever he wanted. It was great. He had been doing it since he was three. Anyway. One day, he decided he wanted a *glass* glass of water. So, we are eating breakfast. I got up to pee. I was away for *literally a second.* He pulled out a chair. He moved the chair to the kitchen counter. He climbed the chair. He used the shelves as grips and foot supports to climb up to the glasses. I came out of the bathroom. I walk back into the kitchen *the moment that the top shelf broke.* He fell backward. I dove forward. I caught my son in midair, moments before his back landed in a pile of shattered pint glasses. My forearms, hands, and wrists were all embedded with broken glass. Ironically, he literally put the chair directly in front of his little drawer full of child-safe cups. The glasses that were broken were among some of my prized possessions. So many unique pint glasses from Disney world, ski resorts, out-of-the-way American towns, the super cool ones that had been stolen from countless bars, grills, and restaurants (my wife has a compulsion), and even my PBR pint glass that my grandpa gave me (he stole it, too). Anyway. It was quite a day.
My toddler at the time grabbed a stick of butter out of the fridge and tossed it into the fish tank. Minutes later all the fish were floating dead in the fish tank. Last time we owned fish
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My dad had a 65 gallon tank when I was a kid. I didn't drop anything into it...well, except for myself when I just decided to take a swim in it one day. We did not have a fish tank for long after that.
My daughter and my niece decided to feed my fish once without asking. They poured every single morsel of fish food I owned into there. Huge tub of flakes, even huger bag of pellets, dried bloodworms... It was anarchy. Caught it early enough that the fish didn't die, they must have just thought they were in heaven. But what a pain in the arse to clean.
TIL fish hate butter
I'm not the parent in this scenario, but I'll share the story anyway. I was in college, and had a club meeting. Some of the people involved were non-traditional students with a toddler, and they had the kid there at the time. OK, no big deal, he was pretty much entertaining himself. The parents were trying to pay attention to what was going on, much like the rest of us, when this one guy jumps out of his chair with a yell and grabs the kid. Turns out the kid had been playing with his dad's keys and was headed for the electrical outlet with them.
Do electrical outlets talk to kids? Because kids are always drawn to them as if the outlets are saying *commmeee hhhhhhheerrrreee*
I mean, you give them toys where you put shaped blocks into the holes that match. They see an outlet with a slit and hold an object that might fit so they have to try just like the toys they played with.
Ahh that’s a great way of seeing it didn’t think about that you’re right
Also they are basically the only thing in a room that is at toddler height.
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I had taken my four year daughter into a public toilet in France, which was next to a main road. As we left, I let go of her hand for a split second as I looked away to close the door behind us. When I looked back she was running into the main road as she'd seen her Mum on the other side. From where I stood, my view of the road was obstructed so I couldn't see if any cars were coming, and she had gone too far for me to catch her. By a complete miracle, she got safely over the road. It sends shivers down my spine remembering the helpless terror I felt when I saw her in the middle of the road.
My mother was standing by the side of the road with me (8) and my brother (5). She let go of my brother’s hand for just one second while she searched in her handbag for the keys to unlock the car. My brother raced into the road in front of a car. I can’t remember if it was my mother or if I grabbed him, (this was nearly twenty years ago, now!) but luckily one of us hauled him back so he didn’t actually get hit. My mother was so shaken after that I don’t think she let go of my brother’s hand near roads until he was in his early teens - which went over so well with a boy his age! She’s been joking ever since that he’s not allowed to cross the road by himself until he’s 30.
Having two young kids is such a juggling act. I was leaving the store with my three year old holding my hand and my infant in a baby carrier on my chest. Three year old pulls away and starts to run, and my reaction to lean down and grab her before she could get into the street almost dumped the baby out of the sling onto his head. Once I had my daughter by the hand again I sat on the curb and CRIED. They were both fine, but I was wrecked.
I actually tripped while wearing my then infant son and almost cracked his skull open on the edge of a stone stair (I live in a very old city by American standards so the sidewalks are very uneven in some parts of the city). I tore my knees up badly but by some miracle managed to stop my momentum millimeters before his head got smashed. I literally sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and bawled while my son looked at me baffled. He had no idea how close he came to being seriously injured that day and it chills me just thinking about it.
That's so scary!I work in childcare and for a long time worked in an infant only classroom (I know work with a mixed group of 0-3 year olds). One time I was carrying a 6 week old across the room to his crib and the rug slipped out from under me. I fell straight to the floor. There was another infant on the floor nearby so I was trying to hold onto the 3 week old with one hand, catch myself with the other, and not fall on the 6 month old nearby. I have no idea how I did it but I managed not to drop the baby and the only injury was a bump on my head from hitting a shelf on my way down. I sobbed so hard that my boss had to come relieve me from the classroom for a few minutes (she saw what happened on the classroom cameras and came to check on us) Another time an infant crawled behind me (I should have expected it because he was always behind me) and I took a step backwards and stepped on his arm with my full weight. He was perfectly fine (not even a bruise) and didn't even cry but I held him for easily fifteen minutes sobbing because I'd hurt him. He just looked at me so confused for the entire time.
This is why I didn't laugh when my best friend 'leashes' her troublemaker 3 y.o child in public. He did this one too many times and she was just 'fine, band around our wrists it is then'. I actually don't think it's bad either, reading this thread. Must be super scary.
My mother used to put a leash on me when I was a toddler. I think I ran away from her one too many times in public. She told me people used to look at her like she was a monster.
I liked to hide under clothes racks in stores, so my mom used to have to leash me as a toddler. She definitely got some mean comments. I was perfectly happy, so I don't get why other people felt it was their business to be upset about.
Omg my son did this when he was small. I was frantically looking & shouting for him when I hear him giggling his ass off in the middle of a circular clothes rack.
I was the child in question, two years old at the time. We were at the beach, where about two feet into the sea there's a shelf where it suddenly gets twice as deep. My parents were distracted by my brother, so didn't notice me wander into the surf. When they next looked up, all the could see was my hat away floating on the water. Panic set in, and my dad sprinted into the sea. Discovered that I was still wearing the hat, and was somehow floating completely vertical with just the hat showing above the water. Edit: Turns out this is not that uncommon! Remember, when you're near a body of water, *never* stop watching the kids.
Jesus?
Perhaps a less boyant Jesus.
He's trying his best.
My sister baked some cookies to share at work, and when her 3 year old daughter seen them on the plate on the counter she asked for one. Instead of explaining she wasn’t allowed to have one, my sister lied and said they were “yucky”, implying it was a bad batch. My sister, confident that her lie was successful turned her back to finish cleaning up. She heard the plate being removed from the counter and turned around just in time to see all the cookies slide off the plate into the garbage. Her daughter smiled and just said “yucky”.
Is that what people call instant karma?
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See, the best way to approach feeding the starving is a little at a time. Tell her to try feeding bits next time, instead of jamming the whole sandwich in.
The VCR needed milk. I get peanut butter stuck in my tape hole too.
Hi, could you please select all the boxes that include cars in them?
My sister put a grilled cheese in the VCR, she wanted to warm it up
I work from home. My son is usually with me while I work in the evening. One night I take a call, he was sitting on the floor next to me playing with his cars (he's three). The next minute, I look over and watching him as he is flying through the air next to me. He had climbed up on our table and just launched himself off! I always mute myself when I'm not speaking when he's home so thank god the customer didn't hear my OH MY GOD as i caught him lol
I was round at my buddy's place, he had kids about 7 and 5. Both super nice kids, nice family. We were sitting in the garden with a beer. The eldest had a foam-covered baseball bat that he'd been hitting foam balls with. Out of nowhere, he calmly walks up behind his dad and takes a full home-run swing at his head. Fucking clobbers him. This bat is coated in foam but it's still wood beneath it, so it's basically mid-level assault, maybe attempted murder. Dazed, the dad turns round to defend himself, at which point the 5-year old sees his opportunity and grabs the beer from the table and starts chugging it. Not just drinking it, full on frat boy chugging it out of nowhere. In the three seconds it takes me to recover from the shock and reach across the table to stop him, the kid's drank about 2/3rds of the bottle. Not much for an adult, but a fucking skinful for a kid weighing about 1 stone. Within about 3 seconds, we went from nice family BBQ to concussed adult, domestically abused by a psychopathic 7 year old, and a wasted 5 year old. Went real dark real quick.
I catered a funeral about a decade ago. It was outside in the family's yard. At some point, we began to notice that one little girl - maybe 4-5 - was walking from table to table and drinking from various cups. Little girl was TRASHED. She just starts having the best time. Running, screaming, spinning in circles... I assume you all know where this is going. She eventually turned into a fountain of vomit.
My 4 year old at the time (she just turned 17) grabbed a freshly made margarita I had just set down on the coffee table and chugged it. It was one of those pre-mixed margaritas that come in a jug at around 14% alcohol, but of course I had added an extra shot or so of cheap tequila to the glass. I didn't know what the fuck to do with a drunk toddler, but I sure felt like a shitty dad
Generally you give them a cigar and then put them down for a nap. Seriously though, you're fine. My mom once accidentally let me eat, EAT a whole pack of cigarettes. Accidents happen. Edit: Since this got so many upvotes, I should add that cigarettes are very dangerous and if your kid eats one call poison control.
I ate half a book of matches when I was little Mom went to grab a camera to take a cute picture of the baby next to the jack o' lanterns, came back, took a picture because I had a funny look on my face. A split second after she got the picture, she realized *why* I had a funny look on my face, panicked, got me to spit out the rest of them, and immediately called poison control who laughed and said I'd be fine
How does one accidentally eat a whole pack of cigarettes?
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My father was also blind, though my drug of choice were all the readily available cigarette butts in the ashtrays. He'd have to call for my mom because he could hear me spluttering somewhere and not be able to find me. It's sort of amazing I made it through early childhood, tbh.
step 1: be a dumb kid that's it, that's all you need.
At four years old, a friend of mine woke up from a nap and asked for a drink. Her mum told her to get the juice from the fridge. She drank about half a bottle of wine before anyone noticed the problem and was quite impressively vomity. She's 40 this year and she still doesn't drink - you might just have turned your daughter into a more responsible citizen!
Honestly sounds like the kids planned it. Maybe 5 year old lost a game and had to do a dare. 7 year old to 5 year old: I dare you to drink dads beer. 5 year old: He won't let me just take it. 7 year old: I'll distract him, but you have to chug it fast before u/Black_Sky_Thinking can take it. 7 year old and 5 year old: Ready, Set, GO!!!
I'm surprised the kid kept chugging after tasting it! One time my dad was drinking a dark beer out of a glass and I asked him for a sip of his "pepsi". My father grinned and handed me the glass. I threw up and never asked for a sip again!
Kid probably chugged it so fast he couldn't taste it.
I can confirm that this happened to me when I was a kid, my dad had these Budweiser tall glasses and I always use them for my drinks, I filled mine with apple juice and just came in from running around outside, I picked one up and chugged it and only tasted it 2/3 of the way through, but it was disgusting to 7 year old me and that's only the second worse experience I've had with beer as a kid lol
This is the funniest one in the thread. Idk why but imagining a toddler chugging beer makes me cackle
Yeah it was pretty impressive. You’ll have to take my word for it that I’m not exaggerating, but it was like, full bore vertical-bottle-open-gullet spring break drinking. Unless he had some drinking problem we didn’t know about, the kid just randomly did it out of nowhere.
Kids are like dogs. Once they get their mouths around something, it's gone. I still remember eating a random tylenol and feeling AWFUL for the rest of the day. It was an EZ tab so I thought it was candy. Or when I was 12 and I ate like a prisoner, hunched over my food and inhaling everything in minutes.
What happened to the 7 year old?
I swear babies that can't even flip over yet can teleport short distances when no one is observing them. You put that thing down in one spot, turn your back on it for *one second* and then it's moved a few feet away. They can do this because they don't understand how it's impossible. When babies learn enough about physics and object permanence to be able to move and navigate they lose the ability to teleport, because then they know enough to figure out it can't be done.
Mine was so bad about this, though we knew from the start he was rolling. Literally had just been born, put in the clear plastic crib thing, and I just watch this newborn baby roll over to his stomach. Nurse comes in, doesn't believe me, flips him and he rolls over again. Heard "he shouldn't be able to do that" about fifty times.
The nurses kept scolding me at the hospital for “not putting him on his back”. He keeps rolling! I’m doing my best but I’m exhausted!
I know what you mean! I'm so thankful my husband was there to help, because we literally could not put him down without him trying to roll onto the floor. :,D One of us had to hold the kid the entire time.
Was he born four months late?
He was a few weeks late, had to get evicted via induction, but not quite that late lol. And it was wild! He was so active right from the start, just constantly trying to move and kick. The videos I have of him are honestly bizarre because of how small he was compared to how he moved. Little gremlin wouldn't even let me hold him all that much the first few months unless he was tired because he wanted to be wiggly.
What is he like now? Our 10 month old literally never stops moving or exploring unless he's really sleepy
He's 3, almost 4, and still crazy active. Strong and big for his age, and honestly on energy alone more of a handful by himself than most multiples I've watched over the years. He's more cuddly now, but it's like holding a very wiggly hyperactive dog lol. Honestly it's fun, but I'm glad he's my only, I could not handle the literally never-ending energy from more than one kid.
Is he a famous athlete yet?
Still only 3, but we get constant comments on how active he is, and he was doing push-ups with me at 1.5, so we'll see where it goes lol.
“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a baby should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The baby, of course, flies anyway because babies don't care what adults think is impossible.”
This reads like a Douglas Adams' novel. LoL.
Not a parent, but when I worked childcare I lost a child. We didn't have enough workers scheduled, just me and one other, for an event. The policies for the place were horrible and for this event we had to accept any kids that parents wanted to drop off. So we had about 20 kids, around 12 toddlers, 4 kids who were too old to be in the nursery (4-6 years old), and four infants. Well, we should've been in the same room as we only had two workers, but we knew the toddlers would end up hurting the infants if we did that. So we split up. I had the 16 kids, the other worker had the four infants. One of the toddlers had to use the restroom (attached), he went on his own and after he needed help buttoning his pants again. So I turned my back to the room, fixed his pants, directed him to the sink to wash his hands, and then turned back into the room. I immediately performed a head count, and realized I was off by one. So I counted again. And again. Then I started frantically checking the closet, and mentally figured out who I was missing. I was freaking out. Told the other worker and they're freaking out. We don't know where the kid is. Mentally I'm thinking I have to call the cops now and it's going to be a huge deal. The other worker calls the churches pastor (church event) and they call the child's parents. They had picked up their child. In the 10 seconds I had my backed turned the child's father had walked up to the half door, the child saw him and ran to the door and he just picked them up and walked away. Didn't sign the sign out sheet. Didn't see an adult. Didn't do anything but walk up and carry their kid away. We were absolutely pissed and now that I'm older I wouldn't work an event like that or I'd turn away kids once we got to the point we couldn't take care of them. I wouldn't be in that situation again.
Left my son at the kitchen counter while preparing pancakes. One minute he’s there, the next thing I know he’s successfully empties the syrup bottle All. Over. The. Couch. I mean puddles of syrup in our cushions and pillows. First time as a parent I remember calling my mom crying because I was at such a loss for how to clean it all up.
At that point, you just get another couch.
Getting ready for my first Christmas party at a company. It's a family affair. We all looked great. Hubby was already in the car, ran to the bedroom for something I forgot, we were running a little late. Ended up going to to the party with my 3 year old looking like a smurf because he thought my blue nail polish was "just like mommy's makeup". Still to this day don't know how he got the cap unscrewed because he's 10 now and can't open an already cracked bottle of water to save his life 🤷♀️
Not a parent but the kid in the story. I have 2 younger sisters. They are twins and only 12 months younger than me. When I was 3 and they were 2, me and sis 1 put sis 2 in the washing machine while my mom went for a pee. She came back right in time because we were already playing with the buttons.
Christ, that is terrifying and can happen *so* easily.
The horrifying thing about this for me is that I have no idea how to open a washing machine once it's started. And a good amount of them are installed under a unit where you can't quickly get to the plug and disconnect them...
I think there's usually a reset button on washer. I have a rather inexpensive washer. The button I push to start also has the option that when held for 3 seconds will stop the load and unlock the lid.
I was the kid in this situation, but when I was about 3, (16 now) my mom was helping me out of the shower and she turned around to grab a towel, turned back mere seconds later, and I was standing in the same spot but my face was covered in blood. I somehow managed to fall onto the rail for the sliding door and shoot back up to my feet instantly. I passed out shortly after and went to the E.R. 17 stitches in my forehead, major concussion. I was lucky to survive tbh
She found some glitter
I was sitting in a high chair, climbed out of it, onto the counter, and stole my mother’s coffee. All she did was to put her shoes at the door, 3 feet away
One thing I’ve learned from this thread: small children have the ability to teleport.
Found my baby boy had climbed to the top of a 4 ft tall dresser after stripping naked and covered his entire body face and hair with diaper cream. He performed this act in less than three minutes.
I swore I would never tell this.. At 19, I have a 9 month old baby. I leave her on the bed to go pee. A beautiful spring day, windows open, Cleaning. I come back. She’s gone. Yet I can hear her! I AM FRANTIC, ALONE, AND LOSING IT. I check under the bed, in between the bed and the wall, everywhere. Until I look up and realize the screen is out. She fell out the Window into a bush outside and was laughing hysterically. NOT ONE SCRATCH ON HER. She’s 17 now and I haven’t ever shared that story with her or anyone but my therapist until today.
I'll tell one on my mother's behalf. When I was three or so, we lived in an apartment with an arched set of monkey bars out back. A standard rule was that I shouldn't play on them when she wasn't around to supervise. Well one day I was playing on them when the phone rang, so she ran inside to answer it, but not before ensuring that I'd gotten off the monkey bars and repeating her usual warning. One of the things she never allowed was for me to try and *walk atop* said monkey bars, and already being primed to play on them, I seized the opportunity. I'd made it to about the middle before I lost my balance, and fell through the bars, wanging my head on them as I passed and then landing more or less head first onto hard, packed dirt. Had a stutter for years after that, and I suspect the process of getting over that is why I don't speak as if I grew up where I actually did. This was one of many, *many* times that I got hurt the instant I chose to disregard her warnings. Also included are the time I crushed my finger in a dumpster (The warning being to come and get her should I find the lid closed; my sister and I judged that she could toss it open and I could just time throwing the trash inside. We were mistaken.), the time I was impaled on a tree (I was told to not climb cedar trees, especially the one that I climbed and then promptly slipped out of only to be helpfully caught by a branch through the groin on the way down), a number of bicycle wrecks and pseudo-fencing accidents, and...well...You get the idea.
I feel very sorry for your mother.
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I looked away for 1 second and my son (1yr at the time) ate my pack of cigarettes that I thought he couldn't reach. Called poison control and they told me he'd be fine, and he'll probably throw up. When he did throw up, noticed he only ate a little bit if the tobacco, no filters or anything. I quit soon after that.
My daughter (5 at the time) was very defiant. I was four weeks post partum, dressed in sweat pants and a nursing tank. No shoes. She wouldnt get out of the car in the kiss and drop lane. I hopped out to open her door, not thinking about what would happen next. She locked the doors. Here I am, lactating, blocking the line, ready to either collapse in an emotional sobbing heap or break the windows out of the car. This escalated to the entire parking lot being rerouted before my neighbor showed up with spare keys. When DD saw her with the keys, she hopped out of the other side, yelled "Have a good day" as she ran into the school.
Oh my, good luck.
My husband was watching our kids (2 and \~6 months at the time) in the bath and swears he looked down at his phone for just one second and then looked up just in time to see the 6 month old putting a pea into his mouth and eating it. Where did he get a pea in the bathtub, you might ask? From the stealth poop he did in that one second.
when my sister, brother and I were young, probably 2, 4 & 5 or thereabouts...my mom left the room for 2 minutes and in that time we had managed to spray an entire container of baby powder around the room. She said it looked like it had snowed in there.
Growing up we had a shed with our laundry room attached to our porch. My mom had me sitting on the floor of the porch playing with some toys (I was about 2), while she was doing laundry. I was just out of her eyeline for the time it takes to start a load of laundry, but by the time she turned around I had somehow managed to find a snake and had picked it up and was playing with it.
Went to pee , put my kiddos in there room with the door open and the gate up. I also had the bathroom door open...come out to find a dozen eggs cracked on the kitchen floor and into the butter and my youngest covered in peanut butter naked. My now ex husband was sleeping...I walked into our room woke him up and tagged out..my brain was fried at that point. To this day I have no clue how they escaped, they are 16&18 now.
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My siblings did something like this when I was still too little too join in, we jokingly call it the great butter incident of 99. My oldest sister was sitting on the counter in undies with a tub of margarine and a whisk dipping the whisk flinging the butter on the kitchen floor my other two sisters were butter skating and getting that butter wherever their tiny fingers could get it. We didn't pass the military housing cleaning inspection when we left cause my mum couldn't get all the butter out of there.
*TL;DR: Infant son rolled off the couch, cracked his skull, and had to have brain surgery.* I had just finished changing my six-month-old son's diaper, with him lying on the couch, with a changing cloth underneath. I turned to throw the diaper in the trash right next to the couch, and in the two seconds I didn't have my hands on him, he rolled of the couch—he'd never even rolled over before. He hit the ottoman, which spun him back the other way, and he smacked his head on the hardwood floor. He cried, but calmed down after a few minutes. There was no sign of swelling, no blood, etc. We were worried about a possible concussion, so we kept a close eye on him the rest of the day. When it was time for us to go to bed, we decided to stay up and watch a movie instead, and I went in and checked on him partway through the movie while my (now ex) wife went to make some popcorn. I changed his diaper, and he woke up a little. One of his pupils was overdilated, and the side of his face had started to droop like he was having a stroke. We immediately grabbed our diaper bag, jumped in the car, and drove to the hospital, which fortunately was only ten minutes away. I walked into the ER carrying my son and told the nurse that I thought he was having a stroke. She checked him, took us to a back room, and within minutes the room was swarming with medical personnel. A doctor informed us that it looked like our son had cracked his skull internally, and there was swelling in the brain. They would need to perform open-cranial surgery immediately to relieve the pressure on the brain. The doctor told us that they weren't sure he would survive the surgery, but it was the best option. We were whisked into another room, separated, and asked questions about exactly how the injury had happened. They wanted to make sure it wasn't due to abuse, because they said that falling off the couch onto the floor shouldn't have had the force to crack an infant's skull. At this point, his mom and I were both sobbing, just trying to figure out what was going on and whether our son was going to be OK. When they finally finished interviewing us, they brought us into a waiting room. I called my parents to tell them what was happening, and then another doctor came to tell us that the surgery had gone well, but that they'd had to remove around 2/3 of his brain tissue due to the blood saturation damage. He showed us an X-ray or MRI they had done just before actually beginning cutting that showed what looked like a crescent moon of gray matter clinging to the left edge of the interior of the skull, with the rest of the image filled by blackness, which the doctor told us was blood. He advised us that even if he survived the rest of the night, our son would likely never learn to walk or talk. When the surgery was done, they brought him to us. He was still groggy from the anesthesia, but other than being (very understandably) fussy, he seemed otherwise like his normal self. (Of course, there was also a large incision wound, stitches, and tubes coming out of his head to drain off the excess fluid.) It was around 2 a.m. at this point but I called our religious leader—who I was also good friends with—to tell him about the situation. He came and prayed with us, and offered a blessing for our son, just that he would make it through the night. This story is already getting much longer than I want to type on a Reddit comment, but he survived the night. He survived the next week, and the next month, and every time the doctors saw him, they said it was a miracle that he was alive. He had mild seizures for a few months after the operation, and when he first started to crawl, he would sometimes just stop and freeze for a second or two for no apparent reason, but remarkably, the 1/3 of his brain matter that they left grew to fill the rest of his brain cavity. The blood vessels from the left side of his brain spread and grew all the way across to cover the right side where the original vessels had been destroyed. He learned to talk and walk within the regular timeframes, and has had no noticeable residual effects of his traumatic injury. When we took him back to the hospital six months later for his final post-op check-up, every one of the nurses said it was a miracle that he was even alive, much less talking and moving around like a normal one-year-old. *Edit: Added TL;DR at the start*
Edit - Tl;dr - my brother snorted a crayon while my mother looked away for 1 second. Our crayon privileges got revoked. Not mine, but my mother's My brother and I were little, and he must have been around 2 years old. We were sitting in the living room colouring and mum left for the kitchen for 2 seconds. Within that time frame, my brother SNORTED A CRAYON. It was stuck in his nose and he then proceeded to cry hysterically. My mother obviously freaked out (here on out I remember everything). But she is a superhuman and had her brain still working. She got hold of a pair of forceps to try and pull out the crayon out of my brother's nose. The crying was NOT helping since everytime he gasped for air the crayon would go further in (the other nostril was open). Finally, in what seemed like forever, my mother managed to pull out the crayon. All our crayon rights were revoked immediately until we got FAT crayons that would not enter any body cavity lol.
On more than one occasion my daughter jumped into her bath fully clothed. I was turned around to get the bubbles or her toys or something and then SPLOOSH. She was like 2. Lol Most recently I was sitting down after finishing some chores and she walked up to me really proud with a chunk of her hair. "Look mama, I cut my hair!" She just turned 5...
At 2yo, I cut my hair with my mother's 12-inch/30.5cm long sewing shears. Big-ass, super sharp, metal scissors that could probably have cut right through my little fingers. I'm now in my early 40's and have been giving myself fucked-up haircuts ever since.
My son is in 1st grade this year, and we've been doing virtual learning. He's also on the spectrum, but he's able to do normal classes so far. I have a desk and his computer set up in his room. While his lesson was going on, he accidentally spilled some water on himself and his desk. I'm just like, "it's ok! Hold on a second! I'm going to get you a towel!" So, I run downstairs to get him a towel. I'm gone for 10 seconds. I come back upstairs, he took off his shirt and his pants, and was searching his drawer for dry clothes in his underwear... while on camera. I feel like I did the slow motion action movie, "nooooooooo!!!!" When I went to turn the camera off. I'm pretty sure his teacher at least saw him stripping down to his underwear, but she didn't say anything. Lol.
I think this isn’t the first time the first grade teacher had to deal with that. Young kids don’t like wearing clothes.
As someone who works closely with kindergarten and first graders, I have to be really careful about how I phrase things because a kid will have an accident and I'll tell them "okay go change your pants" and next thing I know the kid is naked in the middle of class. This year alone (we're in person) it has happened 3 times off the top of my head with different kids. This is such a normal occurrence for teachers...
I had a kid in pre-k once who had an accident, and had to change. He did that just fine, shoes and everything, except his pants were backwards. I told him he did great, but to make sure the button was in the front. He said “okay!” and vanished back into the bathroom. Maybe 5 minutes of shuffling later, he comes out of the bathroom butt naked, with only his shoes and socks. “I couldn’t do it!”
My year-18 month old son was playing with his toy trains. I turned on my computer to play my new game diablo. While it was loading my son came up to me with what looked like chocolate on his hands. I said to myself where did he get chocolate and sniffed it. It wasn’t chocolate. I turned around to see the most horrible site of poop smeared over everything. It was a shit storm, Randy. The floors were the worst. We lived in an old farm house and the cracks between floorboards were like a centimeter wide and poop was pressed deep into them. I had to use a toothpick to scrape it out. I learned a lesson that day.
Obligatory not a parent: I was watching my sister's kids and told them we would grill for dinner and have pie. I went to the bathroom, came back, and the pie was ALL OVER the living room. When I asked them what happened, they told me it was daylight savings time, so dinner was now. I couldn't help but laugh. Edit: pack to back. Don't type before coffee, kids.
This happened last year as we were in Lockdown. My 2 children (8&2) we're jumping on the bed. I walked in, scolded them and they stopped. Not 2 steps out of me leaving the room, i hear the springs again and the worst scream in the world. Evidently, eldest pushed youngest in excitement, a bit too hard, and youngested hit her eyebrow hard against the side cupboard. It was bloody anarchy! Rush to the emergency room with screaming from baby the entire drive. And only one of us could go in. Ended up needing plastic surgery and lucky to have full eyesight with her crushed in skull. Edit: word.
My mom told me a story about me when I was 3-4 years old. She went to the kitchen for something and I got oddly quiet. Somehow my super speed powers activated and I was all the way in the bathroom, climbed into the sink and got my dads razor. She walked in on me shaving my face, I looked like a baby vampire that discovered blood for the first time, face just gushing with blood, I’m smiling and giggling and my mother was absolutely mortified. I’m in my mid 20s now and still have scars on my face from this. Edit: I am a girl so it’s kinda funny to say that I got a scar from shaving my face
Sorry to drop a tragic story, but here goes. It wasn’t me, but someone who worked right across the hall from. They had a bed at window height. Young baby was on the bed and the window was open. He turned away for a second to address his other kid. Baby is missing. Baby fell 2 or 3 stories out the window and died in impact. Needless to say the dad took quite a bit of time off worm after that and wasn’t the same after. I didn’t even know how to talk to him anymore, it that we were ever closer, but it’s always at the forefront of your mind even when making small talk
When I was 5, my friend that lived a few doors down went on holiday with his parents. They were staying on a resort that had a cabaret / entertainment bar. His parents went up to do a karaoke duet one evening and left him with the group of friends they had made whilst on holiday. In the time they were singing the song he'd wandered off. They found him 10 minutes later in the resort pool, drowned. It was ages before my Mum told me the true story; she initially just said that he had to go live with some relatives to be near his new school. Edit: Thank you for all the kind words. That was almost 40 years ago, and I’ve not thought much about since my Mum told me the truth. But, thinking back I can remember my Mum being really insistent that me and brother learn to swim and she has paid for all the swimming lessons for my 4 kids ( now all teens and excellent swimmers). It appears it certainly affected my Mum much more than me.
When I was maybe 7 my friend and I were watching a small tv that was on top of a dresser in her parents room. She was always really anxious about using the tv and eventually she told me why. When my friend’s cousin was about 4 she opened some drawers in her parents dresser to climb up (as kids sometimes do). The dresser fell over and crushed the cousin killing her. That always stuck with me as a child.
I think it's good to share stories like that one. So many children die because they get into mischief when an adult looks away for a moment. If the parents affected realized how common it is, it might make continuing life afterward slightly easier.
A friend I've known since the 7th grade had a toddler drown in a 5 gallon bucket. Before that she was a picture-perfect suburban housewife, happy as a lark. Wound-up running off to Alaska and living in remote cabin for a few years, then she came back to the lower 48 and seemed to be doing better, but then joined a cult and cut herself off from her family. At age 48, she has recently emerged from the cult and rejoined her family, but her sister tells me that she could fall off the ledge again at any moment.
Losing a child is often listed as the one worst thing that can happen. Losing a child to something that could have been preventable... that's an amount of grief and guilt that can break a person.
When I was a kid my mom was watching me play while hanging laundry. When she turned to hang a garment I discovered a “bouncy spot” in the grass and fell down a 100ish year old abandoned well. She said that day took years off her life. Edit: So much Reddit attention. I’m blushing and my hands are sweaty. I have social anxiety and now I feel like everyone is LOOKING AT ME. I’m trying to answer everything I can!
Jessica?
No, I’m not baby Jessica, I actually fell down the well in 1984 before it was cool.
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Did you make it out?
Yes the fire department eventually showed up (this was pre-911 and my mom told my sister call the fire dept but she was 5 so she hid under the bed instead) after my mom called them. They ignored all safety protocols to get me out before their supervisor showed up and made them do it the “safe way” which I’m told would have taken a really long time. Instead they just tied a guy to some ropes and lowered him in. Edit: Some of you might find it interesting but 20 years later (almost to the day) I ended up meeting my rescuer completely by accident at a work event for our local fire department. I asked if I could try the boots on, and when they asked why, I explained that boots (and worms) were most of what I remember about the whole experience of falling down a well. Turns out the story had been told around the firehouse a bunch, and the actual rescuer was standing 15 feet away from me. I got to shake his hand and everything.
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Telling it on my dad's behalf. On a fishing trip and I fell in a rapid while playing on the rocks. Never a strong swimmer, just kinda started my travel to the sea. He barely caught me by the arm.
He was playing outside in the sand box just 10 feet from me. I had the window and door open and could hear him playing. Suddenly I was aware that he wasn't making any noise. I couldn't find him. I searched the yard, I asked strangers on the street and made a larger and larger circle and met my neighbors. 10 long minutes and he was nowhere. He had curled up in his stroller and was asleep.