"I'm Not Grounding Them! That's Awesome!": 40 Proud Parents Share What Made Them Discipline Their Kids But Just For Show

I've told this story before, but:

> **Middle kid (8):** "MUUUUUM! DAAAAD! TIPPED HIS WATER ON MY LUNCH!"
>
> **Youngest (5):** "IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!"
>
> **Middle Kid:** "WAS NOT!"
>
> **Youngest:** "IT WAS SO! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! I DIDN'T MEAN IT!"
>
> **Eldest (10, chipping in for the first time):** "How could it possibly have been an accident? You tipped your drink over her lunch while saying 'I now declare this sandwich officially... wet.'"

SO HARD to yell at him without laughing. I had to give up and let my wife do it.

My son was three. My husband still laughs at this. I forget why I made the cake, I have a penchant for randomly making cake for folks or to practice my decorating skills to prep for making my sons inevitable fancy birthday cake each year.

So I made a cake. And then had to go to the bathroom. I'm in the bathroom and we hear a :crash:! I come bolting out of the bathroom, my husband comes bolting out of the computer room, I stupidly presumed I had pushed the cake back far enough that the kid couldn't reach it.

We step into the kitchen and see the cake and it's plate on the floor, and half of it gone, and no kid anywhere. NOWHERE. So we're freaking out. Searching all over. part of me pissed because I had spent all this time making this cake, decorating little marzipan chess pieces on it, etc etc and the little s**t had gone for it.

My husband tells me he thinks he found him. Under the futon. I get down to my knees and look and there he is, this totally guilty look on his face and half the cake clutched to his chest, shoveling cake in his face as fast as he possibly can before we can think to take it away from him. It was hilarious in it's sheer cartoonish-ness. I was so so so pissed though because the cake was destroyed and I hadn't even taken pictures yet.

But to this day we can't help but think of it now and then when he asks for cake - he's now almost 12 - and we tell him 'Sure, so long as you don't take it under the futon" He remains to this day, confused and we refuse to tell him.

Today, my seven year old son was upset about losing two games in a row of Go Fish. I have been working on his sportsmanship for a while now, and I was disappointed in his attitude. Trying to coax him back to the table and continue the lesson, I said, "Best three out of five?"

Without missing a beat the tears stopped, and with an intensity usually reserved for a fight weigh in, he spun 'round, gave me a steely-eyed glare and said, "No Dad. We're going to settle this the old fashioned way." He rolled up a sleeve, popped his elbow on the table and presented an arm ready for an epic arm wrestling. I nearly lost it, and I didn't want to indulge this, but I did. With his little sister's help, they were 'victorious' and teased me mercilessly for the next hour. I had to excuse myself for a good giggle after.

My son was 2 years old when he got his first pair of eyeglasses. At first he resisted wearing them until he realized he could see properly for the first time in his life.

A few days into wearing his glasses, I brought home a 5 pound bag of individually wrapped chocolates that I was planning on taking to the office in a few days. He had gone upstairs to his toyroom and he was being way too quiet for too long. I went up there and he was surrounded by wrappers, covered in chocolate. Half the bag was gone, and he was so proud of himself: "Mommy, I not need help to open them, so I not had to ask!" It was the first time he had been able to see where to pull to open the wrappers. I was so happy that he could finally see that I couldn't be angry.

I had to tell him that he still needed to ask permission to take the candy, even if he didn't need help opening it anymore. The punishment was his bellyache. Kid's lactose intolerant.

I did not give birth to them, but I have raised my two nephews as my own, full time, for the past ten years, I'm almost twenty five now, they are fifteen and twelve, and I swear, they are both little scientists. My oldest built a rocket out of fireworks and remote control car parts for the science fair which he successfully launched into our corn field when he was in junior high, home made fart bombs ( principal called on that one ), countless Rube Goldberg machines which destroyed my kitchen, my husband's study and workshop, then there was my youngest. His multiple baking soda volcanos which he figured he could use the same method to create a puking monster, his remote helicopter "flying fox" bat, and passing out Harry Potter jelly beans at school on test day. I really love my boys.

My five year old roommate yelled at his mother "I'm so mad I'm going to poop in YOUR pants!"

My daughter figured out manipulation at age four.

As we were leaving a theme park, pretty worn out, she looked at my husband and said "Daddy, I bet you can't carry me all the way to the car"

It was actually my nephew, but a few years ago (back when he was in 2nd or 3rd grade), his class was learning about onomatopoeia and the teacher was asking the children if they knew any. Apparently, my nephew raised his hand and said "I know one!" and then he farted.

Put a hole in the wall of my room. Repaired it by painting the back side of some photo paper and gluing it to the wall. My dad was fairly upset when he found it about 2 years later, but later admitted that my McGyver repair job was impressive.

I overheard my dad saying he was secretly proud of something I did in school. It's school photo day and what happened is we go in small groups and have our picture taken then the wizard photographers put it all together, I got myself in two of the groups and ended up in the final photo twice.

I was sending my daughter to bed and she was being difficult as four year olds do so I was using an angry but not quite yelling tone. She proceeded to inform me that she found my tone unacceptable and she would rather I not speak to her that way.

I had to explain to her that she is four and if she feels I am hurting her feelings she should tell me but in a respectful way, but really I was kind of being an a*s cause I just wanted some goddamn quiet time and I was impressed she called me out on it.

In my case, I was one of the kids impressing their parents.

My cousin, my brother, and I, all around 10 years old, were walking around a farm about half a mile away from our grandparents' house. It used to have lots of pigs but at the moment only four dogs that guarded the farm were there, living inside tiny cages where they probably stayed most of the time. We found the key to the cages, "freed" all the dogs and wrote some cheesy line like "FREEDOM TO ALL THE ANIMALS" in childish handwriting on a wall with a purple desinfectant spray we found.

Turns out the farm belonged to a close friend of our grandma and since one of the dogs decided to follow us we got caught very quickly. We had to go to the owners' house and apologize and we were grounded for the rest of the summer, but last year (like 10 years later) my parents actually told us they were very proud and impressed!

My brothers dad is an alcoholic. He was grounded from absolutely everything at his dad's house and one night my mom took him to dinner to talk about what's been going on. She got a call from his dad. His dad asked her to ask him where his laptop was. He said under the bed. When he went in to look for it he found my brother had took all the alcohol he had in the house and poured it on his bed. When my mom asked why he did it, he said "well if he can drink it all day then he might as well sleep in it too." My mom didn't know whether to be angry or proud.

There was a guy staying with my MIL around the time my little one was 3-4. This guy was completely taking advantage of MIL, psychologically abusing her, terrorizing her, etc. One day my tiny child said to him out of the blue, "I don't like you. You are not my friend. I hate you. I hate you!"

Normal morning rushing around trying to get ready to go out for the day, I notice my daughter playing in her room and generally delaying getting ready for our days adventures. I shout through to her, " You'd better not be making a mess, I want everything off the floor please" i wasn't even mad when I saw her results...

http://imgur.com/zLF23w4

I can speak for my mom by telling the story of my sister and I playing with her bright red lipstick.

My sister and I were about 4 and 5 at the time, watching Peter Pan in our parents' room while they were watching TV or whatever downstairs. My sister and I had seen the movie a bazillion times before and would play along with the movie, singing the songs and just acting silly.

I wanted to be Tiger Lily. I convinced my sister that to look like Tiger Lily, we could use our mom's lipstick to paint ourselves red (thank you, Disney racism). So we go into the bathroom and lock the door, which we were strictly forbidden from doing, and covered our entire faces in lipstick. Even our ears. We were thorough.

Because we likely knew we would get into trouble for what we were doing, we were being really quiet. This was a red flag for our parents, and it wasn't long before our mom was calling up to us to ask what we were doing. Apparently responding, "nothing!" in unison is another red flag.

Our mom came upstairs and tried to come into the bathroom, but we had locked the door, so she told us in her angry mother voice to unlock the door immediately. When we did, she couldn't even imagine what she was going to open the door to. She said years later that it took all her willpower to not laugh when she saw what we'd done and found out why.

Last night while at a restaurant, she loudly sang a song she made up about her vagina.

My son will scowl at me instead of doing what I told him to do. He thinks it's a scary face. It's more of an annoyed pout. And it's adorable. But he can't know that.

Not my story but a friend's and I think it's hillarious:

The family was invited to dinner at their friends' house who also had a daughter around the same age. They had a lovely evening and a few glasses of wine. On their way home - oh s**t - police - stop&search. Where we are from the police always asks if you have had something to drink and the law is very strict about drinking&driving. It's really easy to loose your license with a glass of wine.
The officer had picked them for a random breath test...which the dad (who was driving) failed. He tried to defend himself: "I didn't drink, Sir. There must be something wrong with the machine. Try it on my daughter if you don't believe me." My friend told me that his dad has no idea why the hell he made that suggestion. The 5-year-old daughter was sleeping in the backseat, they gently woke her and she actually took a breath test. And BOOM, the result was positive. The officer was now convinced that his machine wasn't working properly, appologized to the family and let them drive off. Mum & dad were completely puzzled but they just thought they had had a lot of luck that night.
Back at home the friends with whom they had spent the evening called and told them: "Guess what, I just found a half emptied bottle of egg liqueur in my daughter's room. Seems like the girls had a little party of their own." So, the kid actually was drunk while taking the breath test.

Tl;dr 5-year-old saved her dad's driving license by getting wasted.

I live with my dad and my 9 year old daughter. I sometimes go to the gym at night and tell my daughter to brush her teeth while I'm gone. When I get back she shows me a video on our tablet of her brushing her teeth as proof. A few days ago I realized that her hairstyle was slightly different in the video, and I figured out that she had simply prerecorded herself brushing her teeth in several different outfits. While I was fairly impressed at this, I kept a straight face and explained to her that when I was a kid, grandpa would beat me savagely with a set of jumper cables whenever I didn't brush my teeth. Since then she's been brushing several times a day on her own.