Once kids get to a certain age, they no longer need constant parental supervision. The adults might at first rejoice in their newfound freedom, but very quickly, they might get the unsettling feeling that now their offspring can do things by themselves, without a parent seeing or knowing.
Netizens wanted to hear parents' stories of the weird, unusual, and downright disturbing things they had found when being nosy in a kid's bedroom. The list runs the gamut from obvious, if unpleasant answers to twists and turns worthy of a true crime series. So get comfortable, make sure to upvote your favorites, and, perhaps, reconsider being nosy if the desire arises.
#1
When I was 12 and in 6th grade, I got in trouble for basically just goofing off and being poorly behaved in class at school. The teacher made me write a note to my parents telling them what I had done and she signed it and I signed it, and I was instructed to give it to my parents. I did bring it home but realized that my parents didnt know to be looking for it. So I decided to hide it, because I feared it would be found in the trash.
So I unscrewed the cover of the Air Conditioner vent and placed the note in there, figuring in an emergency I could go back and get it if the Teacher ever somehow asked about it.
Fast forward like 15 years later or so, and my parents are having the air-conditioning in the house replaced and also having the ducts cleaned in the process. Worker finds the now forgotten note and gives to my parents. I get a call (was living in an apartment/in college at the time) that I needed to come home because we had to have a talk.
Came home to serious parents who sat me down at the kitchen table to "discuss the problems I'm having at school". I was beyond confused and so lost as to what they were talking about. They then bring out the now ancient note and we all had a good laugh about it. It was funny
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300points
#2
I'm not typically a nosy parent - but I did have to clean out my child's closet once. (The breaker box was in it and we no longer had access.) After finding handcuffs, whips and chains I decided to let her clean it out herself! (She was 19 at the time. We had a discussion about protection and safe words. I did not share with her father!)
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217points
#3
Drag queen son here.
Last month my mom found all of my drag stuff (wigs, corset, makeup. Etc.) And made me throw it all out. ALL OF IT. Like things I bought with my own money. She even threatened to kick me out if she caught me doing it again and told me that I needed help. She doesnt know the difference between a drag queen, a transgender, and a transvestite. Good news is I dug it all out of the trash, but hiding it way better.
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213points
Now, most of the stories here involve items, but there is also a distinct subset of children or teens that decide that they just want a pet and will get one underneath their parents' noses if needed. Pigeons, stray cats, and even dogs have all been featured in these sorts of stories, though naturally, smaller beasts like hamsters and gerbils seem like they should be a natural choice.
Besides being cute companions, children often bond with animals to such a degree that they will even tell them secrets and other private thoughts. Young kids in particular, for better or worse, might start to believe that their pet even understands them, which, inevitably, makes it a lot harder for the parent to get rid of it when it’s discovered.
#4
Our kids share a small bedroom so there isn't many places to hide stuff, they're young, 4 and 6.
We don't let them have much candy or sugary treats. A few times a week they will have some cookies or something but not every day.
So one day my wife is in there cleaning and she pulled one of their beds away from the wall to vacuum and found our eldests daughters stash of candy.
She had all kinds there, kitkats, twix, packets of potato chips. It was all unopened except for some bags of hard candy.
We were both quite surprised because we keep the candy out of their reach in high cupboards in our kitchen. So how exactly did she amass such a collection of delicious contraband?
Well it turned out she would take her candy when given it by us and sometimes save it. She would never refuse a treat even if she didn't particularly want it because she might want it later and so stashed it behind her bed in the gap against the wall.
I found it quite interesting that she could have such forward thinking to know she would maybe want some candy later and needed to secure her supply now.
So anyway we let her keep the candy but we put it in a bowl on her dresser and we explained to her she didn't need to eat it all, she could continue to keep it there for when she wants some candy. Neither of them have eaten that stash, just a few pieces.
So I guess it worked out pretty good.
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203points
#5
While organizing my one year old's closet, an envelope with a hundred dollar bill fell down. Seeing as we just bought the house, I'm guessing it was left over from the previous owners and that my infant does not in fact have a side hussle going on..
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193points
#6
When my son was 6 years old, I went into his room and found a live pigeon that he had been keeping as a pet. He was really sad when I let it outside
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186points
Of course, certain animals, like the aforementioned pigeon really shouldn’t be living with humans, despite whatever the child is feeling at the moment. On the other hand, it could be a lot worse. Let a bird run free, it’s probably happier in the long run and the kid gets an important lesson in the difference between a pet and an honest-to-God wild animal. Some parents have to deal with a lot more, from literal weapons to drugs.
#7
My mum found my contraceptive pill at one point. Never said anything about it but I got home and she’s tidied my room and left it nicely on my bedside table. Figure she was just pleased I was being sensible.
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179points
#8
Throwaway for reasons Cleaning teenage son’s room one day, using the broom to reach down and sweep under his bed. The broom clunks up against something hard in the back-middle area under the bed. I’m a dust freak (hardwood floors) so I use the broom and push the object out from under the bed so I can get aallllll the dust. I walk over to the other side to see what in the hell it is: before my eyes lay the absolute most massive, blackest-a*s d***o I have ever seen in my damn life. I said to myself “Good Lord, son. Enjoy, but...ouch!”—Pushed it back under and never said a word about it.
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170points
#9
My mum's worst finds were when she used to read my Facebook messages, rather than go through my room.
She found messages where I admitted to a friend that I was worried I might be pregnant, read all the fights I had with my boyfriend(s as I never held a relationship for very long), all the messages to my friend about feeling like I had no privacy and my friend insulting her and me not defending her (my friend still hates her, this was after I'd changed my password and she told me that if I didn't give her the new one I would lose all internet access while I was trying to pass GCSEs), about not being sure about dating this guy (she then sat me down to talk about breaking up with him) and admitting to a close friend that I was experiencing gender dysphoria (she urged me to never stop being a girl)
As a child who had a very nosey parent, please just ask your kids about what is bothering them. To this day I can't have an open conversation with my mum because I don't trust her anymore.
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154points
Parents can actually reverse engineer the child's logic when they find something hidden. First, the location. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, kids have a somewhat comical idea of what “hidden” can mean. For example, a “clever” kid, when asked to clean their room, will often shove a lot of stuff under their bed. Out of sight, out of mind. Most adults, first of all, know this trick and, second of all, are pretty aware of a little idea called object permanence.
#10
Not the parent, of course, but this is a good one.
When I was in middle school, my dream was to become a medical examiner. I wanted to do autopsies and hints like that. My method of practicing/preparing was drawing ‘cadavers’ on pieces of paper, giving them names, ages, and causes of death, and then using the scalpel I got with my microscope kit to perform the Y-incision, as well as cutting along their foreheads.
Needless to say, my mother was incredibly disturbed and worried when she found those. The explanation made her feel a lot better, though.
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141points
#11
My mom found my journal and read it cover to cover. I was a really prolific journaler at 15, I’m surprised she read the whole thing. There really wasn’t much in there, aside from losing my virginity and getting on birth control.
Anyway, I was in the hospital at the time and she came there to yell at me so much that they made her leave. Our relationship was never the same again. When she died a two years later, we were barely speaking.
Parents, don’t snoop through your kids’ s**t. Try being nice to them and they’ll *want* to talk to you about tough things.
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140points
#12
When my sister and I were little, my mom would make us take multivitamins. You remember the ones. Small, shaped like animals, vaguely fruit flavored but with a texture like wet chalk. They were disgusting and we hated them. At some point, we hit on a pretty clever scheme of getting rid of them. She would give them to us just before we left for school, when we'd normally be sitting on the couch putting on shoes. So we began stashing them in the couch.
Of course, we didn't think it through. What was going to happen when too many vitamins got shoved between the couch cushions?
My mom got the surprise of her life one afternoon when she set out to vacuum the couch. A month's worth of children's chewables for two, stuck between the cushions. They'd begun to melt a bit, and some were bleeding into the fabric. Some were stuck together in a huge wad. A rat king of chewables, if you will. Still others had begun to crumble into dust. And worst of all, the smell. You know the way those animal shaped chalk tablets smelled? Well now the couch cushions smelled like that. I remember her standing in front of the couch after school and saying, "I am not angry, I just want to understand", her eyes pleading with us to give a rational reason why we would do such a thing. Sadly, all we could say was, "They're gross".
We were not allowed to leave the house without dramatically munching our vitamins in front of my mother for the remainder of the time we were required to take them.
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136points
The choice of items can also be illuminating. Many parents do try to limit a child's candy, which can do two things. Kids start to overvalue candy and store it for the future, or develop shame around eating it, but can’t resist a sweet snack. And who can blame them, many adults suffer from eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with certain foods. What a kid chooses to hide is as much a reflection of what they think a parent dislikes as the kid's own preferences.
#13
My six year old had a voice recorder. I asked him about it. He said that his mom (my soon to be ex), told him to record at my home. So messed up. My attorney said to not report it to CPS.
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133points
#14
My mom found my list of sexual partners (I keep a list for personal reasons and also so I know who to call just in case I get an irregular test result, but I digress.) when I was 22 and lost it.
Mostly because she thought that was way too many partners for a woman to have. But also because there were women on that list.
She’ll never know that what she found was a super old and outdated list and that her daughter is, as the kids put it, a bit of a s**t.
131points
#15
We had to move our kid out of a bad living situation. She wasn’t in any condition to help. So wife and I go in and just start grabbing her stuff. We come across her adult baby fetish gear. Like two duffel bags of it, giant onesies, binkis, diapers etc. Wife looked at me, I looked at her, we shut each bag and have never spoken of it again.
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130points
But the downright most comical examples are those bits of information a parent will find out anyway, like, for example, report cards or notes from teachers. These days, schools use digital technology to communicate, so only the most tech-savvy children can intercept these messages. But in the past, nervous kids would stow away any information about them not doing so well in school, as if their grades would magically change by the end of the year.
#16
Am a parent...so one weekend wife and I are chilling out in bed watching whatever garbage on tv, when our youngest son (11) comes in and says oldest brother (13) is looking at p**n on his tablet. So we call for oldest son, he denies and denies of course, so tell him to bring me his tablet. He hasn't learned the art of incognito browsing or clearing history completely. Going through his history, well I'll be damned, he is looking at p**n. Not just any p**n though. Some anime stuff, some adult raunchy stuff. But the real kicker was the Scooby Doo p**n. So mom leaves the room to let dad and his son talk about this...starts with the usual, don't lie, you can't hide this s**t from me if I go through your browsing history, it's ok to m********e (in private of course), your growing up, yada yada yada. Finish the conversation, give him his tablet back, but as he's walking out the door, I can't but help do my best/worst Scooby impression "But Shaggy" followed by "Zoinks", "Jinkies" and "Ruh Roh found your p**n". His face got so red, and I just lost it, I was in tears. Now every so often, when he starts to cop an attitude with us, I just go "Zoinks" to him. Kicker of it all, youngest son comes into the room with "I was only joking, I didn't know he really was".
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129points
#17
So, have you ever had someone hand you something, usually trash or something insignificant, and say "Keep this forever, it's a token of our friendship."? It's a very high school thing to do, but a girl once gifted me a plastic spoon and told me to keep it forever. To own the joke, I was going to keep it for a long time and regift it to her.
I had it sitting on my dresser in my bedroom and my mom barged in and just started cleaning/throwing away what she thought was trash. She did this occasionally and it pissed me off. She grabbed the spoon and was about to throw it away, and I told her not to. She paused and asked "Why?" I didn't know how to explain this without seeming weird, so I awkwardly said "... just...don't."
I don't know exactly what she was thinking, but she yelled "You better not be doing anything weird!" and walked out.
I still have no idea what type of weird s**t one can do with a plastic spoon.
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114points
#18
Not snooping through his room, but stuff he was throwing out.....I found my son's journal from when he was about 9. In it, he chronicles how he heard me and my then- boyfriend have sex on multiple occasions. I probably died of embarrassment reading it.
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109points
But, at the end of the day, there is the elephant in the room. And it’s not the parents being nosy, although that is a whole can of worms in of itself. Many parents describe shock, surprise or their findings as “messed up,” which illustrates that at some level, they have not yet accepted that their child is an independent, sentient being that will grow up into an adult. One fun part of being an adult is not having to tell others what you do or keep at home.
#19
I don't snoop so I haven't stumbled across anything too crazy but when my kids were in 3rd and 4th grade I found a shoe box (without the top) filled with actual cash and "Jesus Dollars" when I grabbed their hamper to do laundry.
Jesus Dollars were something my kid's school gave out to kids for good behavior or high scores or doing anything Jesus like. My daughter was a top student and collected a lot of Jesus Dollars. They were allowed to be cashed in at the school store but my daughter didn't see anything worth buying. My son has always been the kind of kid who could sell ice to an Eskimo so they combined my daughter's ability to get a lot of Jesus Dollars and my son's car salesman skills to sell their fake money for real money during recess. They had 44 real dollars when I found their stash.
We don't pay for regular chores so finding that much money in their closet at that age was a little weird. They admitted to it right away and thought their plan was great but I did put an end to it because I didn't want parents to call the school complaining that my kids scammed them out of their snack money. I'm not religious but it also seemed anti Jesus like to encourage it.
My kids are teenagers now but they keep their rooms clean and have been in charge of their own laundry for years so their Jesus Dollars operation remains the most shocking discovery and I hope to keep it that way.
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107points
#20
Kid here. When I was really little my parents bought an entire encyclopedia collection thinking I could use it later in life for school. Then a thing called the internet happened and they were basically defunct, but I still always kept them in my room. I used to hide random money in them, like from birthdays and forgotten. Fast forward 15 years, mom "snooping" through my old room for things to donate and books are still in my old room so my mom calls me to see if it is OK to donate my old encyclopedias to her church. I remember the money and laughingly tell her sure and you can even keep any money you find in them. The TL:DR version of this story is, I gave my mom almost $300................
105points