Parents of Reddit: What is something your child has done that made you think, "I don't approve of that... but damn, that was really clever"?

1. My ex wife decided that my son (15) is no longer allowed to date this year, despite the fact that it was never a problem before. This coincided with him starting to date a girl down the street who's parents hate my ex wife, though she claims that had nothing to do with it. She claims it is to ensure he gets good grades, though he has yet to have a problem in that area as a A/B student. Instead of sneaking out and around, or getting mad, he went directly to the girls father and offered to work for him in his shop (guy runs a machine shop on his property), cleaning up, sweeping floors, organizing. So he got his first part time job, which his mother was ok with, and in turn gets 3 nights a week where he is "working" where he gets paid to go out with the daughter. It was sneeky and underhanded, and perfectly orchestrated between my son and this guys daughter and I am extremely proud of him.
   — EvrythngComesDwn2Poo


2. My brother once paid a neighbor kid (his same age) 5 dollars to mow the lawn for him. When my parents found out he justified it with they just asked for the lawn to be mowed and didn’t specify who was to mow it, (although it was clear it was meant to be him they just didn’t say the exact words) 10 years later the family still has a good laugh at that one.
   — straws44


3. Heard a ruckus down the hall and came in to see my younger son (4 at the time) standing over my older one (6yo) like that famous Muhammad Ali picture. "What's going on?!" "We were boxing" "0_o?" "(Older son) had a loose tooth and we were trying to get it out." Older son gets up, tooth is in the ground. "Looks like it worked..." (High fives all around) Turns out the tooth he knocked out wasn't the loose one they were after, but a _different_ one. Oh well.
   — mad_science






4. Kid goes to kindergarten, but after a few months parents notice that the kid isn’t really getting any better at counting/reading or anything really. Parents ask if they can watch the kid for a day, school hasn’t got an issue. Turns out the school puts the kids in three groups - Red, Yellow and Blue. Whilst two of the groups are doing lessons the third is always in the sandpit playing with minimal supervision (compared to those in lessons). Kid had worked out if at every changeover he went to the bathroom, he could wander in and go straight to the sandpit. No wonder the kid loved school, as far as he was concerned it was a place he’d been able to play in the sandpit for 2 months. Parents moved the kid to another school..... sort of thought the teachers should have noticed.
   — RadarWesh


5. When my kid was 8, we were having some "behavioral problems" with her to put it mildly. Went to a therapist who talked to each of us individually, and figured out the root of the problems. She was playing us off of each other. Despite being only 8, she had our number, and was - unintentionally for the most part - winding her mother and I up over some minor thing, then watching with glee as we fought over what she wanted us to fight over. The therapist suggested we try an experiment. The next time we caught ourselves being manipulated, we were supposed to lock ourselves in the bedroom and refuse to engage with our little hellion. Her reaction was at once disturbing and enlightening. She tried to bash down the door to the bedroom. Starting with the vacuum cleaner, and when that didn't work she went to the kitchen, got the pizza cutter out of the drawer, and tried to saw her way into our bedroom in order to keep the fight going.
   — gogojack


6. This is actually a story about my mom and my uncle that I was told repeatedly as a child (from grandparents and mom and her brothers). My grandmother was a terrible cook (can verify) and often made liver and onions. My mom and my uncle Steve (the two oldest siblings out of four) hated liver and onions and would never eat it. On one such occasion, they were behaving badly and sent to another room with their dinner plates and the ketchup bottle, so they cut up their liver into tiny pieces and shoved it into the ketchup bottle. A week later my grandfather made himself a sandwich and went to put ketchup on it. My grandmother never made liver again.
   — ibethuhwalrus






7. This happened a few months ago. My sister is 9 and I'm quite a bit older than her. I walked into the bathroom and saw her brushing her teeth. Having never seen the toothbrush she was using, I asked her where she'd gotten it out of genuine interest. She said, I shit you not, that *a classmate had given it to her.* It's usually pretty obvious when she is hiding something, so I was shocked. Besides, who in their right mind would give a *toothbrush* as a gift? "Was it a boy or a girl?" I asked her. "A boy." "Who?" "I'm not telling you." "But did he use the toothbrush before giving it to you?" "I don't know." She then shrugged, told me not to tell our parents, and continued brushing her teeth. Of course I went ahead and told my parents the following day. I thought that it was a big enough deal to break her trust. I certainly was not a saint in this situation. After my mother confronted her about it, my sister told me it was actually our mom who had bought it. She had just made up a story to see if I would snitch on her. I turned to my mother and asked whether it was true. "Yes, now I remember I bought it a week ago." ^Edited ^for ^formatting.
   — Dulcibel


8. When my daughter started high school she immediately started signing her own permission slips so she could wag when she got older and sign her own notes. Thing was she didn't even take advantage of it for several years, but set up the long con from the start.
   — anoukeblackheart


9. My 11yo daughter takes loyalty very seriously. She's a loving kid, and can even take some knocks. She had a bully pick her last year, and she handled it with grace - someone she doesn't like picking on her didn't really bother her. But recently she found out a friend that she trusted was gossiping behind her back. Not the end of the world, I'll even vouch that this gossipy kid is still a great kid, it's just young girls you know. Anyway, my daughter doesn't respond so well to "betrayal". I started hearing that she had turned some other kids against the gossipy girl, which was giving gossipy girl a hard time socially. I wasn't sure whether to believe it, I mean my kid is an angel right? Then we found it. My 11 yo angel had, in a notebook next to her bed, a complete and detailed business plan about how to destroy this "traitor's" life. What to say, and to whom, and when, and who could be enlisted and enlist others to cut this gossipy girl out of various social circles. She had this plan, she was executing it, and it was working. Ooooh shit. We had some talking to do. Luckily, she had a bully the year before, so she was able to remember what that feels like and decide maybe it didn't feel good to do that to somebody else, even if they were a little snooty gossip. My daughter turned it around, and engineered the social recovery of her detested enemy. So she corrected her course and I'm still proud of her, but a little surprised at what she was capable of.
   — Tom_Navy






10. Not my kids, but my much younger cousins (Alex is 10 and Charlotte is 13). We were playing Monopoly and I know that Alex is a sneaky fuck, so naturally I was the banker. At some point during the game Alex went to the toilet and on the way back he grabbed the 500s from the bank and 'accidentally' dropped them. He bent down and picked them all up and gave them back to me and started to walk back to his seat. I stopped him and told him to empty his pockets, he pulled his pockets right out and gave me a smug grin. I let him go, because he apparently hadn't taken any. Eventually it was discovered that he had been conspiring with his sister and when he bent down to pick them up he had passed a few 500s under the table to his sister. He then got past me undetected and they split the money when I wasn't looking.
    — DPressurise


11. In 5th grade, my kid's teacher would let the students retake any quiz if they got lower than a certain grade. But she gave the *same* quiz. My kid was deliberately tanking the first quiz, finding out what the answers were, and scoring 100 on the retake.
    — tinyahjumma