We all have intrusive thoughts from time to time. But we generally don’t follow through with them. Nor do we mention them aloud. Children, on the other hand, often don’t have any filter. Their minds are still developing, and they don’t yet have a firm grip on social norms.
So, many of them say and do whatever is front-of-mind for them. User u/TheEqualizer1212 started a slightly creepy discussion on r/AskReddit, where they asked parents to reveal the most unsettling things their kids have said or done. Scroll down for their stories. It’s a reminder that some parenting challenges are stranger than others and will almost definitely come as a surprise.
#1
When my daughter was learning her ABCs, one morning at breakfast she sang all the way through for the first time. We congratulated her and asked if she’d been practicing at day care.
“No, mommy’s mommy taught me when I was in bed”
Uh.. Mommy’s mommy died 3 years earlier.
Image source: cnewman11, cottonbro studio / Pexels
#2
My son went through a phase when he was 6 where he would write “Help me! Let me out!” on everything. It was on all his drawings and he’d write it outside on the side of the house for the neighbors to see. Then he started writing “Help me!” backwards, like some redrum s**t.
Turns out he was really into Goosebumps and one of the episodes has a girl trapped in a mirror writing “help me”. To the people looking into the mirror “help me” was backwards. Mystery solved, my kid is just a bit theatrical.
Image source: BlackCatAttack666, Sarah Dietz / Pexels
#3
When we finally told my oldest, then three, I was pregnant, he stopped and grabbed my stomach intently. He thought for a moment and then said “and we don’t stab the baby with knives?”
….correct, child.
Image source: Quicily, Rovshan Nazirli / Pexels
#4
When my daughter was about 3 or 4, she started talking about “the blue lady”. My wife and I asked her who she was and were told “I don’t know but she wants her hands back”. Chills. This went on for a few weeks. The story never changed and it was always the Blue Lady needs her hands. We were seconds away from getting a priest or a witch in to bless the house. One morning, I’m watching TV and there is a woman in a blue US Post Office uniform saying “thanks to blah-blah hand cream, I got my hands back!” and my daughter comes running into the room screaming “That’s the blue lady! I love her!”
I relaxed so hard I nearly s**t myself.
EDIT: This comment really blew up! Thanks for the love! There are actually two other unexplainable stories about the time we lived in that house, both of which we can’t connect to TV commercials, so as a quick bonus:
She had two imaginary friends while we lived there. One was Samantha, a little girl who she played with. Samantha would leave at night, and my daughter would say goodbye near our back door. When we asked where she lives, her answer was, “in the backyard under the grass, but going there makes her sad”.
The other “friend” was a man named “Monsterist” or something close to it. According to my daughter he had long black hair and wore brown pants and no shirt. He used to wear red or blue paint and he carried a long stick. We live in an area that had a large native American population in the past and that’s what he sounded like to us. He would also stand on the porch every night until morning.
Image source: parkinglotguy, Ksenia Chernaya / Pexels
#5
My son walked into the room butt naked holding a pair of scissors and asked why his younger sister didn’t have a penis. He never explicitly said he was thinking of performing surgery on himself, but we kept a close eye on him for a few weeks and hid all the scissors.
Image source: anon, Ksenia Chernaya / Pexels
#6
When she was 3, we’d gone for a meal at a really old pub/restaurant. She wanted the toilet, so I took her and the pub had the kind where it’s a little room on it’s own. Now she was in that phase where they are basically small terrorists and if you do or say the wrong thing, well there will be the most almighty tantrum.
Her big thing was no talking while she was on the toilet (3 year olds are weird!). So I’m standing there silently looking out of this really tiny barred window, while she does her business. It’s a tiny Tudor window and the first thought that popped into my head was that it would be impossible to get out of if the place was on fire. Don’t why but that’s just my brain.
Suddenly I hear her little voice say ‘it’s ok Mummy, there won’t be a fire’.
Now I know 100% I didn’t say anything out loud, she had me well trained. But somehow she heard my thoughts. She did it again a couple of times in the next few months and then has never done it again. It was so bloody weird.
Image source: Mischeese
#7
I went into check on my sleeping daughter, who was four at the time, and she rolled onto her back, and muttered in her sleep, ” I must not eat humans, humans aren’t food”. And then rolled back on to her side.
Image source: anon, cottonbro studio / Pexels
#8
When we first brought our baby daughter home from the hospital. My preschool son walked up to her in her crib, looked at her and said “Hello. Welcome back.”.
Image source: BoredBSEE, freestocks / Unsplash
#9
My son used to talk about when “ he was alive before” and things he did in his “old life”.
Image source: anon, Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
#10
My four year old keeps talking about how her daughter died in the water and she couldn’t fit in the hole and the map got all wet so she couldn’t read it. The daughter’s name was Gina. My kid has never, ever heard the name Gina.
Yesterday she told me that my dead dad “is fine with being dead. He’s ok.”.
Image source: psnugbootybug
#11
My daughter was probably around 4 years old when we had this conversation:
Daughter: dad, you know how water is poisonous?
Me (confused): um, water isn’t poisonous.
Daughter: it is if you put poison in it …
Image source: Sterling_Johnson, Pixabay / Pexels
#12
My three yr-old daughter came up to me as I was sitting on the couch, reading. She leaned against my knee and heaved a big sigh…sort of an existential despair type sigh.
‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’ looking down at her curly head, while her face was turned into my leg.
She turned her head up and said, ‘I’m tired of this planet…I want to go back to the star where I came from…’, looking me straight in the eye.
I picked her up, hugged her close, and said something like, ‘I know, sweetie…I know.’
I never asked her about it again; several times I sort of alluded to something that would give her an opening, if she wished it…but, she never brought it up again.
Image source: Spirit50Lake, William Fortunato / Pexels
#13
I was putting my 3 year old to bed and she said, “mommy, can you tell me a story where we all get electrocuted.”
Image source: SunnyTheToad, Tatiana Syrikova / Pexels
#14
This happened last week.
My two year old is sitting down at the table for dinner. It’s dark outside. He looks outside and says “What is that?”
He doesn’t know how to say “who” yet. When meeting new people he says “what is that?” My wife and I look outside and don’t see anything… It’s dark. We look back at him. He’s staring into the darkness. He’s a kid, his eyes are new, he sees better than us.
We freak out. Is there someone outside in a dark outfit and we can’t make it out, and he can? I grab a flashlight, go outside, looking for the trespasser. Nothing.
Come back in, he makes the same comment. I sit next to him and look in the direction he is. Like over 200 feet away, on another house, there is a small LED American flag that is turned on. It’s barely a foot wide.
“Is what you’re looking at red and blue?”
“Yeah!”
“That’s a flag, buddy.”.
Image source: theTrebleClef
#15
Mine isn’t very good, but it creeped us out pretty well. Our 16 month old son was going to bed, and my wife said”say goodnight dad!” and my son removed his pacifier said “goodnight dad” completely clearly, well enunciated, no baby syllables at all, and has since refused to repeat it.
Image source: Espelancer, Alicia / Pexels
#16
Five year old stares around wide eyed and genuinely asked is this even real? Is this real life or like a game. I had a minor existential crisis.
Image source: OviliskTwo, Ahmed akacha / Pexels
#17
A few greatest hits:
When my son was about 2/3, for a few days in a row he told me that there was someone in his room with “no eyes, just ears” the night before.
For a while around age 3, that same son got confused about the meaning of “dead” and would use it to mean “inanimate”. So a stuffed animal cat would be “a dead cat,” and a doll would be “a dead kid” etc.
Now, at 4 years old, when he’s having a tantrum about something mundane, like he doesn’t want to go to bed or doesn’t want to get dressed, he’ll threaten to “make himself not alive anymore.”
Meanwhile, when my daughter was around 5 years old, she discovered the concept of wills and inheritance (probably from the Aristocats movie, if I recall) and went through a phase of asking if various items of mine—usually sparkly stuff like jewelry—would be hers one day after I had died.
Fun times.
Image source: Rosa_gallica, Ketut Subiyanto / Pexels
#18
While I’m a parent, the creepiest thing I’ve experienced was while at work at a childcare centre. I work with infants and we have a sleep room, sort of separated from the play area. (I imagine many infant rooms work this way but that’s beside the point). The sleep room was dark since we had set it up for nap time while the children ate their lunch when one of the boys looked into the darkness, smiled, waved and said “hi!”.
I looked over to the room and there was definitely nothing there. He was pretty friendly though and would usually smile, wave and say “hi!” to people as they walked past the room.
I asked my coworker if she would mind putting the kids to sleep that day as she hadn’t heard him say this.
Yes, I sacrificed my coworker to the ghost along with the children. They had a good run.
Image source: MamaSweeney24, MUGESH DSRAJ / Pexels
#19
More cute than creepy, but still very surprising- when my niece was a baby, she had these little wind-up turtle toys for the bath. Before she was even crawling properly, she would snatch the turtles out of the water with her mouth.
I’m talking full-on predator instincts, slowly tracking the toy with her eyes, and then launching her face towards it and coming back up with it in her mouth. She’d laugh when she got it, but was completely deadpan while focusing on it. Maybe a year old.
And that’s why we call her our little velociraptor
Also yes, we made sure she was safe in the bath and pulled her back upright immediately.
Image source: majorex64
#20
My son had an imaginary friend named Xavier… but Xavier was the ghost of a little boy who was in his room. He’d have whole conversations with this supposed ghost. It was f*****g creepy. He forgot all about him within a few weeks of starting preschool and has no memory of him now.
Image source: zerbey, Alexander Grey / Pexels
#21
Not my kid, but my nephew. Aged about 3 I was showing him a Sonic the Hedgehog game and he went “I’ve played that before, with my old Grandad”.
His Mum explained that he regularly talks about his old life and she’d pieced this much together from him…
– He died when he was 13
– All his family were very sad
– He had lots of brothers and sisters
– He lived in a flat with his old mummy and daddy who were very nice, but didn’t have many teeth
– He picked my SIL and BIL to be his new Mummy and Daddy
He was very consistent and very persistent that his old mummy and daddy were good people when SIL said to someone “It sounds like they were crackheads”
Pretty weird. Not sure if he still talks about them now he’s started school.
Image source: biscuitboy89
#22
I caught my nephew bringing food to a dead wolf he named Cody. We all thought Cody was a friend from school because he had a classmate named Cody that he would go hang out with. Nope. I followed him to Cody’s house which was a cave about 50 feet out of town in the woods and there was all sorts of wrappers from snacks and a decaying wolfs body.
Image source: DTG_420
#23
For a while, when my son was 3/4, he would cry and scream because he dreamed there was a tall man at the end of his bed, who was completely black and had holes where his eyes should be.
His nightmares were really bad for a while, and I can’t blame him.
Image source: Kthulhu42, Vika Glitter / Pexels
#24
My daughter (about 2.5 at the time) saying Hi John! to nobody. I said, kind of amused, “John who, honey?”
“John G____!” she declared. A cousin of mine, who had died by suicide across the country 6 years earlier. This was a 2nd cousin, not a last name of anybody she would have known or met.
“Where’s John G?” I asked, and she trotted out into the hallway and pointed to the stairs. Not down the stairs, but straight ahead, if that makes sense.
We waved hi to John, and then swiftly changed the subject.
Image source: Kateysomething
#25
When my daughter was young, we’d be riding in the car & she’d randomly say: “My sisters are here!” Then animatedly whisper to the empty seat beside her. She was very lighthearted about the whole thing, she spoke of “Ira” & other sisters that she didn’t know their names. She was always happy to see them, being an only child, imaginary friends weren’t a concern to me. What was worrisome was it only happened near cemeteries. It was one of those creepy things you’d try to explain away. She’d say it & I’d look around, relieved to see no headstones in sight, only to find a small family plot buried in the brush along the roadside a few moments later. Once it happened on vacation, she said it at the base of a hill. As we crested the hill, there was a cemetery on the other side. I have no clue why & she never mentioned the cemeteries or ever acknowledged them. It happened frequently & I would just shrug it off, eventually she got older, it stopped.
She’s a teen now, says when she thinks of it, it’s like a dark room full of different girls with the light only shining on the girl she knew as Ira in the forefront.
I googled the girl name Ira, is means ‘watchful’ in Hebrew.
Image source: bluevioletblackbird
#26
My 2 year old regularly talks to a “baby brother” in the dark at bedtime. He points at shadowy corners and says baby brother!! He doesn’t have a baby brother. And on more than one occasion my husband and I have heard the pitter-patter of feet at night only to realize our 2 year old is fast asleep. So ya, we have a toddler ghost I guess.
Image source: spacebun3000
#27
One day when my son was about 3, he started asking all kinds of interesting questions about his younger sister. He was providing details about the way she dresses and her personality. I kept trying to ask if he meant his cousins or a friend from school, maybe a character on his favorite TV show, but this only made him more upset. By the time my wife came in the room he was nearly stamping his feet asking these questions I couldn’t answer. After my wife tried to calm him down and assure him that there was no ‘little sister,’ he got even more upset and screamed, “Then why does she look just like you?” This caused my wife to run out of the room crying and slam the door to the bedroom behind her.
Just over a year earlier, my wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks in. It’s an emotional event she still hasn’t completely recovered from to this day, and to this day, I still have no idea to whom he was referring.
The good news is that this sort of talk ended that day and was never spoke of again. He now has a real little sister. It was a spine tinglingly creepy conversation I’ll never forget.
Image source: thecwestions
#28
My partner’s nephew was really into commercial jingles when he was about four. Grandma was babysitting one night and, after she had put the kid to bed, she fell asleep on the couch in the living room.
Now, this was one of those wrap-around couches with a high back, so someone who is the height of a four year old can’t really be seen coming down the hallway by someone laying on the couch.
Well, around 1am Grandma is woken up by a small child’s voice slowly singing “Nationwide is on your side,” from somewhere in the dark behind her.
Scared her silly. Thanks, Brad Paisley!
Image source: twowaysplit
#29
I had a 10 yr old who got hit by a car and died.
People meant well but some of the comments were insane. Like well you’re young you can always have more. No bueno.
Anyway I was waiting with my 6 yr old for the bus and made a comment about not getting too close to the road. He said it’s ok Mommy if I die you can get another one.
He knows nothing about my daughter. It was 16 yrs ago. I lost it.
Image source: kw66
#30
My two younger ones would talk quite a bit about it before they started school. Who they were in a past life, I just took it as matter of fact, my son had been a German soldier in WW2, and my daughter had been on the run as a little girl with a another little girl with dark hair and eyes in France in WW2. She described running to a house that had a big blank wall next to it out in the country- they were running for their lives on a dirt road before dawn. I did some googling and there was a safe house that was still standing with a big cinder block wall next to it! It made me think maybe it’s true that we encounter the same person who we have things to work out still, until we fix things or something. Who can know for sure?
Image source: anon
#31
Oh I’ve got a good one! So my son was probably about 4 or 5. I wake him up every morning. I go in one morning and he is already awake in bed, his eyes wide open and blanket pulled up to his chin. He is completely still and just staring at the corner of his room. I look at him, look at the corner, wait a couple of seconds, and asked him what was wrong. Still looking at the corner, he says “Somebody crawled on the floor, and up the wall and looked around. When he looked at me his head did this.” Then he pointed his finger in the air, and just started spinning it in a circle very fast. I put my hand on his back and said, “lets go get breakfast and watch some cartoons.” He looked very freaked out and I wanted to get his mind off of it. As he is walking down the hall in front of me, he sort of half whispers out loud “He just faded away…” I didn’t let him know it, but I was freaking out inside! He is 8 years old now and I asked him if he remembers it. He said he does, and that he saw it another time backwards crawling on his ceiling before just fading away again. Freaky.
Image source: Time_Trigger
#32
Watching my nephew. We were playing tag and I was chasing him around the house when he like disappeared. He showed up behind me and I said, “ oh there you are Dylan how’d you get there?” He looked me dead in the face serious as ever and said, “ I’m not Dylan” in a deep raspy voice. I laughed it off and told him to go watch tv.
Image source: anon
#33
When my kid was around 2ish, she told me one morning “mommy, the ghost picked me up last night”. I was like wtffff because I’ve never talked to her about ghosts or used the word ghost or anything along those lines (something she could’ve easily picked up at daycare or from a kids show or something).
A few years later when she was around 5ish, she was like “mommy, remember how I used to cry at night?” (she was a terrible sleeper and would wake up like 4+ times a night and cry until we came to get her). She said “It’s because the ghost used to come into my room and pick me up at night”.
Image source: anon
#34
My daughter told me she loves me so much she wishes she could wear my face!
Apparently there’s no returns on creepy kids….
Image source: ExcellentFoundation6
#35
Me and my 15 month old share a room and sometimes she just stares at me while I sleep. It freaks me out when I wake up and the first thing I see is a tiny child staring at me. To make it worse sometimes she just stares and whispers at me and it sounds like she’s putting a curse on me.
Image source: CrockyCroc
#36
This was almost 20 years ago. My youngest son was about 3 I think. I was up late on a Friday or Saturday night watching TV while the kids were sleeping. My son comes out of his room and says “Dad come see the lady in my room.” I was a little freaked out so I went with him. We get to his room and no one is there. He says “she’s gone now”. I asked where she was or something like that and he says “She comes out of the wall”.
Image source: HumpieDouglas
#37
Maybe not very unsettling, but still…
I was pregnant, waiting my second child and my first born was about 2 years old. She had some speech delays and usually formed sentences containing max 2 or 3 words. Anyhow…
I was making dinner and my daughter was in the kitchen with me. Suddenly she looks at me, points up with her finger and states calmly and matter of factly: “I used to watch you from up there.”
I had no words for her, I simply turned around and stared at her. She smiled and ran off to play. Now I wish I would’ve asked her more about what she meant by that…
Image source: Particular_Flow191
#38
My son was almost 3 years old when he called me to his room about 5 minutes after he was put to bed. I asked him what’s wrong, and he replied “I’m scared”. I asked him “What are you afraid of?” “I’m scared of the old lady with the angry, red eyes!”
I figured he saw something on the telly or his ipad, so I, while bent over his baby bed in the corner, asked him where he’d seen this old lady with the angry, red eyes. “She’s standing right behind you”.
Damn, that was chilling. Worst of all, I turned around, slooowly, looked around and said there’s nobody here – everything’s ok. Kissed him goodnight and left him but let the door halfway open. Still feel bad about it, but wasn’t going to let some angry old, red-eyed ghost b***h f**k with my family.
Image source: paatus75
#39
The kids at my son’s school have this game where they mock the sewer grates by shouting “YOU CANT GET ME, PENNYWISE!”
The 1st time he did that at home certainly gave me pause considering no one his age should have ever seen IT.
Image source: orphan_grinder42069
#40
My son was around 4 years old. I was driving him to daycare, and he was uncharacteristically grouchy. Didn’t want to go. After around the third time I explained that mommy had to go to work, he got real quiet. Then, his tiny voice piped up from the backseat: “The darkness is watching you. In the night they’ll come for you”
He never explained it. I slept with the hallway light on.
Image source: caution_soft_berm
#41
I was the creepy child. I used to have an imaginary friend i called bibble. One day my mom walked in on me sitting in a chair smiling hella wide at nothing. I told her bibble was taking my picture. She’s still convinced I had a demon friend.
Image source: MennyNdJaddy
#42
My daughter (4) was playing in the backyard one day and I quickly went inside to do something in the kitchen on our first floor. I did not go upstairs to the bedrooms at all. After a minute or so I came back out. She said “mommy why were you in my room? I saw you look out the window at me!”
This freaked me out because we were the only people home at the time. I said I didn’t go upstairs and she insisted she saw me look out her window. With great hesitation I went upstairs to look around but nobody was in my house lol – ghost or otherwise.
Image source: Stunning_Attention82
#43
Big brother of 3 here
When I was about 16, I used to sleep in the same room as my first little brother (in a bunk bed) and my little sister (who had her baby bed at the other side of the room) , who was 2 at the time. It was late, around 2a and I was deeply absorbed in a book.
Complete silence, not a single car or person outside, even the cat was fast asleep and I was drifting off to sleep, when my sister suddenly lets out the sharpest and highest scream I’ve ever heard.
I am simply unable to forget this scream. The amounts of complete and utter horror that were contained within those two seconds bolted me awake like an entire pint of vinegar down my mouth. The pure unfiltered fear my body sensed had my breath hasty and my brain producing enough adrenalin to punch through a steel wall. I couldn’t sleep that night. Rigid and on edge until sunlight.
There are still marks of my fingers on the plank of the bed from how hard I gripped it.
8 years later, I’ve had a fair share of scary and creepy experiences, but nothing prompted a gut response as deep as my little sister’s scream.
Image source: SpectroTemmie
#44
My four year old nonverbal autistic nephew likes to randomly look past you and giggle like there’s something standing behind you. Sometimes you will try to get his attention, but he’s too entertained and focused on what’s behind you. He doesn’t do it to be funny or anything like that; he’s done it since he was a baby. I know there’s a rational explanation for it, like he’s super focused on a spot of light or a speck of dirt – but it’s still creepy as heck when it happens.
Image source: anon
#45
I asked my mom and this is what she said.
“you were playing with toys on the couch and kept saying hello to someone. i asked you who you were talking to and you said, “”the man! in all black! he’s walking up the stairs right now. he says hello.””
that house was holy watered up after (laugh).”.
Image source: anon
#46
I mentioned this just the other day.
My bedroom is really dark during the night. Woke up to my daughter right in front of my face whispering “mommy”. All I could see was just a big shadow when I woke up. Scared the s**t out of me.
My sons have done it too, just not as close to my face.
She’s also snuck in to our room in the middle of the night and grabbed my foot to wake me up. Childhood fear was realized except it was my own little monster instead of one that lives under the bed.
I’ve also caught one of my sons smooshing his bits in between the toilet seat and bowl. He was taking forever in the bathroom so I got up to check on him and saw him doing that. Think he was 5 at the time.
Image source: SaveusJebus
#47
My nephew decided he didn’t like to walk down the hall at night to use the bathroom. He started peeing in cups and glasses but would dump them out before anyone was the wiser. However pooping was a different matter, for that he would go into his closet and push a pile of clothes to the side and poop on the floor. I discovered this pile of poop once while house-sitting when they were away. I cleaned it up and had a private conversation with him he promised he would stop.
About a year later my brother and sister in law went out of town and wanted me to babysit while they were away for the weekend. My sister in law told me before they left that they caught my nephew pooping in the closet about a month ago and warned me and requested I check in mornings to make sure he wasn’t doing it anymore. Apparently he had also done it at a friend’s house during a sleepover.
I don’t know if he still does it but he was about 7 or 8 when this was going down.
Image source: slytherinprolly
#48
When my son was 3 yo he was learning the alphabet pretty quickly. One morning he woke up and flawlessly started saying the alphabet backwards. I was half asleep and thought wow that’s cool. Later after coffee and have woken up a bit I realized he was never taught to say it backwards…I was in a state of shock thinking how was this possible for a 3 yo to think “let me try it backwards”.
Image source: SedlavJ
#49
Night terrors. 4 year old wakes up screaming, running into the living room, looking right at me as as I try to comfort him and looks right through me and then at me, as if I was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen or could have ever imagined, and then some.
Image source: Puzzleheaded-Mind525
#50
My youngest slipped and fell in the shower when she was 8. She broke her two front teeth. Fast forward to last year, she told my wife and I that she did it on purpose. She was intending to break her arm so she could get sympathy from her friends at school.
Image source: thefredlund5
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