How naughty were you as a child?

I was a right goody two shoes when I was a child The worst I can remember was pretending to be fast asleep at nap time (reception class had a morning nap) and when the class went to assembly I played in the sand pit till they came back. I might've progressed from bad to worse but we moved house shortly after the naughty nap and that (and subsequent housemoves with my dad's job on the railways) started me off being rather shy. It paid off because I really got my head down at school. Once my younger sister arrived, she quickly became the rebellious one and I often confessed to her crimes and got a smack so my dad would stop being Basil Fawlty and let us off parade! Pathetic!

I particularly liked the tale of the little crafty 3 year old who was covered in tar!?
I do remember the hot bubbly tar at the edges of roads was pretty irresistible in the long Summer holidays.

Not saying!
However, have hugely enjoyed reading the comments of those posters who are only now coming clean about their crimes!
Juvenile stuff is probably part of the learning process, but it's what makes adults who live a life of crime worth studying, because they never 'grow out of it'.

I was very naughty - at school I was bored and therefore got into constant mischief until preparing for exams kicked in. At home I had temper tantrums. I think that's why I ended up teaching excluded kids because I had some idea where they were coming from although compared to most I had a charmed childhood.

I don't think I was naughty. My parents weren't at all strict and gave me quite a lot of freedom but that was perhaps because they knew I would behave anyway. My school friends used to laugh at me (affectionately) because I continued to wear my beret after everybody else had whipped theirs off once we were out of sight of the school.

When I was very young - about 7 - I did climb over the fence at the end of our garden, despite express instructions not to do so. I gashed my underarm on a jagged piece of wire and had to have several stitches. I remember Mum saying that's what happens when you're naughty. Maybe that accounts for my subsequent wimpishness!

I was normally a very good child, though sometimes got into trouble for talking at the wrong time.
I'm very ashamed to recall being very cruel aged about 6? to a little pretty golden haired girl ( younger than me) by throwing a ball into some nettles and asking her to fetch it, just because I wanted to make her cry! Isn't that terrible? I have hardly told anyone that as its so shameful!
I did tell my children that aged 11 at boarding school I (as many others had done ) sneaked out of school on a boiling hot summers night with a friend and crept down to the school open air swimming pool for some 'skinny dipping' as its called now. It was an expellable offence but we weren't caught! My daughter was extremely shocked to hear this!

Not at all naughty. Dad was very strict but fair and a damned good father but I knew I had to toe the line, 'or else', I haven't a clue what the 'or else' would have been but I sure as hell wasn't going to find out. No it was not bullying nor dominance I had wonderful parents who did their best throughout the whole of their lives for me.

I only ever recall being 'smacked' on the leg by my mum but I knew dad was ill in bed so in my adult years I guess she was under undue stress as it was so out of her comfort zone to have done it. She was a very sweet natured woman.

On the whole I was not a bad child but had my 'moments' as has everyone else.
We used to pass an 'abandoned, overgrown piece of ground' on our way to school and one day my big sister saw in there some shiny red apples hanging on a tree so we fought our way in to the tree and took a couple each for our play piece. We were coming out when a lady asked us what we were doing on her land, we were mortified! She said that she didn't mind us having some apples but would rather we had asked first and invited us to come back with her to where the trees were. She then proceeded to fill our satchels to the brim and waved us off to school. What a pain those apples were all day long but what a clever lady to do such a thing as we were never tempted to go back.

when I was very young my mother told me if I ever stole from a shop, the shopkeeper would "wipe the floor with me". I took it literally, thinking he would dip my head in a bucket and wash his floor! This was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow for my entire life.

Hi Anni ( waves )

Oh dear, l think I was a rather naughty child ! I used to scrump lovely juicy gooseberries from the next door neighbours garden & ( food theme developing here ) scrump plums from the garden at the end of our lane. I also used to clamber up the shelves in the pantry to steal my baby brothers Smarties ! I was always being sent to the headmistress study for talking in class, & remember being exceedingly cheeky to a policeman who told me off for scootering in the park. I've just remembered that I broke a ( very small ) window, while bouncing a tennis ball, at my convent school, nobody was around, so I got away with it !

Double whammy when I was about seven. I was left alone at the dining table with a great aunt who was a pain in the proverbial. She who had to have thank you letters that were perfect because she had been a headmistress.

I folded a piece of bread in half so I had a large whole in it and then spat peas through it at said aunt. Inevitably the old trout told my parents and oh boy did I cop it.

My response was to burst into tears and confess that some weeks earlier at school I had been sent to spend the day in the Babies for talking during Assembly. The aunt then tried to apologise to me for causing me distress. I loathed her to the day she died.

I don't recall doing anything particularly naughty , as one of 4 we were usually in trouble for one thing or another but my husband...now that's a whole different matter.

He was about 4 I think when he and a friend went up to the spare room in his house, and opening a tin of green paint, climbed on the bed and proceeded to paint each , and everything in sight , including throwing the paintbrush up onto the ceiling !!

Oh, did I mention they took all their clothes off first!

As his Mum told me , she didn't even punish them, she said being scrubbed with turps and a brillo pad was punishment enough :-)

I was a bit of a goody two shoes. I hated to be 'in trouble' and couldn't really see the sense of breaking rules anyway. I wasn't perfect (always opinionated and a bit 'lippy') but I have grown up the same, law abiding and disliking pointless rebellion.

Forced to go on a family walk and picnic, I waited until all the food was out and everyone sitting down before rounding up a herd of cows and driving them straight through everyone!! Don't know where the farming skills came from!!

I was pretty wild in the mid to late 40s when Dad was away in the Navy and everyone else was too busy to supervise me. Then I changed with the dreaded puberty.
The best thing I did was to organise a mass fight, girls v. boys, on the field near our house. The girls won!
Looking back, I know I was very upset by the War, and thought, it's all men's fault, why do they always want to fight and kill people? Maybe my battle was a reaction to that, teach them a lesson.

Would have said I was as good as gold but do remember, with a gang of others, leaning on wooden posts all the way up the avenue to break them, then picking them up on the way back down to add to our bonfire pile. When we were almost at the bottom of the avenue one post was missing. The old lady 2 doors from my Mamma obviously saw us, took the post and waited for our return - she was sitting in the window looking at us. We fled, hid the other posts under the bonfire and I was terrified right up until bonfire night - and beyond. She was a lovely old lady and I'm sure didn't tell but my guilt stayed.

I think I was too frightened of being hit on the back of the knees with a ruler at school to do anything wrong and at home my father would take his belt to us for next to no reason at all. The only thing I can think of was scrumping apples from the school down the road with my brothers. Pretty sure I was not the instigator and we never got caught.

Even my teenage rebellion was 'taking the dog for a walk' but really sneaking off to church behind my father's back.

Perhaps I can make up for it when I am in a care home and hold wild parties?

OMG! The things I could tell you, lol. However, one particular time springs to mind, having talked to my DH about it only the other day.

My sister and I lived in a small village, but having moved there rather than being born there, we were 'outsiders', and therefore were bullied quite badly by the bigger village girls at playtime. So one day while waiting for the school bus to take us home, (we lived just outside the village), one of the big girls came to have another go at my big sister. I can't remember who thought of it, or what on earth inspired us, but the next thing we knew, we'd tied the girl to the chicken wire fencing, wait for it ............. by her hair! The school bus then arrived and we jumped on it and went home. Shock! Horror! Ashamed? Not me! She and the others deserved everything they got!

Which leads me on to the time that another big girl was picking on my sister, and as she had a long pony tail, and I was 5 years younger than her, I swung on her ponytail with my full weight, I was quite tubby at the time, so she soon let go of my sister, lol.

I could tell you numerous other misdemeanours, but I think that's quite enough for one day.

Most of the 'mischief' that I got up to was just part and parcel of playing out - from the ages of 6 to 10 (late sixties), I lived on a building site, and it was our playground. Once the builders went home, we would set up den in the piles of triangular roof supports and have mock battles with cement balls, made from the still-soft cement that was left each day. We played in the half-built houses, and one day a newly-built internal wall in one of them collapsed while we were climbing on it. Obviously, we never told our parents what had happened.

I had a real fear of being in trouble. Trying to avoid it led me to do a few things that I shouldn't: At about three, I got covered in tar while playing out in my best clothes with my brother, and rather than go home and face the music, I went to the neighbour's house (a friend of my mum's) and told her that my mum had sent me to see if she could get the tar off me. A bit crafty for a three-year old!
At six, I forgot to take my swimming things to school one day, so wrote my own letter to the teacher, supposed to be from my mum, saying that "C has a cold, so can't go swimming today". It seemed convincing to me!!! The teacher, bless her, just looked at me and told me gently not to forget my things again.

You get the picture!

That's all I'm admitting to for the moment.

I was sat in morning assembly at Junior school and, when the time came to sing the daily hymn, decided to have a very quick chat to my friend. Suddenly, from the school stage, came the very loud voice of one of our Welsh male teachers. I looked up and he was pointing straight at me (or so I thought) 'You, girl, come to my room at break' he commanded. I felt the whole school was looking at me. By morning break I was on the verge of tears at the thought of having to go to his classroom. I stood outside for a minute or two summoning up the courage to knock on the door. When I did I was told to 'come in'. He looked a bit surprised to see me and asked what I was doing there. I confessed all - I am sure I saw him do a quick smile but then his teaching face was back. He pointed to another girl who was sat writing lines. 'That is the girl I was talking to' he said, 'But, as you were also chatting you can sit there with her and do a page of lines of 'I must not talk during assembly' as well' I always made sure I behaved myself during assembly after that!

As my father had a hotel, during the Christmas holidays and at Easter we used to hire the house next to the hotel so that guests could use our rooms; a weird idea nowadays.
My mother was not one for bringing up young kids, so during Christmas day and Easter day she would help in the hotel, leaving my brother and myself alone in the rented house, again something that one would not be allowed to do nowadays.
One night, while she was helping in the hotel, I said to my brother that I would do a dare. I would get out of the window in my nighty and go out to the cliff, at that time I would have been between 6-8 yrs of age.
My mother did find out so I was given the penalty!

We used to get up to all sorts of mischief. Another one was lying on the flat roof of the dining room, where my brother had binoculers and I had a caterpalt. He would tell me where to send small stones in the hotel garden, near to where the poor old World War 1 pensioners were sitting in their deck chairs.
It was the thrill of watching their expressions when they heard the noise of the stone drop near them, naturally never at them.

I pulled a face at the unpopular school secretary as I passed the window of her office. She reported me to the Rector who summoned me to his study and I fully expected to receive the full might of his notorious 'strap'. However, I pleaded my innocence and, looking straight at him, said,'But sir, I was smiling at her.' Goodness knows why, but he chose to believe me! My sisters say I was a naughty child, but apart from that and perhaps a few minor offences, I can't remember that far back.

I was such a cowardy custard I never did anything naughty at all. I was a very dull child and actually am probably a very dull adult. Doing the right thing is built into my being.
Now my son.....

Evidently downtoearth