Sure, family isn't always defined by blood, but more often than not a DNA test isn't needed to prove relations. Kids turn into their parents, sometimes really early in life... and develop the same quirky habits as their moms and dads.
d0uble0h asked parents of Reddit: What's something your kid has done that made you go "No DNA test needed. That kid is mine?"
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
10. Noodle head.
My son frequently runs around waving his arms like spaghetti noodles making a sound akin to a crazed turkey. Recently my mom sent me an mp4 that she had transferred from an old old VHS tape. It showed me at 8 years old doing the exact same goddamn thing.
9. How we sleep.
I'm the kid. My dad has always slept completely covered under the blankets with just a little opening around his mouth so he can breathe - it's something my mom has always shrugged off as a weird quirk of his. Then she came in to my room one day when I was 2 and I was sleeping the exact same way, little blow hole and everything.
8. Uniqueness leaves no doubt.
Both of my children look nothing like me but the second they start concentrating they stick their tongues out. Not in a little cute way but like their tongues become hyper-inflated slugs oozing saliva down their chins. I've never found anything quite so disturbing, knowing I do exactly the same thing.
7. We are all our parents in some way.
My daughter spotted another kid her age at the food court at the mall and leaned over the half wall separating our tables and loudly and enthusiastically exclaimed "HIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
I met my best friend in a similar way. I have very little filter on saying hello to people if I think we share interests.
My one-year old isn't talking yet but ENTHUSIASTICALLY waves at every baby she sees. I'm talking both arms straight up and flapping up and down.
6. Cooking habits?
We both have tried reheating leftover pizza in the oven, but both forgot to take it out of the cardboard box causing mini fires in the oven, about two months apart.
I managed to melt the handle of a pan that was being stored on the oven and got such a lecture of my mum for it.
Three months later, guess who melted the handle on the replacement? I felt smug for the rest of the day after laughing. She no longer stores pans in the oven.
5. Normal is boring.
My daughter's jokes, mannerisms, the way she thinks about the world. She's a little f*ckin weirdo, just like her daddy. Plus she has my eyebrows.
Yo she should give your brows back, lol.
Not til he gives back her nose.
I'm still waiting for the f*ckin airplane to come in.
4. Better than snoring.
Wife took a picture of me and my daughter sleeping side by side. Same exact pose.
I took a picture of my husband, his brother, and his dad at the beach and it's hilariously obvious that husband and brother are basically mini-me clones of his dad - all three have the same stance, the same hand in the same pocket of very similar coats, same color scheme of clothing, same hairline, same jawline, same beard growth patterns. It's one of my favorite pictures, especially now that his crazy birth mom has started trying to insist that they're not actually his sons...
That last part sounds terrible, why would she wanna do that?
Because she's an actual factual crackhead.
3. I wish I could sleep like this.
Not mine, but my husband's.
That time they had to be awakened by cops.
We sent our 13-year-old twins to a summer video game design camp for a couple weeks. They stayed in a dorm. One morning, they didn't come down to the cafeteria for breakfast. A camp instructor went to bang on their door and yell. Nothing. Another instructor with a deep, loud voice tried banging and yelling. Nothing. This triggers the emergency protocol: dorm staff stands by with keys to their dorm room, but cannot open their door until police are present, because there's non-zero chance that inside are dead bodies, drugs, etc.
Cop arrives. Opens the door to find two dumb teenagers, BOTH of their damned phone alarm clocks blaring inches from their faces. Cop stands over one kid, shakes him gently. Kid opens his eyes, confused, sees cop, and immediately starts busting up laughing.
Comparison:
My husband worked in a lab during grad school where his best access to the fancy machines for his research was in the middle of the night. So he'd often get back to his apartment at, say, 3 AM, after many hours of working in a place where you can't eat, hungry. One night, he put some chicken breasts under the broiler. Walked to the other end of the long, narrow apartment. Sat down on his bed for "just a second."
He was awakened at 5 AM by the fireman who had just chopped through his apartment door, waded through the billows of black smoke, and extinguished his chicken. The fireman was shouting at him for a while, and had to grab him and shake him. When my husband woke up to a fireman in full gear with an axe in his hand standing over him, WITH THE SMOKE ALARM STILL GOING OFF LIKE IT HAD BEEN FOR OVER AN HOUR, he just started laughing while the fireman berated him.
BONUS: He didn't clean up the black ooze under and around his stove (the dried mixture of chicken-ashes and extinguisher-foam) for months. Not until his mom was coming to visit. Not unlike the mess in our twins' room, which makes me want to curl up in a ball and scream profanities and develop a drug habit.
Yeah, in retrospect, maybe there was more thinking to be done before deciding to procreate with the guy.
2. A modern day da Vinci.
I'm the son, but when I was a kid, I used to write backwards. For example, I'd write the word example as e-l-p-m-a-x-e, but from right to left so it would look correct. Apparently my dad did the same thing as a kid
My sister did the same thing for years when she started writing. The words would read in the correct order, but she'd start with the last letter first.
We just assumed it was because she's left handed.
1. Cold.
My son was just over a year old. My daughter was a year and a half older than him. (2.5 years)
We had a baby gate and I decided to lock them out of the kitchen while I was making dinner. My son decided to clamber over.
Unfortunately we were potty training at the time so he was bare butt at that moment. This meant that his little scrotum got caught between the space where the two slats of the gate overlapped.
I got busy untangling my boy's mangled bits and my husband came running with all the screaming. As I cuddled my hysterical son as he cradled his poor, bruised, tiny bits, my husband stood there glaring at the situation.
Our daughter crossed her arms and glared, just like daddy.
"Pitiful situation," she growled with a shake of her head. Then she stomped off to play with her toys.
My husband had never been so proud. That was his spawn, by blood and bone.
The one on the floor...?
"He'll learn or he won't," hubby said.
Turned out the kid could learn.