One of the hallmarks of young kids is that they are always trying to push their luck and find ways around certain boundaries, which can be fun and healthy.

What would you do if you had a student at school who always wanted to keep playing with paper or other things at his desk, even during lesson time, and one of the ways he did this was by trying to find loopholes in your instructions?

That is what a student did to the teacher in this story, and one day he was able to bait her into using very precise wording in her instructions, which technically allowed him to get away with not participating in that day’s lesson. It was all in good fun, and an adorable story.

Read through all the details below and see what you think.

Maliciously Funny Middle School Compliance

I’m a middle school teacher, and one of my seventh graders is an ADHD kid with a heavily active imagination.

Keeping kids busy can be very helpful.

He loves working with his hands, so he is always cutting up paper, braiding yarn, etc.

We always encourage him to clear his desk for class and at least try to keep the clutter away, and he always does it happily, although he sometimes has a little back and forth.

Kids can be so clever.

“Student, let’s start the lesson? Put the yarn away” “oh it’s not yarn, it’s technically nylon cords, so I can keep doing it, right?” This is always light-hearted and in no away aggressive, he knows he is being pedantic, it’s just for fun.

Preparing for his responses, I always try to find a way to phrase my sentences in a way it will be hard to counter and yesterday it backfired.

This kid is going to be a lawyer.

He was messing about with paper and he told me “teacher, today you can’t tell me to stop cutting paper, because I’m not cutting, I’m just folding” and he had a huge amount of folded pieces of paper on his desk.

So I said “very nice, student! So will you please stop manipulating paper so that we can start the class?” And smiled victoriously at him.

He pulled off his plan perfectly.

Little did I know, he looked at me and “what did you say? Stop manipulating paper?” And IMMEDIATELY proceeded to put away his notebooks and textbooks.

I knew I had been cooked and just told him he had outsmarted me again. He kept at his desk doing nothing for like a minute and then he laughed it off, winked and got his stuff back on the desk, no folding paper anymore.

Kids like this can be a lot of fun.

I love the little dude and I cherish these back and forth we have

This sounds like a cute kid and a great teacher who knows how to keep her students engaged.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this adorable story.

Lots of kids are clever in this way.

This commenter says her son could be this kid.

Here is a commenter who has a cousin who is this way.

She has a wonderful teaching style.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a landlord who took action after a resident refused to respect an assigned parking spot.

This commenter says she is a great teacher.

This kid is going places. He seems very clever. Of course, this teacher is helping him along the way by encouraging his great way of thinking.

She does a great job of letting him push the boundaries while still ensuring that he pays attention during the lesson.