10 Superpowers Kids Have (And Adults Wish We Had)

By Charlotte Hilton Andersen, REDBOOK

Ever looked at your child bouncing around the room and sighed, "I wish I had that kind of energy!" Well, boundless energy isn't the only enviable super power that kids are born with.

1. The power to sleep anywhere anytime. Not only can my toddler fall asleep sitting up in her car seat surrounded by her screaming brothers, I've found my boys asleep inside a laundry basket, upright at the dinner table with a chicken leg clenched in his teeth and, most memorably, with his legs on his bookshelf and his head on his bed. Yes, that means his body was hanging in midair.

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2. Sturdy bones. I shudder remembering all the times I've seen one of my children trip, fall, tip over or roll down a flight of stairs. Thankfully they nearly always bounce right back up as if nothing happened. The one time my son needed stitches it was from standing next to the corner of a stair rail and bonking his head on it. I was right there and to this day I still don't know how that happened.

3. The ability to laugh at anything. Sure babies cry a lot, but they also laugh a lot-often within the same minute! If an adult did that we'd be called histrionic, but for kids it's just how they roll. And they can find the humor in anything from paper ripping to mom sneezing.

4. The ability to be easily entertained. When you think about it, Play-Doh is just a colored blob of squish. And yet I've seen kids entertained by a mini-tub for an hour. Who needs an iPhone when you have a spoon, a set of keys and a desiccated cricket to keep you busy?

5. A short memory. One minute it's, "I'm not your friend ever times 100!" and the next it's "Let's play house, I'll be the mom and you go get the guns." (And this is what happens when you read them Little House on the Prairie at bedtime.) Sure makes you look silly for harping on that one time 11 years ago when your sister said your haircut looked more like Rod Stewart than Rachel Green, doesn't it?

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6. The inability to be embarrassed. You could rock the one sock/swimsuit/mittens look too if you could just lose the notion that people staring at you is a bad thing. Ever watched a preschooler work a crowd? Even if you aren't charmed by their off-key recital, you have to give them props for chutzpah.

7. Being able to take one bite of a candy bar and then walk away. My toddler actually spit a Snickers bar out into my hand and said "icky."

8. Selective hearing. I can yell, "Who put their underwear in the toilet?!" 10 times with no answer but, if I so much as whisper "candy" they come stampeding. Think how handy this would be the next time your coworker launches into a 30-minute recap of a 20-minute TV show.

9. Eagle eyesight. You see lead-painted sharp choking hazard, they see delicious sparkly toy but either way at least someone found Grandma's missing earring!

10. Backup teeth. 'Nuff said.

What "super power" do your kids have that you wish you could too?

Read more of Charlotte on REDBOOK's The Motherboard blog.

Charlotte Hilton Andersen is a mom of 5 and the author of the book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything and the blog of the same name.

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