This baby may look cute, but in truth, he’s a master of deceit. Then his mother caught him red-handed.

Aww, look at the baby sleeping soundly. Or is he?

Benjamin was only a couple of months old. But he was already learning how to trick his mom. Sometimes, he’d appear to be asleep, only to be wide awake the next second. The mother couldn’t always tell when Benjamin was pulling the “fake sleeping” routine. But one day, she highly suspected that that was what he was doing.

So she took out her phone and started recording.

She called out his name very slowly.

The boy didn’t react. But it seemed like the boy was trying a little too hard to hold back a smile.

So the mom called out his name once more.

After this, the baby’s eyelids moved. But his eyes stayed shut. Was he trying to peek out without his mom noticing?

So the mom moved in closer. Then Benjamin’s eye’s opened just a tiny bit.

His mouth also contorted into a smile.

Then he closed his eyes and moved his mouth back into a rested position again. He suspected that he’d been rumbled, but he wasn’t ready to admit defeat.

The mom then asked him if he was, “a smiley boy.”

The video ended there. It then appeared on YouTube, where it soon went viral. To date, it has gained over 7.1 million views. It also has more than 297,000 likes and 6,700 comments. People have been saying things like this:

Six years went by, and Benjamin’s mom didn’t post any more updates. But then, in mid-2020, she started documenting Benjamin once more.

Naturally, Benjamin had done lot of growing in the intervening years.

The now seven-year-old Benjamin had swapped his passion for treachery with bike riding.

The updated video shows Benjamin riding all-around a bike track near his home.

Benjamin also recently pulled out his tooth.

We all know what that means, he’s going to get a visit from the Tooth Fairy real soon.

Will he try and pull off his fake sleeping routine to get a glance at her? If he does, he might get shocked at how familiar she looks.

Benjamin’s video actually works to substantiate a claim that a British study makes about sneakiness in babies.

The 2007 study, conducted by Doctor Vasudevi Reddy at the University of Portsmouth, claims that babies learn to be sneaky before they learn to talk.

The study documented a range of instances of babies tricking their parents.

For instance, one 11-month-old baby was caught reaching out for soil in a house plant that they knew they weren’t allowed to touch. But when the parents told him to stop, the baby turned the stretched hand into a wave, pretending that that’s what he intended on doing all along.

So the message is clear: babies have been tricking us without our knowledge! They seem so innocent, but in actual fact, they are messing with our minds. The sad thing is that even though we now know this, babies are so cute, we’ll let them get away with their manipulations!

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Source: Living Purposely, The Globe and Mail