Ever since I was a child, I’ve been told what to do and what not to do.

Most of time, I didn’t listen much.

The other week, I was watching Dateline on NBC, which featured a segment entitled “My Kid Would Never Do That.”

In this particular segment, NBC news reporter Natalie Morales took unsuspecting children and tested how they would react in dangerous situations with strangers using actual scenarios convicted child predators have used to target children.

Dateline recorded the scenarios and screened them while the children’s parents watched via hidden camera. Hired actors try to trick their cherubs in setup situations using the known tactics of child predators.

You all know the tactics I’m talking about, too. Enticements that include candy or a trip in a white unmarked van with dark, tinted windows to Disneyland.

And let’s face it: kids are easily tricked. Especially when promises of puppies, candy and ice cream are involved.

The children in the show were usually tested in groups, all by the same actor who is persistent at trying to trick them. Sometimes, the groups of targeted kids were all the same age, sometimes they were mixed ages.

When the children were tested in the company of a child who was older than they were, the older child would usually recognize the “stranger danger” and remember the lessons their parents had taught him or her.

However, when the test was conducted with only the younger children (ages 7-10) present, they would sense that something wasn’t right, but were still easily duped by the actor.

In one of the scenarios, 8-year-old twins Maya and Dallas are working on a poster supporting U.S. soldiers inside a canopy-style tent, rigged with cameras, in front of a building, with no adult supervision.

Then, they hear the unmistakable sound of an ice cream truck headed their way. Just as any child would, the twins are immediately excited upon hearing the alluring music. Soon, an actor pulls up in an ice cream truck and begins to ask the children what they are doing.

The kids explain their task and the actor tells the children that he usually gives out free ice cream to kids who do nice things for the troops.

The children’s ears and faces perk up at the mere mention of free ice cream, like a dog that hears its master shaking the bag of dog food in another room of the house. Both kids seemed reluctant at the actor’s first attempt to ruse them, but then he offered to let them to check out the inside of his ice cream truck and let them turn on the music.

Maya and Dallas follow the actor to the back of the truck and hop right in, then begin to check it out.

The parents stare in disbelief as their children do the unthinkable.

All this got me thinking about how dumb kids are and how many times a parent or another parental figure needs to tell a child not to do something. Otherwise, chances are the parents will be ignored and do exactly what their parents thought they would never do. You hardly need a Dateline special to tell you that.