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“I Didn’t Realize He Was Joking Until I Was Like 14”: 40 Hilarious Cases Of ‘Kid Logic’
Children are creative powerhouses, since they often take in new information daily, without being given any clear explanations about the “why” and “hows” of the world. The result is what some adults deem “kid logic” where they take a shot at working out the mechanics of the universe.
So one netizen asked the internet to share their own examples of bizarre and hilarious things they believed as kids. From the universe being black and white until the 60s, to various theories on how babies are made, people delivered stellar cases of “kid logic.” So get comfortable as you scroll through and be sure to upvote your favorite posts.
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I thought that bands lined up at the radio station waiting their turn to play their song and then went to the back of the line.
Way back in the 70's I thought my Grandpa had a car that told him where to go, like GPS today. As he was driving a green arrow on the dash would start flashing to the right. He would then turn right. Then another arrow flashed to the left. He would turn left. I was totally blown away.
One can’t just blame ignorance and leaps in logic on some of the things we sincerely believed as a child. Many parents (fathers in particular) have a penchant for having a little bit too much fun inventing and spreading disinformation. Or, perhaps equally as common, some parents refuse to reveal that adults don’t actually know everything about the universe and will simply make some facts up.
Regardless, this often leads to some amount of normal “magical thinking,” the process when a person imagines connections between things that are simply not true. As a kid has a lot less information to work with, can happen all the time, i.e. “if it works like that in my family, it must be true everywhere.”
i thought that every time i played with a toy the person who bought it for me would get money. i used to try and play with all my toys equally so everyone would get the same amount of money.
That your blood was a finite amount you had throughout your life and obviously that means old people die when they lose too much of their blood.
I was terrified every time I got a cut or scrape, and as a bonus I was/am still clumsy as all hell.
At 6 I got hit by a car. I was lucky that it was a side street and slower moving cars. I crawled to the curb after, noticing my elbows and knees were busted up and bleeding. I was crying and panicking and trying to cover the bleeding with my shirt when my mom arrived (I was just down the street and a watchful neighbor phoned my mother.). I got carried back home where an ambulance was waiting. I got patched up and the lovely EMT gentleman patching me up let me know that people make their own blood, so my "big boo-boos" weren't as bad as I thought. (BLESS YOU, SIR! Wherever you are now, I thank you. It's been 30 years and I never forgot his kindness and how he humored a small 6yo girl.)
When I saw a character die in a movie I thought the actor sacrificed themselves and died in real life for the sake of the film.
I thought there were two (or more) of each actor. If one died in a movie, then the other one would continue acting, while the first one was sent to the hospital to get fixed, and then return to acting.
A child has to learn everything for the first time but is often limited to what their physical senses can “detect.” So, as one might notice, the majority of “kid logic” listed here featured the physical appearance of something having an exaggerated effect on it. This often has comical results, where “superpowers” are attributed to items of clothing and, for example, the color of a car.
My grandparents on one side of the family have a house in our state and a cabin in another that we would spend weekends at growing up. For some reason, when I was really little, I didn't really get how that worked. Since you can go to Grandma's house or Grandma's cabin, I just assumed I had two identical grandmas, and one just lived at each house. To make it worse, I understood that I only had the one grandpa and just assumed he was married to two identical grandmas. My family still mentions this in jest occassionally.
My son asked me that question when he was little. "When you were little, was the world in color?"
I was born in 1981.
I genuinely thought you could hear the actual ocean anywhere you wanted by listening to a sea shell.
However, the desire to understand “why and how” tends to only really develop around the age of eight. Once a child starts to get a bit more independent, they might turn away from bombarding their parents with questions and will instead try to “figure it out” themselves. This list has just a few examples of the hilarious logical paths that they take.
I thought the chalk outlines from crime scenes were residue left by souls leaving the victims’ bodies.
My dad had a gay younger brother named Mark, my mother also had a gay younger brother named Mark. When I was 5 years old my dad told me if your name is Mark that means you're gay.... I didn't realize he was joking until I was like 14.
I was absolutely certain that if somebody got a 100-plus year prison sentence, they would leave their drying bones in there until the full sentence was completed.
This is a result of working with bad assumptions. While elements of a kid’s logic may be solid, they tend to often not recognize that just because something is true for them, doesn’t mean it’s universal. You can actually discover a lot about a child’s internal thoughts and family life just by seeing what they assume is the baseline.
Lions are boys and tigers are girls just like dogs are boys and cats are girls. Horses are boys and cows are girls and so on.
I thought putting sticky tape on torn paper would repair it. So like most kids, I was told putting a bandaid on a cut made it better. Which made sense because when you took it off the cut had started healing. Well I figured that sticky tape must do the same thing right? I used to pull tape off of things to check if it was "fixed" yet 🤦🏽♀️
When I was little I thought gunpoint was a street so whenever I saw the news that someone got robbed at gunpoint. I would think to myself why would people go there if they're just going to get robbed?
That's a quote from a first season episode of "Friends", "The One with the Ick Factor".
While many of these ideas fall apart as new evidence is gathered, some bits can remain for an embarrassingly long time, often becoming an inside joke for the entire family. So if you want to keep exploring the hilarious chaos of “kid logic,” look no further, Bored Panda has another article on the best of bizarre ideas children have put together.
When I was really young, I used to think people had different accents because the air in their country made their voice that way.
I thought condoms were for boys periods!!
anyone gonna talk about the blue tutti frutti flavoured condom in the picture
I thought wearing green during day time gave us extra energy since plants are green and made energy that way.
I even wore green clothes every time there was a sports event assuming it made me faster and stronger.
Now i realise chlorophyll is different from green dye and its an entirely different concept of biochemistry.
That's not far removed from gullible adults thinking that eating chlorophyll has health benefits.
I thought hamburgers were called hand-burgers. Since you eat them with your hands 🤚🍔🤚
Question. Why are they called HAMburgers if they're traditionally made out of beef?
Quick, before BP staff notice it’s postable! Know you are such an amazing person. And the world is incredibly lucky to have you. You. Are. Loved.
I thought that when films had a character as both a child and an adult (flashbacks, time lapse, etc.) that it was the same actor filmed years previously. I thought it must take forever to make a film and that's why they were so expensive.
I thought there was a huge warehouse-like building, with hundreds of big red buttons lined up with one person at each button. During commercial breaks, whoever pressed theirs fastest got to play their commercial next. Sometimes commercials get cut off by another commercial and I thought that was someone pressing their button before it was time. No idea where I got this idea from
When I was in Elementary school we all thought we'd die from getting stuck in quicksand one day or by disappearing into the Bermuda Triangle. It was such this weird bubble of fear that was omnipresent. Now? Literally nobody talks about the BT or seems to care about quicksand. My younger nephews didn't even know what quicksand was and they're almost 12 lol. Yeah I guess it's not quite the same thing as the original question posed but man...as an adult...bills are far more terrifying
I thought when you got to the age where you had to have a job, you got a letter in the mail that told you what your job was. I was terrified my job would be to sit in the underground room where the streetlights switches were. I didn’t want to watch traffic through the periscope and flip the switch at the wrong time causing an accident.
I thought that Gatorade was made by squeezing the juice out of alligators. It was so disgusting I couldn't comprehend anyone wanting to drink it.
I thought Gatorade was alligators pee. I was disgusted whenever my brothers drank any.
My father had me convinced that if I unscrewed my belly button, my bum would fall off.
... until I tested the theory.
i was raised catholic and went to catholic school, and until i was about 10 years old, i thought there were only two religions: catholic and public.
Well, some Catholics still think theirs is the only religion.
I thought ATMs were just machines that gave you unlimited money lol. I wish :(
As a small child, I was convinced that [jerk] people are [jerks] because of certain bacteria that are unique to them and if I interact with them, I will catch their bacteria and become an [jerk] myself.
Well, he's correct in some way. Being around jerks as a kid might infect you with this jerk disease
I used to believe that in order to get pregnant and have a baby, you had to eat A LOT so that your stomach would get bigger and the food would transform into a small human being 😂
I thought if it was raining, it was raining all over the world.
I thought "Skyscrapers" were airplanes, and not "Tall Buildings" until I was about 10...
Here is how that happened:
I went to the park with my mom as a little kid. The park was located on the outskirts of the big city where some tall buildings could be seen in the distance. "She said look at the sky scrapers, can you see them?"
So, I looked around and saw a plane... It had a white trail behind it... I assumed the plane was "Scraping the sky".
My dad told me “Watch for Falling Rocks” signs were signs to keep a lookout for a lost Indian brave (who’s name was Falling Rocks) who got lost while out hunting to win the hands of the chief’s daughter. Every time we passed one of those signs I’d look all around to see if I saw him.
I was in my teens before I realized that was stupid. 😂
I used to run away from home as a kid quite often to go adventuring. Countless times upon being found or returning after said adventures, my mother would try and remind me if the dangers of me being by myself at such a young age and I wasn't worried because I was convinced Superman would come out of nowhere and save me if anything happened.
Luckily I didn't have to learn the hard way that it simply wasn't true.
And I thought if I got in any trouble at all, an angel or two would bail me out. I guess we'll never know if that was true or not.
I thought girls were born from women, and boys were born from men. It made sense at the time.
I thought teachers lived at the school & remember feeling confused that they didn’t.
I also was deeply offended when I saw my Mom pay our babysitter. I thought she played with us because she just liked us!
I thought you get pregnant when you kiss at your wedding.
As a kid, I heard that you get pregnant by sleeping with someone. I thought it meant actually sleeping next to person of opposite sex.
My daughter learned something about evolution and asked me, what it was like, when daddy and I were monkeys.
Since breastfeeding from my mum gave me milk then I should breastfeed from my dad to get chocolate milk.
Luckily that was shut down pretty fast and I did not get far enough to find out.
When my mom was breastfeed my sister, I asked her what she had in there and she said milk. I asked her if she had Coke in the other one? And before she could stop laughing to answer, I said if you do, can I have some. LOL
If I listen to the Superman theme song every day, then I would turn into Superman one day. I’m still hoping 🙏😆
People would talk about seeing a drunk or their uncle who is a drunk. I thought that getting drunk was permanent from one good drinking session. I was horrified when heard high school kids were getting drunk. Probably was close to 12 when I learned about sobering up.
Not me, but my son. Big age gap between my 2 kids. My autistic son was going to be of age where he would be starting school. He was nervous about it, so I reminded him that his (much) older sister went to school, and she loved it. He took all this in, and didn't say anything. His older sister was in university, lived in the dorms, and we would pick her up on the weekends. A few months later my son asked me "Will you and dad visit me, like you visit Sissy?" Absolutely broke my heart, he thought we'd be shipping him off to fend for himself in kindergarten. I still tear up when I think about it.
When I was a little kid, directions confused me a lot (I have zero sense of direction, even as an adult now). My parents finally gave up trying to explain directions to me, and said that the mountains were North of us. So whenever I saw any type of mountains, I assumed that was North. I was 17 years old before I wised up.
I'm 39 and still have to really think about left versus right. So don't worry about it! :)
Once, my parents said we were having chicken for dinner, and tiny me asked ‘Chicken the food, or chicken the animal??’
Used to think that video games were based off of true stories and Mario did exist. If I still thought that I would be on my next plane to Mooncradle lol
mooncradle from sea of stars. *and then everyone decides to no longer upvote*
I used to see signs in shops that said shoplifters will be prosecuted. I used to think it meant electrocuted, 6 year old me did think it was quite harsh.
I rhought the same of "Tresspassers will be prosecuted". We walked all over Australia, but my expat Brit dad was used to hiking through private property and insisted on ignoring the signs. I thought we would be executed by hanging!
I believed that there was ‘little men’ that would come racing to fix cuts/scrapes on the body and could be seen at work with a special magnifying glass, after my dad used it as a way of explaining how the body repairs itself.
For years I defended the idea and got into many arguments at school.
I thought that Alaska was an island…
I believe that a lot of people believe that because when showing all the states together, it shows Alaska with Hawaii in the ocean which is misleading.
I thought that my stuffted toys have lives, like in Toy Story. Each and every night, I would give tthem blankets and hug them good night. Also, I used a lot of money on claw machines because I couldn't stand the fact that the poor stuffies were trapped there.
every time i get a stuffy (even to now) it gets a name and a backstory according to where it was from. one of my teddy bears actually got a STORY about them kinda where they fight monsters when we fall asleep
I used to believe that cartoons were real and that they all lived in Disney Land (regardless if they were from Disney or not).
I specifically remember telling my dad I would love to meet Robin Hood (animated fox) one day and that's when my reality was shattered when he explained how animation worked.
Also on the Disney theme, I believed all their stories were original and any other movie or story derived from them.
Aww, Robin Hood the cartoon was my entire childhood... I miss being a kid and obsessed with Robin Hood... 😕
I had this great feat of becoming a firefighter. One time I came home crying that I didn't want to be a firefighter and screamed I was afraid of becoming one, because I would die if I wasa firefighter. Don't ask.
I thought the turn signal turned on by itself. I also kind of imagined everything to be run by humans. Like traffic lights, self checkouts, and computers. I always imagined a person behind the screen looking at the traffic then deciding when to turn the light green. Or running the self checkout in some random basement. Yea, i was weird as a kid
I used to think for a long time opnages were like place you got dogs, the kids just sat in a little cage with a water bowl holding a teddy bear then you pointed at them and then you signed a pape and they came home with you.
i still think this is how they work. there is no better method. SELL THE KIDS
a woman presses her bellybutton when the baby is ready to be born and it comes out her mouth.
When i was little (like 4-5) i thought that cows made milk because they are grass so i ate grass to try to see if it would work for me.
When I was 5 years old my aunt gave birth to my cousin. My aunt had a C-section scar and my mother did not. I thought I was adopted because mom had no scar and to me, that was wher babies came from. Eventually, I discovered there was another way.
I also thought all pregnant women delivered by c-section, I was terrified to have kids. I don't know how I cane to that conclusion, nobody around me had a c-section scar. Prolly my older sister, she loved to terrify me.
I used to believe that people in magazines, like models, only kept their poses as long as I looked at the page. Once I turned the page, they let out a big sigh and relaxed. But I could never catch them at it, no matter how quickly I turned the page back.
I thought the exhaust pipe on the car propelled it forward like a rocket.
When I was younger, I had thought that different countries were on different Earths, and that all the Earths were shaped differently.
I used to think that because I spoke English and everyone I knew spoke English then that meant almost everyone in the world spoke english, then I googled it and most people actually speak Chinese or something. I also thought that people who spoke other languages if you said something in their language they would hear it as English and they also thought in English.
my freind abby (shes from kenya) once said "i just relaized i speak in english and i think in swahili"
I used to think my moms middle name was Vias San Victor. Whenever someone asked for her full name, like the doctors office, she would say “V as is Victor” because whenever someone asked her for her full name, She said her first name then V as in Victor. She would then say her last name.
Forgot to mention, I used to think it was weird that her name meant Vias without Victor, (We speak Spanish) so I asked her about that and that’s how I found out.
I thought that volcanoes were like weather phenomena and could just "erupt" out of the ground at any time.
Reasoning: there's an episode of Spongebob about a volcano in the town, which isn't there in all the other episodes, so I thought they just came and went, but we never got any in where we lived , same way we never got tornadoes.
While watching that episode, a house exploded down the street from my house. so we all ran to the window wondering what that loud sound had been and saw a ball of debris flying through the air.
Having just been watching the Spongebob episode I was convinced a volcano had appeared and erupted down our street.
My dad watched a lot of soccer, and I thought that the players were always the same and wore different shirts and pants just so you could tell the teams apart, and were playing pretend to come from another country, like we did at recess. It blew my mind when I discovered that they REALLY were foreign players and took planes from so far away just to kick a ball around during 90 minutes ! It seemed (and honestly still does) ridiculous to me to travel around the world just for... playing ball, you know ?
I suppose that adhering to that logic you must find the Olymic Games ridiculous too, or is it only soccer?
i thought the phrase "no skin off my teeth" was "no skin off my cheese"
Actually, makes more sense to me. I have a running list of irritating phrases, including this one. Other examples are elbow grease, happy camper, eyes peeled, head on a swivel, etc.
I believed that my life was a movie that giants in the sky would watch and could change to a different life to watch if they got bored of mine.
I used to think that the TV had tiny actors in it and my mom would find me crawling behind it and trying to take off the back to make friends with them. (TVs we’re literally heavy boxes on feet that stood on the floor back then)
I used to think that the cows could hear me and my siblings saying 'moo' and they would know we were saying hi...
Maybe the cows really did understand. Animals understand much better then many people believe. I recently discovered a couple of Congo snails found out how to push the glass of the aquarium they lived in to the side, so they could crawl up and look about. Who would have thought it of snails?
When I was a kid we were not very well off. When I would ask for something expensive or out of our budget my Mom would say "when our ship comes in".
I couldn't understand why we lived in a state that was nowhere near an ocean if we were waiting for our ship to come in. I thought if we weren't near the ocean we would miss our ship. Boy did I think my parents were stupid for not moving to the ocean.
I thought left and right were different for men and women… as in like they were swapped
I thought that if I yelled into the TV speaker, Gilligan would hear me.
As a 3-4 y/o(english not being my first language) I thought peter pan was peter pants... I also used to think that if you had a disease certain people had the capability to just stop having diseases...
I vaguely thought that lint was just some sort of byproduct of the drying process. I thought it sometimes got stuck on your clothes and wound up in your bellybutton, and I didn't really wonder about why it was generally grayish blue. It wasn't until I was a teenager and I put a red blanket through the dryer alone that I saw red dryer lint and realized that lint comes from my own clothes.
I once believed as a young child that the Pokemon from the game were real and only the special app could detect them, otherwise they were invisible to the naked eye. I was very disappointed when I realized that Pokemon were not, in fact, real creatures 🥲
Thought permanent bracelets were melted on to your skin
Not really something we believed as kids, but whenever it was raining and we were driving somewhere, my siblings and I would say "windshield wipers go!" And whoever said it the closest to when the windshield wipers actually went had 'the power'
I called Wendy’s…. Cinderella. I mean it was perfect logic. She looks exactly like the one scene in the beginning of the movie with the braids and nightgown and everything, except she is a redhead. I also called French fries cow pies for some reason 🤷🏽♀️
I used to think that black holes pop up out of nowhere. One day you are in your yard then BAM black hole is tearing you apart and sucking you in atom by atom.
I was born in 2007, and believed a LOT of stupid things as a kid, these are just a few of my favorites
- If I imaged dinosaurs hard enough, I would be able to actually see and hear and feel them like Dino Dan
-the original Godzilla was made AFTER the s****y (I say s****y but I actually still love this movie) 1998 American remake, and was black and white for aesthetic purposes or something
- When I googled Godzilla, and got images of Mothra and Destoroyah, among other Iconic Godzilla monsters, I assumed these were different versions of Godzilla, and when my dad showed me "Mothra vs Godzilla" and Mothra appeared I thought she was Godzilla
- Misogynists were homosexual because of their hatred for women (looking back this one might be true)
- if you were to leave the door open with the AC on, it would actually cool down the entire neighborhood (my dad would always complain we were air conditioning the whole neighborhood when we left the door open.
-If I ate enough red food, it would turn my skin red, similar to how flamingos get their red color from eating brine shrimp
- our cat (who lived until I was 3) actually enjoyed it when I yanked her tail
- my moms C-section scar was from when I burst out of her womb violently and bloody
- my brother was born on Christmas and I thought Santa had put him inside our mother
- The only reason my brother and I looked different was because of our age, and when he was my age he would look just like I did. I also thought I would look identical to my dad when I was his age.
- since our Dad is 10 years older than our mom, I thought this made it completely acceptable for a 10-year-old to date a 20-year-old. Also at the time I thought 10-year-olds were adults.
- There were dinosaurs still out there somewhere and that I would rediscover them and become famous
- my personal favorite, when actors got injured in a movie (like getting cut and stuff) they would actually hurt themselves. I knew their dying was just an act, but if they got a huge gash or something I thought the director was just like "Here hold still for a moment". This also led me to believe that whenever Godzilla bled, they would harvest blood from the human actors (I hadn't realized yet Godzilla was a man in a suit) and just stuff it in the Godzilla prop and squeeze it out offscreen which is why is squirted everywhere.
I knew a woman who ate too much beetroot and she literally turned pink, so the flamingo one isn’t too far off.
Not me, but my brother. For context, our primary school was really tiny and the different year groups (mainly preschool and kindergarten) had different areas to play in. So when me and my brother got dropped off, him, me and my Mum went with him and he believed that when I went to my area, I was going to a fully different school, far away.
Growing up, I thought that the states were colonized from the top left to the bottom right, with Alaska first and Florida last. That was until I learned about the 13 colonies.
I thought the television was a box with little people in it. We watched them go about their lives but they didn't realize that they were being watched. So maybe we were in a box and some giants were watching us on their TV but we didn't realize it.
That is a really horrifying thought. If it were so, what would happen when our show got cancelled?
I remember this so vividly. I was probably 9, driving with my mom, dad, and brother when I asked, "How do kids get their dad's genes if they are in their mom's belly?" I don't remember my parents' response, but I'm pretty sure they said "I don't know." Another time was when my brother was about 6, he thought our dad gave birth to him because he was a boy.
I used to think that when you bought something in a store and you got change back, you got your actual own money back. I thought it was some weird kind of adult play pretend that everyone was in on.
Never occured to me why people have jobs or how some people can be poor.
I also, for some reason, thought that the right side of my body was good and the left was bad. I remember hitting on my left foot pretty hard because I wanted it to go away or to at least be as good as the right foot. Never talked to anybody about it. So I don't know where I got the idea from.
I used to think grilled cheese sandwiches were girl cheese sandwiches and that boys were not allowed to eat them
I used to think grilled cheese sandwiches were girl cheese sandwiches and that boys were not allowed to eat them
I used to think grilled cheese sandwiches were girl cheese sandwiches and that boys were not allowed to eat them
I thought that volcanoes were like weather phenomena and could just "erupt" out of the ground at any time.
Reasoning: there's an episode of Spongebob about a volcano in the town, which isn't there in all the other episodes, so I thought they just came and went, but we never got any in where we lived , same way we never got tornadoes.
While watching that episode, a house exploded down the street from my house. so we all ran to the window wondering what that loud sound had been and saw a ball of debris flying through the air.
Having just been watching the Spongebob episode I was convinced a volcano had appeared and erupted down our street.
I thought that volcanoes were like weather phenomena and could just "erupt" out of the ground at any time.
Reasoning: there's an episode of Spongebob about a volcano in the town, which isn't there in all the other episodes, so I thought they just came and went, but we never got any in where we lived , same way we never got tornadoes.
While watching that episode, a house exploded down the street from my house. so we all ran to the window wondering what that loud sound had been and saw a ball of debris flying through the air.
Having just been watching the Spongebob episode I was convinced a volcano had appeared and erupted down our street.
I used to think that black holes pop up out of nowhere. One day you are in your yard then BAM black hole is tearing you apart and sucking you in atom by atom.
Still beleive that if I max out Garl’s magic def., he can’t die from Fleshmancer magic.
Among us
Among us
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I once heard a family friend say, "I don't drink," when offered an adult beverage. I took this to mean that he never consumed liquid of any kind, and this rattled around in my head for quite some time. I was disabused of this notion when, at a family picnic, Roger poured himself a glass of iced tea, I took it away from him (spilling most of it on him in the process) while yelling, "but Roger, you don't drink!"
For some reason when I was a kid, I was told a blizzard was coming, my three year old brain imagined a giant blue caterpillar, imagine my surprise when it was just stupid more snow.
I once heard a family friend say, "I don't drink," when offered an adult beverage. I took this to mean that he never consumed liquid of any kind, and this rattled around in my head for quite some time. I was disabused of this notion when, at a family picnic, Roger poured himself a glass of iced tea, I took it away from him (spilling most of it on him in the process) while yelling, "but Roger, you don't drink!"
For some reason when I was a kid, I was told a blizzard was coming, my three year old brain imagined a giant blue caterpillar, imagine my surprise when it was just stupid more snow.
