Things Kids Misunderstand

No matter how thoroughly parents think they explain the world to their children, they can’t cover everything, because it’s difficult to remember what a context-free life is like. But that’s what children have. Everything is a new experience, and it’s easy to get the wrong idea. A roundup of these childhood misconceptions had me giggling.

8. “I thought the cops would come get me.”

“When I was younger I saw an accident on the side of the road and my mom said, ‘If you have an accident, the cops come.’ I thought she meant that if I peed my pants in the car the cops would come get me.”

—Kate Heidenreich, Facebook

14. “I am too young! I am too young!”

“When I was in the first grade a lot of my school’s teachers were pregnant. One day I ran home to tell my mom that my teacher announced that she was expecting a baby, too, and my mom said, ‘I guess she drank the Kool-Aid.’ The next day we were served Kool-Aid for a kid’s birthday and I freaked out, screaming, ‘I am too young, I am too young!’”

—jennifers160

There are dozens more in the comments.

My mom used to tell me that hairspray was used to "keep your hair from flying away". I thought that without hairspray your hair would going flying off your head like a bird and you'd be bald.

Janell Ebel

Well, we all have these. I refused to eat cotton candy because I thought it was made of the same material that was stuffed into the top of aspirin bottles. My daughter just recently told me that she’d watch me put dryer lint in a “magic pink box” when she was very young. It was a small wastebasket on a shelf. She thought it was magic, because when it got full, it would “magically” disappear. It was years before she figured out I just emptied it. Read the roundup of childhood misconceptions at Buzzfeed. And if you remember a funny one, share it with us!

(Image credit: Flickr user Pete Bellis)