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Original poster

Misunderstandings you had as a child

206 replies

NoEffingWay · 01/08/2025 20:15

When I was little, there was a florist near my house. It had beautiful displays of flowers, and I used to spend ages looking in the window. What I really wanted to do was save my 20p a week pocket money and buy my Mum some flowers. Not just any flowers but the ones that said ‘Mum’ on them. I was in my teens before I realised these were for funeral cars Blush. Luckily for my mum, there was a sweet shop next door where I spent my 20p on sweets every week so I never even asked!

OP posts:
awkwardasfuck · 02/08/2025 00:24

Slightly sad but I thought all adults drank their way through every evening and didnt allow people in the home :( very surprising when I was old enough as a teen to visit friends off my own back and realised this wasn't true.

Blueyorstitchagain · 02/08/2025 00:36

I used to get so confused by buoys in the sea whenever my dad spoke about them and really thought there were boys in there 😬

Disturbia81 · 02/08/2025 00:39

Meadowflower2023 · 01/08/2025 20:29

I’m embarrassed even typing this but here we go.. I used to think every To Let sign on buildings we drove past as a child was advertising there was a toilet there (to use) I can remember thinking why are there so many toilets around when we drove through the city to my nans (until I learned to read properly)

That is a common one don’t worry 😂

SophiaLaBe · 02/08/2025 00:44

HobnobsChoice · 01/08/2025 21:01

"mummy am I a Catholic or a Prostitute?"

"You're lapsed Church in Wales"

My understanding of both The Troubles and Christianity was somewhat lacking age 9

As a child I was convinced my religion was ‘president’ 🤦🏻‍♀️

LadyCankleOfGrantham · 02/08/2025 00:49

FanofLeaves · 01/08/2025 20:28

I used to think that if you had a bigger tv you’d be able to see more of the programme. Like you missed out on a lot of the scene if your tv was small, and those with big TVs were treated to more 🤣

Do you remember those TVs with the really round screens that were in fashion in the 90’s? Me and one of my brothers convinced our other brother that if he stood at the top he could see down the presenter’s tops, he actually believed us and used to try it 😂😂

Amiunemployable · 02/08/2025 00:59

The year before I started secondary school, there had been quite a lot of news stories about teenagers getting stabbed. I was absolutely convinced that I would be stabbed once I was a teenager and that I'd never get to the end of secondary school. I got it into my head that no one survived their teenage years. I just kept thinking, how could our parents do this to us? Let us go to secondary schools, let us become teenagers and die? Why would they?

The irony was that I lived in a very small coastal village that hadn't had a single stabbing.

Brendahollowayreconsider · 02/08/2025 01:02

MrsAukerman · 01/08/2025 23:52

When we were driving along motorways when I was a child, we'd see big trucks that said "plant hire" on the side. I thought they had very big plants inside that you could hire for an upscale event. I was about 12 when I vocalised this and got told that "plant" in this context meant equipment for groundworks like diggers etc. I did always wonder why there was such demand for rented horticulture!

I thought similar when seeing the road sign.. heavy plant crossing.
Was always disappointed not to see a giant plant crossing the road.

404PageNotFound · 02/08/2025 01:07

used to think that it was trees that produced wind, when they moved about it made the air all windy.
Me too. As teen I asked my dad why they didn't cut all the trees down to stop the wind 🙄

viques · 02/08/2025 01:08

I was given chocolate money in gold foil, one Christmas,and naturally assumed from that time on that all coins contained chocolate. I tried very hard, and unsuccessfully, to prise coins open using a screwdriver, kept me occupied for hours, and I remember wondering how adults, who must know about these things , could bear to spend coins in a shop when they knew there was chocolate inside.

Brendahollowayreconsider · 02/08/2025 01:11

Above .. that's lovely child logic❤️

PrincessFiorimonde · 02/08/2025 01:13

When I used to read the newspaper at maybe around 10yo, reports of crime often used to include the sentence "A man is helping the police with their enquiries".
I used to think what a helpful person he must be!

Cupboardlovely · 02/08/2025 01:27

Fieldsfaeries · 01/08/2025 23:40

I was flabbergasted when I was told that Henry the eighth made everyone in the country belong to the Church of England so that he could get divorced. I was about eight years old and I thought this meant the entire religion was invented so that he could get divorced.

I think this is actually true? I feel a bit silly saying that now. I’ll go check it out on Google 😬

bendmeoverbackwards · 02/08/2025 01:43

I used to think that if your birthday fell on 29th February, you only aged a quarter as fast as everyone else 😂

Mistyglade · 02/08/2025 01:53

I used to think WHSmiths was pronounced ‘wit-smiths’ with a soft t.

Helpmechooseausername · 02/08/2025 04:32

I lived near Wimbledon common and we'd go up there with dad to walk the dog. The dog would rummage around in the bushes and I was convinced it was the Wombles!

I was in my mid teens before I found out the truth and was more upset than I should have been 😂

HerRoyalNotness · 02/08/2025 04:48

As a tiny tot I had an argument with my step sisters that our dad was my dad first and I wouldn’t back down. It slowly dawned on me that actually as they were older he was their dad first. I remember slapping the couch and saying, well, this was my couch first. Also not true 😂

Delphinium20 · 02/08/2025 05:05

My mother used accurate terminology for body parts. So, when I was 4 and my baby sister was about to be born, I was terrified she’d come out all bloody and cut up. When they brought her home from the hospital her face and skin were smooth and soft. I was so relieved she’d made it safely through the tunnel of jagged and broken china. It was much later when I realized what female body parts rhymes with “cut china.”

MillieMollyMandi · 02/08/2025 05:28

In old children’s songs like Puff the Magic dragon and Alice in Wonderland the Walrus & Carpenter I always thought they were singing about ceiling wax. I thought old houses used to have waxed ceilings or something like that… it was only a few years ago I realised it was sealing wax :) Completely different!

LuckyManifestations · 02/08/2025 05:55

HarryVanderspeigle · 01/08/2025 23:02

I thought that whenever my mum wanted to buy something, writing a cheque created money. I thought she was most unreasonable not buying anything and everything i wanted with this magically generating money.

How funny! I came on here to say exactly the same thing. I never understood why my mum would say "I can't afford it this week" when there were loads of cheques left in the book. I couldnt wait to get my own chequebook when I grew up and knew exactly all the things I was going to buy. Its was a horrible day when I learned how they actually work Confused

financialcareerstuff · 02/08/2025 06:32

These are all so cute!

financialcareerstuff · 02/08/2025 06:37

I can’t remember from my childhood. But when my daughter was potty training, she did her successful pee in the pot for the first time, and we gave her a little chocolate, saying “that’s a well done treat for your pee in the pot”. She took it right over and dropped it in there, to give it to her pee, as she believed she had been told to.

We gave her another one for HER. 😊

scalt · 02/08/2025 06:43

Aged five, I remember playing a game at school "guess who is speaking in a funny voice", and I wondered why the teacher asked each guesser "can you see?". When it was my turn to guess, the teacher blindfolded me with a scarf, and it came as a total shock that I couldn't see a thing, not even the pattern on the scarf: I was so surprised that I zoned out and forgot what I was supposed to be doing. Even though I had seen the other children being blindfolded, I thought the scarf would appear as a narrow strip in my vision, not make me completely blind!

I liked wearing my velcro trainers on my bare feet, because I found socks fiddly, and my parents used to say things like "when you take them off, they'll walk away without you", or "your toes will disappear". These didn't stop me doing it, but I kind of believed them, and I kept wiggling my toes inside my shoes, to check they were still there. I felt vindicated when at school, we were made to wear shoes on our bare feet to walk from the classroom to the hall for PE.

TheMasterplan23 · 02/08/2025 06:55

I thought that if a man woman kissed then the woman would become pregnant straight away. I watched Alf & Ailsa kiss on Home & Away and remember thinking they’d have a baby soon.

A few years later my mum’s friend had twins and I presumed she’d had sex twice really quickly to get 2 babies….

My mum never did give me the ‘birds and bees chat’ 😂

scalt · 02/08/2025 06:57

imnotwhoyouthinkiam · 02/08/2025 00:23

As for my own misunderstandings.

I thought that doctors and nurses were the same thing, but doctors were men and nurses were women. Admittedly most doctors were men, and most nurses were women. But I thought they were the same job. Much like actors and actresses. Or waiters and waitresses.

I also thought I was a Baptist for a long time. I'm not, just plain on CofE. But my church was called St John The Baptist.

My favourite shop was the antique shop. Pronounced anti queues. Grin

The head of my primary school sought to debunk this. The children in an older class went round the other classes, asking each child in turn "would you like to be a doctor, or a nurse?" Of course, most of the boys said "doctor", and most of the girls said "nurse", and the older children were probably given a lesson about this. The same head teacher hated the ancient books that we used to practise reading from, as they always featured the boys out having a good time, while the girls were at home helping Mother. She used to make us swap the boys' and girls' names when we read these out loud.

scalt · 02/08/2025 07:06

I understood from a young age the idea that most stories were pretend, but I then had the idea that if things appeared a lot in stories, they were pretend. Some things I was surprised to learn were real were: rainbows, castles, prisons, kings and queens (although why didn't we have both?); and I was amazed to learn that some people very seriously believe that ghosts are real. I haven't made up my mind on that one!