Originally published 2018-12-21.
"Child logic" is the name parents give to the moments when a child follows an instruction perfectly and still ends up somewhere no adult expected. A maze gets solved by drawing round the outside. A maths question that says "find x" gets a circle and an arrow. None of it is random: children reason carefully, they just start from different assumptions and take words very literally.
The fourteen examples below were shared by parents, siblings and teachers on Reddit, Twitter, Imgur and Instagram. Each one comes with a short note on what is going on, and the article ends with a few ideas for how adults can respond when a child's reasoning catches them off guard.
Why children think this way
Psychologist Jean Piaget described children between roughly two and seven as being in a "preoperational" stage. Children this age tend to focus on one feature of a situation and ignore the rest (he called it centration), struggle to see things from someone else's point of view, and often give objects feelings and intentions. From about seven to eleven, they get much better at logic, but mainly about concrete things in front of them; abstract and hypothetical questions remain hard.
Later researchers showed that Piaget underestimated children in many ways, and that development is less tidy than strict stages suggest. Still, his ideas explain a lot of the photos below: the child locks on to one word or one rule and follows it all the way, while ignoring the unwritten part that adults take for granted.
Instructions taken word for word
1. The shortest way through a maze
The puzzle asks for a route from start to finish, and this child found one: a short line around the outside wall instead of through the corridors. Nothing in the printed instructions said the line had to stay inside the maze. It is the same move engineers call "reframing the problem". Credit: unknown user, Reddit.
2. "Find x"
A right-angled triangle with sides of 3 and 5 asks the student to find x, so x gets circled with the note "Here it is". This joke answer has done the rounds for years. For the record, it is a classic 3-4-5 triangle, so by Pythagoras' theorem the missing side is 4. Credit: DrEckskerl, Twitter.
3. Defend your answer
Asked to "DEFEND your answer" on a chemistry worksheet, the student drew the word ANSWER behind barbed wire, guarded by a stick-figure soldier with a machine gun shouting to his sergeant that they cannot hold out much longer. Teachers use "defend" to mean "justify", but the military meaning is the one a bored teenager will always reach for. Credit: Vietnombie16, Reddit.
4. Match every item to every answer
A matching exercise pairs things like "Romeo and Juliet" and "Mona Lisa" with answers such as "by Shakespeare" and "by Leonardo da Vinci". Instead of drawing separate lines, this student pulled every line into one central knot and fanned them out again, so every question technically touches every answer. It is guaranteed to include all the right pairs, and guaranteed to get no marks. Credit: belal0200508, Imgur.
Projects, gifts and home-made design
5. A costume with a recycled wig
For a school or library presentation on Sir Isaac Newton, this boy made the scientist's famous curled wig out of cardboard tubes, the kind left over from toilet or kitchen rolls. Seventeenth-century gentlemen really did wear long curled periwigs, so the idea is historically sound; the materials are pure resourcefulness. Credit: rather0od, Imgur.
6. The Christmas squid
A roll of festive wrapping paper is printed with white reindeer heads, but the roll was stood upside down, and the antlers instantly turned into tentacles. A sibling's question, "Since when is there a Christmas squid?", is a good example of how a child's brain reads the shape in front of it rather than the theme it is supposed to see. Credit: Inqubate, Reddit.
7. A future designer
The rear side windows of this silver car are covered, edge to edge, in small stickers, most likely applied from the back seat by a young passenger with a fresh sticker book. It looks like frosted glass from a distance. Peeling them off later is the price of the masterpiece. Credit: annypooh, Twitter.
8. A birthday present from a 9-year-old
A zip-lock bag full of batteries, labelled "Present not included" with a crossed-out drawing of a gift box. The child has noticed the small print on toy boxes, "batteries not included", and turned it neatly around. It is also, honestly, a practical gift. Credit: Dr_Risbo, Reddit.
Food, drink and the bathroom
9. Corn oil that looks like apple juice
A little girl in a supermarket aisle hugs a big yellow bottle of corn oil and is heartbroken that she cannot take it home, because she is sure it is apple juice. To a young child, colour and bottle shape are the clues that matter. The serious side: look-alike bottles are a common reason for accidental swallowing, so keep oils, cleaning products and medicines out of reach and, if a child drinks something it should not, call your local poison centre or a doctor. Credit: grill_panda, Reddit.
10. A banana, eaten sideways
Instead of peeling from the top, this young eater opened a slit along one side and ate the fruit out through the gap, leaving most of the skin attached. It is not the usual method, but it keeps sticky hands to a minimum. Credit: J3b3di3, Reddit.
11. Teeth brushed, as asked
Told to brush his teeth and left alone, a two-year-old carefully brushed the teeth of a wind-up chattering-teeth toy, leaving them coated in white toothpaste. He did exactly what he was told, just on the wrong set. Toddlers need an adult to help with brushing anyway; dentists generally advise only a rice-grain-sized smear of fluoride toothpaste for children under three. Credit: OnTheSubjectOfWeird, Reddit.
12. Straw or cup? Both
This short clip shows a toddler sipping a Coca-Cola cup through its straw, then tipping the whole cup up like a bottle while keeping the straw in his mouth. Using a straw is a skill young children are still learning, and he has not yet worked out that one method replaces the other. Credit: gamechanger, Reddit.
Dogs and podiums
13. Why use your own fingers?
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
This spot held an Instagram clip from the Australian Shepherd account Aussies Doing Things, posted in November 2018 with the caption "Feelin extra stylus today". It reportedly showed a dog's paw being used to tap a touchscreen, a joke about turning the family pet into a stylus. The post can no longer be viewed. Credit: @aussiesdoingthings, Instagram.
14. Happiness is a choice
At an outdoor sports day, the child on the first-place box holds the winning card with a look of total indifference, while the child in third place throws both arms in the air with his "3rd" card, celebrating as if he has won the world championship. Small children often care far more about taking part than about where they finished, and this photo captures that better than any lecture on sportsmanship. Credit: haidernawaz99, Reddit.
How to respond when a child's logic surprises you
Most of these moments are funny because the child was right in a way the adult did not plan for. A few simple habits help turn them into something useful:
- Ask before correcting. "How did you work that out?" often reveals a reasonable chain of thought, and children learn more from explaining their idea than from being told it was wrong.
- Be precise with instructions. If the maze must be solved through the corridors, say so. Children cannot read the rules we leave unwritten.
- Separate silly from unsafe. Eating a banana sideways is harmless; drinking from an oil or cleaning-product bottle is not. Correct the dangerous ones calmly and clearly.
- Think before posting. A photo that is sweet at four can be embarrassing at fourteen. Share in ways the child would be comfortable with later, and avoid showing names, schools or locations.
Children are not bad at logic. They are often better at it than we are, because they follow the rules exactly as written. That is why these pictures make adults laugh, and also why they are worth a second look.
Sources: photos credited individually above (Reddit, Twitter, Imgur and Instagram users); preview image combines photos by an unknown Reddit user and belal0200508 on Imgur. Background: Wikipedia: Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
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