17 Kids Who Surprised Even Experienced Psychologists

Psychological tests can sometimes leave even adults feeling stumped. But kids, with their unique way of thinking, often find surprising solutions, even if they can be a little perplexing. While a child’s drawings or answers might seem unusually dark, it doesn’t always indicate something troubling.

• Six months after my son finished first grade, a psychologist came to his class and said she would do a test. The kids were given sheets of paper, markers, pencils, and asked to draw how they see themselves in school. The kids were having fun: the girls drew themselves as princesses with books, boys were drawing little humans next to a building named “school” with helicopters and planes around.
  Do you know what my son drew? He drew 3 rows of 5 rectangles. There was another rectangle, a big one, and the teacher’s initials. The second rectangle in the 3rd row said, “Me”. He drew a map, so anyone could find him. © missisissi / Pikabu

• When I was in kindergarten, there were very good doctors and specialists. One time, the psychologist asked to talk to my mother. All the other kids drew birds in bright colors; but I drew a black gothic-looking raven and was proud of it. The specialists thought I had issues and fears. But my mother just told them, “I guess I shouldn’t have shown her the murals so early.” My mom was a professor at an art academy. © “Podslushano” / Vk

• Before I was accepted into an elite school, I had to do a series of tests. One of them went like this: I was shown a picture of a boy and a girl with easels standing near an elephant and drawing it. The boy was facing the elephant and the girl was on the side. So, there were 2 pictures of the elephant — sideways and from the front. The psychologist asked me, “Which picture was drawn by the boy and which by the girl?” I said that the picture from the front had been drawn by the girl. The psychologist was surprised and asked why, and I said that that picture was more beautiful. I was accepted into the school. © FarnKatz / Pikabu

• It was time for me to go to first grade. Of course, I had to see a psychologist who asked me a few questions. My mother remembers the test in which I had to categorize 4 objects: bird, airplane, bus, and trolleybus. A normal person would just put everything that flies into one group, and in the other, everything that doesn’t fly. That’s what the psychologist said, anyway. My imagination decided to create 3 groups. In the first one, I put the bus and the airplane; in the second, the bird; and in the third, the trolleybus. When they asked why I had done this, I answered, “The bus and the airplane move because there’s gas in them, the trolleybus has electricity, and the bird has blood.” My mom remembers the psychologist being shocked but also surprised that it was so logical. © AngelAlpha / Pikabu

• Before I went to first grade, I was given the task to redraw a picture of a ship. The picture was so old that the ship looked faded in some spots. They told me to redraw the picture exactly as it was. Well, I did it — with all the blurry lines. © lutaosk / Pikabu

• My friend is a pre-school teacher and he is starting to get bald. So some of his students came up to him and said rather confidently, “You’re not so good at having hair!” Luckily, he is very chill. © Nine-LifedEnchanter / Reddit

• In elementary school, I had to draw our school. I did. My mom had to go to the school to talk to the psychologist about why I saw the world in such dark colors. And it was because I drew the sky in dark blue. Well, I only had a set of 5 markers: blue, red, yellow, green, and black. © “Podsluashano” / Vk

• In kindergarten I once took my mom’s tampon for show and tell and told the class it was dynamite. I can only imagine the conversation that occurred. © badericbad / Reddit

• I was supposed to put the sun and a lamp into the same group because both of them emit light. But I said they had nothing in common because the lamp was drawn with a cord, but wasn’t plugged in. The psychologist was surprised, and my parents were proud. © qwertzasdfg / Pikabu

• A school psychologist once asked my mom to come to school. She gave my mom several pictures of potatoes, carrots, beets, and asked, “What would you call these things together?” My mom said, “Vegetables.” And the psychologist said, “Yes, and your daughter said they’re soup.” © “Podslushano” / Vk

• In kindergarten, the psychologist asked me to place the colored cards according to how much I liked them. I didn’t understand the task correctly and did it in the opposite order. So it looked like I loved black and brown, and didn’t like red and blue. You should’ve seen the psychologist’s face! © GenBardak / Pikabu

• A psychologist asked my friend’s son, “What time of the year was it when you were born?” He replied, “How can I remember that? I was too small, I was just born!” © denianataly / Pikabu

• When I was in elementary school, psychologists were checking kids’ reactions to different events. They invited us one by one into the room, and then they scared us just a bit. So I was sitting there thinking about the question I was asked, and then she was like, “Boo!” Well, the next minute, I scared her even more with my loud screaming. © “Podslushano” / Vk

• In elementary school, I had to draw our school. I did. My mom had to go to the school to talk to the psychologist about why I saw the world in such dark colors. And it was because I drew the sky in dark blue. Well, I only had a set of 5 markers: blue, red, yellow, green, and black. © “Podsluashano” / Vk

• Once, I had to meet with the psychologist in my daughter’s kindergarten. The kids were told to draw winter nature. My daughter drew flowers among the snow, houses, snowmen. The psychologist told me to pay more attention to the child’s knowledge about the seasons. But I knew that my daughter loved flowers. I decided to ask her why she had drawn them, anyway. She said that flowers were about beauty, and that she knew that they didn’t grow in winter. Then she told me that it was a drawing, not a photo. © Nadezhda / AdMe.ru

• I was supposed to draw a person. Because I had done all the previous tasks really fast, I had a ton of time, so I decided to do a very detailed drawing. My mom is a doctor, so I’d seen the anatomy books countless times. They were all bright and really interesting. So, I drew ovals and things saying, “These are lungs, there are the liver and the stomach.” They still accepted me into the school, but only because I did the other tasks better than anyone else. © vitarinka / Pikabu

• I went to the kindergarten to pick up my son, and the psychologist looked all worried and told me that my son only drew pictures in black. I said, “Strange. What did he draw?” And she said, “He drew a chess board!” © YanaRuh / Pikabu

Kids often say things that catch us off guard, sometimes revealing surprising or even unsettling details that they’re unaware are meant to be private. Curious to hear more stories like these? You can find a collection of them right here.