wen i was younger and just grasping the whole reading concept and id been taugh if u didnt know a word to say it how it was spelt, when reading a menu i became baffled by the word meringue and for ages pronounced it mirengoo coz my mum didnt have the heart to tell me i read it wrong!!!!!

Rachel

I used to have a chart of the alphabet on my bedroom wall. I remember, at about the ages of four, spending a substantial amount of time repeating the phonetic sounds of the letters in a vain attempt to find the letter that made the 'ch' sound. Needless to say, I never found it.

Alice

My ex-husband and I share custody of our 11-year-old daughter, but the relationship is a difficult one. This past summer, my ex tried to stop me taking my daughter to visit her grandaprents abroad. I decided to be honest with my daughter and told her that her father was trying to stop the trip, but that I would try to talk him into it.

Later that week, I found some crumpled up pieces of paper in my daughter's room. Over and over she had written, "I hate my dad. He's a tourist." Flummoxed, I tried to work out what on earth she was talking about. Until it dawned on me: she meant 'terrorist'. I laughed so hard I fell over.

(Mind you, she wasn't far off the truth!)

Oh Lordy

Once, in first grade, I thought that I had to put a comma after each word or something terrible would happen. Like this:

My,name,is,Jessica,I,like,cats,and,ice,cream,

You get the idea.

Jessica Tinch

I used to believe that "elemeno P" was a certain kind of "P" found only in the English language.

Anon

When me and my sister were about six and seven, we would "write cursive." Mind you, we had just begun learning how to write cursive in school. I remember writing ynynyn over and over in cursive, breaking it up into sentences and paragraphs. Thinking that whomever was reading it would know what it meant. Cause after all, that was how you wrote cursive.

Cari

So some people assign genders to numbers... I assigned genders to my name (and family member roles)
C was the mom, I remember.. I was the baby... E was the nurse.. R and R must have been the kids.. etc

Carrie

When I watched Countdown when I was little, I thought there were such words as LJTEBDOFV and DLBAECGUV. They weren't, but letters that Carol put on the board for the word games.

H

I used to believe that all numbers and letters had gender, ACGKNPQRSZ were female and the rest male. Girls could only have names that started with those letters and someone named Barbara or somethign just had parenst that messed up

Nicole

When my mom taught me how to read and write, she compared the lowercase b and d to pregnant women. I took this literally and thought she meant that they actually were pregnant. I always saw lowercase letters as children and was horrified that they were pregnant so young. I knew they must be having a hard time, so I made it a point to always capitalize those letters, even in the middle of words.

Kassi

I used to think that the end of the alphabet song ('Next time, won't you sing with me') was 'Next time, won't you sing with cheese.'

Ian

I always used to spell 'They' 'Thay'. When I was in year one, my teacher was marking my book and told me the correct way of spelling 'They'. I was very upset (I almost cried!) and argued my case like hell, and I was certain I would win, but I didn't. It shoud be spelt phonetically in my opinion. But you just wait. I'll get my revenge on teachers in Britain.....MUWAH HA HA HA HA

Anna H

I used to think that Sioux Indians were pronounced "Syox" it wasn't until I was around 18 that I realised the pronunciation is "Soo". I'm Australian so what would I know!

Robby

when i as little, about four years old i used to sing the alphabet, but in stead of L, M, N, O, P, I thought it was L, a minow, P.....like the fish! :D

not so bright

I was a precocious reader, and due to construction going on at my school, I attended kindergarten at a local church. I came home one day and asked Mother what "off ice" meant since I saw it on a sign outside the church where I went to school. She was very puzzled. I kept asking her day after day, so finally she got tired of being pestered, bundled me up, and we walked to the church to see. The sign said "office."

Texas granny

Up until some time in kindergarten, I thought that when you wrote a capital E you had to squeeze as many lines as possible in it. My teacher was not a very good teacher (she told us that we weren't allowed to tie our sweaters around or waists or touch our own blood. She also never corrected a kid that said her name wrong.) so she didn't care. It wasn't until my neighbor told me you're only supposed to have 3 lines in an E.

Emmy

I used to think that when you wrote in cursive you didn't just join letters in a word together - I thought you could join all the words together too. I refused to believe my mother when she corrected me on that.

Christiecat

I used to think that cursive writing was just a big scribble. I would draw a bunch of squiggles and lines and show it to my grandmother saying, "what's this say grandma?" She would pretend that cetain squiggles meant certain things.
I felt really smart!

Rainbow

When I was just learning to write I used to space the words so that there wasn't only one word on the line below. I was afraid that it might get lonely.

Sharon

I used to believe that you spelled "ESSAY" like "SA" and "EASY" like "EZ".

Lauren