they have unlimited curiosity, and unlimited love and respect for you. they don’t just want to learn they want to hear you talk.
for fucks sake, do not squander that special time.
no one will ever look up to you with such love admiration and respect again.
Treat every question as if it is the most important philosophical question of this generation. Because for them it is. think it out loud, teach them how you think.
They are humans with full human intelligence, just less experience.
I’ve unironically had entire existential crises over noticing someone younger than me at work or volunteering looking at me with a similar respect. Nothing says I’m having a great time like having someone’s confidence in you create doubt.
hey listen, my 7 yo nephew just asked the other day why we had to spend money to get fake money in games and oh BOY did I have a whole speech ready for that one hehehe
Do tell!
because 🤑
My daughter went through the “why” phase for a while when she was 3. I do my best to answer them because it’s a fun game. She’s trying to learn, and I’m here to teach her. At one point we got to the topic of our dog and she was like “Why is he a dog”
That one stumped me for a while before I hit her with “because his parents are dogs”. And then she went right for the “who are his parents” and that spun off into questions about dog breeding and how they used to all be wild wolves… It’s fun.
No I meant why is he a dog and not a hound like in other Germanic languages?
I once put this song on when I thought my kid wasn’t paying attention:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BLzxuIfD9rU
After ignoring most of the song, they suddenly looked up and said “Daddy, what is reality?” I admit I was completely unprepared for that question.
My 4 year old is autistic and his special interest is space. We read a fun kids book about neutrinos the other day and he started asking me questions like “where do they come from”. Idk bro, I only have an arts degree. I wish he would ask easier questions ! I’m not a theoretical physicist
I mean you could look these things up together
I do and I’ve been trying to get books to learn more with him. It’s a learning process for the both of us.
Tell him you don’t know, but keep him interested and suggest who you could ask. Or look it up.
neutrinos going through earth are mostly from the sun
My 6 year old: how do you make people
Me: well, when there’s a mum and a dad…
6 year old: no, where did the first person come from?
Me: oh god can I just tell you about the birds and the bees I at least have a chance of properly explaining that one
The floor can because of gravity.
What’s gravity?
It is what causes everything to fall down.
Why does it do that?
Because everything weighs something, and the more something weighs, the more it causes other things to be drawn towards it.
Why does that happen?
It’s the way the universe is made. If it weren’t for that, the world wouldn’t exist.
Why wouldn’t the world exist without gravity?
Because without gravity, nothing would stick together.
What is nothing?
Nothing is what you see when you close your eyes, but you’re not there to look at it.
Side note, i’m honestly looking forward to having kids. I cannot wait to have an inquisitive child asking me questions that I could have never thought of myself.
MY MOMMY SAID THE FLOOR MAKES FAT PEOPLE STICK TOGETHER!!
That’s how planets were formed!
What you’ll discover is that there is often a very weird something behind the question. It is often as important to understand what that thing is as it is to answer the questions. The problem is that you can’t directly ask that lest they shut down.
The problem is that a question like, “how can the floor” might be related in the kiddos mind to something as seemingly unrelated as “why did we eat hamburgers last week?” and if you go down the wrong path, suddenly your kid has a link between hamburgers and orbital motion that doesn’t necessarily link up in any real logical way.
My approach is not to just answer questions, but to help them think through their questions and how they might answer them. No clue if that works.
Later that week on the playground: and my dad said your mom eats so many hamburgers that she causes orbital motion around her.
Fun fact: the tides are influenced by how many hamburgers “your mom” has eaten that day.
My sister says the trick to deal with this is to respond with something like “well, what/why do you think?”
I’ve gotten mixed results with this approach.
I found you need to tailor the questions a bit more to their question and enter their frame as much as possible.
Daddy, why are there police?
Well, that’s a good question, what do you think police do?
Put bad guys in jail.
Hrm… Well, do you remember the movie we saw last month with the sheep? (Sheep Detectives it is very good and everyone should watch it.) Was the spoiler a bad guy?
No… But they did arrest them. Why?
And then we slowly work through a conversation about policing without going too deep into the details.
Mine is just starting to say a couple words and I’m quite excited for these conversations.
You missed the most important and inevitable part.
I’d definitely go with pressure over water-bath.
Floor can because it is
Also toddlers:
Me: “Why did you just throw your toy? We don’t throw things in the house.”
Toddler: “Because I needed to.”
Me: “Why did you need to?”
Toddler: “I meant it! Hmph.”
While you stand on it and never think how can the floor.
What’s the difference between a duck
“That’s not even a…” < gets headshot by sniper >
A perfect opportunity to explain antagonistic coevolution!
3 year olds :
Why’s this?
because this that and the other
why’s this?
yes
“Because.”
If I were a parent I wouldn’t answer questions like these.
Instead i’d ask “why do you think it is?” and use that as a teaching moment about how to do research and how to test a hypothesis.
“Dada, can you teach me how to read?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
I mean I think i’ll be a more gentle mom than that, but essentially, yeah. Kids are actually super great at learning. If they already show interest in something, they just need support and guidance, not someone to do it for them.
You definitely want to encourage your child to learn independently and be curious, but it’s important to remember they’re starting from a place of knowing absolutely nothing.
I had some friends who thought it was important to let their (very young) kids have agency and basically make all their own decisions, but they had no framework within which to know what choices to make. Their oldest is doing better now, but went through several years of pretty bad anxiety and tantrums, and I have no doubt their technique contributed to this.
This is just an anecdote, I know, but I think kids need to have their questions answered flat out unless you know they either already know the answer or have the tools prepared to figure it out independently
I tend to think if they’re old enough to ask the question they’re old enough to (attempt to) puzzle out the answer. Obviously there can be too much of a good thing, but I think on average most parents hand-hold too much (the ones that aren’t simply neglectful)
Obviously, yes, they need the tools to figure things out - which is why you teach the tools. Teach method instead of memorization.
Yeah again I agree, but I also think once you have a kid you’ll understand that early on they’re largely going to be asking questions to which they have no hope of figuring out an answer, because they’re just beginning to learn to read and know absolutely nothing about the world. Developing curiosity and investigative methods are part of it too, but genuinely only for what is within their grasp, otherwise it can become confusing and frustrating
