How can I encourage ravenous curiosity in my kids?

Think of curiosity as the link between wonder and understanding.Wonder s the “wow” moment: “Wow, look at all the stars!” “Wow, look at the way that chameleon changes colors!” Curiosity is the next step—the desire to understand: “How do the stars keep burning?” “ How many stars are there?” “How does the chameleon do that?”

If curiosity is what you’re after, your main goal in responding to a question shouldn’t be giving the answer. In some cases, an immediate answer can even extinguish curiosity.What you want is to keep the questions coming, day after day, year after year. To do that, you want first and foremost to make the child feel that questioning itself is a fun and rewarding thing to do. Adding some appropriate praise—“What a great question!”—makes it clear that you see questioning itself as a neat thing to do.

If you don’t know the answer, leap on the opportunity to say so! In so doing, you can join the child in the search for an answer, modeling curiosity at every step. Tell her that you’d like to know the answer yourself. Ask if she has any guesses and offer some of your own before you look it up.

Best of all, model your own curiosity: “I wonder if fish sleep.” “I wonder why light goes faster than sound.” “I wonder what it’s like outside of the universe.” Doesn’t matter whether you have the answers or even whether there are answers. Just let your kids catch you being curious and they’ll surely follow your lead.

Posted in: Kids Curiosity