Answering Children's Questions
Answering Children’s Questions
All the children are very curious and they always ask a lot of questions because they want to know a lot of things. "Where does water come from?", "why is the sky blue?" and "what is infinity?" are among the questions that parents struggle to answer for their children. Another query that has tripped up mothers and fathers for generations is, "where do babies come from?" Most parents are unable to give a correct answer to the basic questions from children about the planet, outer space and the human body. Some of them say that "babies are delivered by storks”, others - that "babies are found under gooseberry bushes". Also parents find moral questions about God and religion hard to answer.
I think that every parent should follow some principles answering children’s questions, and the first of these principles is “Never to lie”. Because children are very quick-witted and they may think so “If you found me under a gooseberry bush it means that someone had left me there...and who is this someone?” It would me much more difficult to answer.
The second thing is that we all must learn till we live. And if we don’t know something it’s never late to learn. So if a child asks “What is a black hole” or something like that, it would be appropriate to say "Let's look that up in the encyclopedia." So we can show the child the way he can learn things and encourage him to seek response through authority in the future.
One more thing we can do is encourage brainstorming, or consideration of alternative explanations. For example, if a child asks "Why are all the people in Holland so tall?", the parent can answer “Let's brainstorm some possible answers. Maybe its genetics, or maybe its diet, or maybe everybody in Holland wears elevator shoes, or ... etc.” And then the child and his parent can decide which answer is the right one.
We should never avoid answering the child’s question saying “I don’t know” because the child has nobody except his
All the children are very curious and they always ask a lot of questions because they want to know a lot of things. "Where does water come from?", "why is the sky blue?" and "what is infinity?" are among the questions that parents struggle to answer for their children. Another query that has tripped up mothers and fathers for generations is, "where do babies come from?" Most parents are unable to give a correct answer to the basic questions from children about the planet, outer space and the human body. Some of them say that "babies are delivered by storks”, others - that "babies are found under gooseberry bushes". Also parents find moral questions about God and religion hard to answer.
I think that every parent should follow some principles answering children’s questions, and the first of these principles is “Never to lie”. Because children are very quick-witted and they may think so “If you found me under a gooseberry bush it means that someone had left me there...and who is this someone?” It would me much more difficult to answer.
The second thing is that we all must learn till we live. And if we don’t know something it’s never late to learn. So if a child asks “What is a black hole” or something like that, it would be appropriate to say "Let's look that up in the encyclopedia." So we can show the child the way he can learn things and encourage him to seek response through authority in the future.
One more thing we can do is encourage brainstorming, or consideration of alternative explanations. For example, if a child asks "Why are all the people in Holland so tall?", the parent can answer “Let's brainstorm some possible answers. Maybe its genetics, or maybe its diet, or maybe everybody in Holland wears elevator shoes, or ... etc.” And then the child and his parent can decide which answer is the right one.
We should never avoid answering the child’s question saying “I don’t know” because the child has nobody except his