July 2008
This week was our first proper family vacation, just the three of us. So we got the CityPass and headed out to fill our brains and become kids again--first the planetarium followed by the Shedd Aquarium and the Natural Historarium also known as the Field Museum. Then a couple of days lounging around the house and the beach. William, all 3 years old, was just bursting about everything, he was on overload trains, bikes, beaches, buses and museums he could not believe it got this good I imagined he would just make like one of those robots in the movies, smoke would start coming out of his head and explode or at least he would scream or something fortunately by the end of the day usually on our way home instead he would sleep. In the space in between one word will forever remind me of this week--Why? He's all over it and I love it. Truly these kids are genius. He always has a follow up question and its always spot on again.....Why? So today I sit at the beach Will finally occupied with something I can't answer to like why he keeps filling up his bucket with sand and emptying it out in the same place he got the sand in the first place and trying to figure out what this is all about.
So Why do kids ask why?
Why do they never stop asking why?
How about when they already know the answer.
Why do I have to go to bed ?
For all that we ask kids to do and don’t: touch that, sit still, eat, drink, sleep, stop and not now.
They ask why in retaliation.
It’s a throw down, a test. Do you know?
Why?
When a 3 year old asks why dinosaurs are extinct its not because he’s actually going to remember beyond the moment you tell him apart from perhaps to tell a person standing nearby. They are trying to make sense of what is and is not important. Testing our hypothesis? Prejudice? How does it fit? Where?
Whether its bugs or planes, astronauts or trains kids want to know if you know whether or not they should. How do we interact in this world? What’s important? Socialize me.
Why do they never stop asking why?
How about when they already know the answer.
Why do I have to go to bed ?
For all that we ask kids to do and don’t: touch that, sit still, eat, drink, sleep, stop and not now.
They ask why in retaliation.
It’s a throw down, a test. Do you know?
Why?
When a 3 year old asks why dinosaurs are extinct its not because he’s actually going to remember beyond the moment you tell him apart from perhaps to tell a person standing nearby. They are trying to make sense of what is and is not important. Testing our hypothesis? Prejudice? How does it fit? Where?
Whether its bugs or planes, astronauts or trains kids want to know if you know whether or not they should. How do we interact in this world? What’s important? Socialize me.
What's beautiful to me is that ultimately, kids are about as simply Socratic as this ethnic, class, ideology, and theology based world gets. And yet we take for granted that we know, or think we know, why it is important or not. What is important or not. Maybe that is the reminder that we too often neglect. There is the beauty in discovering Why? Every time he asks I have to pause and take another look and try not to "because" or ignore but appreciate what a gift I have been given.....
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