A couple of weeks ago as M (6yrs) was climbing a tree she asked if anyone in the world live in trees.

Drawing from my knowledge of ancient indigenous cultures in the modern world… I gave the obvious answer:

“I dunno!!”

It would have been easy to forget about it since she did not mention it again. But one of the things I am really enjoying is taking her questions seriously and finding answers to them… even the ones that seem to be ‘throw away questions’ and just idle ponderances.

This in turn has made we wonder how the hell did parents homeschool before the web!??!

When we got home I invited her to search for an answer with me on google, in this instance she enthusiastically agreed and we found out about the Kombai clan in Papau New Guinea (pictured). This in turn led to us chatting about cannibalism (which some claim the Kombai were/ are) and led her to dig out our copy Pippi Longstocking that night (whose father was meant to be a ‘king of cannibals’).

Days later a meandering conversation about eggs, chicks and chickens led to her asking do horses have hair when they are born?. Minutes later we watched several horse births thanks to the magic of YouTube.

Other questions over the last week: “what is spit for?” or “who was the first person to find gold and what’s so good about it anyway.” M was not really interested in the answer to the spit one (though I was), but the gold one took us on a whole adventure because although i turned up information on “precious metals” and ancient Egyptian civilisations each new answer led to her asking new questions.

Yesterday’s questions included how did people become people from gorillas (which was my feeble and relatively inaccurate attempt at explaining evolution months ago coming back to haunt me) and how did people work out that the world was not flat, since it looks flat… which I was excited about but M then moved on from very rapidly.

These conversations often happen in a broken, unpredictable way at unpredictable times. They also rely on me containing myself on the rare occasion she asks something I actually know – I am learning the art of letting go of “teachable moments” and providing information that she wants to know, rather than doing an information dump of what I know or what I think she ’should’ know.

Oh … and playing “follow the question” is just as interesting with our 2 yr old son. It’s extremely different but just as rewarding & fun. He is well and truly in the “why” stage.Rather than dismissing or ignoring his “why’s”, I have started to challenge myself to answer each one seriously with age appropriate answers. This leads to a second challenge – how many whys can i give legitimate answers to in a row without repitition of answers… (my record is nine, although dp got to 10 the other night!).

So for example one from earlier in the week:

let’s sit at the table; why ; to have dinner ; why ; because we need food and its fun to eat together ; why ; why do we need food or why do I think its fun to eat together? ; why you need food? ; because our bodies turn the food into energy and use it to grow ; why ; ummm….. hey look butter chicken! Yum!! (not one of my better attempts but gives you an idea)

Whether it be from M or Z, I am enjoying their wonderment and playful curiousity about the world.

I am finding that the process of taking their questions seriously is renewing and healing my own natural curiousity, which had come into a beating from years of institutionalised learning and being ‘taught’ at school and uni.

Yet another gift to thank my children for

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Its two days since i wrote the post above… i just had to add the question that M asked today, it was: “If a Ninja went to the dump and got a really massive piece of metal, then they hit it really hard with their head, could they make it crumble into tiny pieces?”   …. hmmm now how do i google that?  ;)   scarey thing is, there is probably a video of someone trying to do that on youtube!

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