“Don’t quench their questions,” my husband whispered to me at dinner the other night.
Two of our adorable grandchildren were visiting, and one was full of question after question.
We answered them patiently, marveling at the breadth of his curiosity.
(We also laughed several times. This seven-year-old is very earnest.)
Several times, my husband darted a look at me. At me!
And then I chuckled. Well, maybe he did inherit something from me.
What does “don’t quench their questions” mean?
The point of childhood is to learn about the world.
They gain a lot from observation, trial, and dealing with error.
But it often starts with a question.
These two grandchildren like to take a walk around the block with me.
I call out questions:
- “What do you see?”
- “How many steps to the corner?”
- “Do you smell anything?”
- “How did that balloon get up in the tree?”
They love it!
But I need to take as well as give.
- “Grammy, what is that?”
- “How long until we get home?”
- “Why did that car honk?”
- “Where is that plane going?”
Be creative with your answers
Rather than quench their questions, open up the conversation — or at least expand it to learn something together.
I learned the answer to the plane question years ago when the boy’s father — at a younger age — asked me.
After trying to come up with an intelligent response —I’d been answering questions for a mile — I finally had the answer.
“That plane is going to the airport.”
“Okay.”
That same drive, to church in Connecticut, involved road work.
He wanted to know the exact name of every road-working machine.
How would I know?
But, as I muttered to myself, “don’t quench their questions,” because that’s how they learn, I had a brilliant idea.
“Let’s go to the library and find out.”
We came home with several books about trucks.
(We already owned Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go–but it wasn’t sufficient for that child!)
Be creative yourself
Creative in the sense that sometimes you need to look beyond the “presenting” question to determine what they’re really trying to say or understand.
One of my math/science braniac kids handed me a form. “Can you sign this for me?”
He wanted to spend a class hour every day running errands for the junior high school office.
That made no sense to me. If you’re in school, you should be learning something.
But he must have had a reason behind the question.
“Why don’t you want to take art?”
He hemmed and hawed. “I don’t like art. Do I have to?”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Sure.”
He loved the class and got an A.
Why do we silence the kids?
You know the reasons. We’re busy. Dinner is late. Too many kids with too many questions.
We’ve been talking all day — probably answering questions — and we’re tired.
But using questions is the basic conversation opener that children know.
The trick is finding the emotional energy to look past the question to what motivates it.
Knowledge? Let’s look at a book together.
Attention? Get down on their level, look them in the eye, and respond with your full attention.
Connection? Will you work on dinner with me?
Fear? “Tell me what you need to know.”
Curiosity
How else do they/we learn if we quench their questions?
It’s the opening gambit in a conversation to learn: about each other, about the world, about roadworking trucks.
In our family, if we answer that question with our full attention, the kids are usually satisfied.
And as they skip back to wherever, my husband and I can look at each other and laugh.
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?