[rimliu]

How does this drive out the curiosity? If anything it encourages it: kid should find out that this button does before pushing it. Though to be fair I did my share of button pushing at 5 years old. It was a typewriter at my mother’s work and I taught her a couple of new tricks after finding out what buttons do. On the other hand I struggle to understand people who refuse to read manuals and then struggle for months or even years with some basic functions of the product, when spending two minutes reading the page four of the manual would have saved lot’s of time and frustration.

[Consultant32452]

This is not realistic for childhood curiosity. A 4 year old is curious about things like what happens when I bang a pot on the ground. It's unreasonable to expect the 4 year old to read a manual to inform them it makes a loud sound, and also unreasonable to expect them to know the difference ahead of time the difference in scale of danger between banging pots and flipping a switch. In fact, for most areas of curiosity no such manual exists. Experimentation is the primary mechanism of learning.

[DanBC]

It even has a name - heuristic play.

Here are early years examples, but it applies to all children.

http://www.kathybrodie.com/articles/heuristic-play-a-simple-...

https://schoolhouse-daycare.co.uk/blog/heuristic-play/

[pixl97]

>kid should find out that this button does before pushing it.

I bet you're the same parent that got an infant a toy covered in giant buttons that light up and make noise. We as a society design button pushing as play.