| I guess I should come clean and admit that I'm older than most of the people here ... my kids are 21, 19, 16 and 10. I think when they're younger, you try to answer the question in a fun way that makes them continue to think about the topic. Remember though ... the impulse to tell them they're too young for the question can be pretty strong. Counter this in your mind by reminding yourself that they weren't too young to ask the question. You just need to think a bit to make the conversation age appropriate. When they're a little older, you can start to send them off on fun "quests". Instead of answering, say "Hmmm ... I think you should go try <insert a "life-experiment" here>". And you won't need to cover the bases at all. Guide their curiosity to the answers instead. Once you get used to it, your conversations will happen this way naturally. We didn't really push our kids academically, but we did push them to be critical thinkers. We also never really conversed with them in "baby talk". We used college-level language around them and gave them definitions for the words they didn't already know (you'd be amazed how well context works even with young kids). By the time our oldest two were 8-10, they were comfortable having long conversations with adults (the adults were generally surprised). I also want to give a lot of credit to my wife. Her undergrad degree is in early childhood development and her masters is in counselling education (focused on elementary school grades). I am a far better father through watching her and getting occasional tips. But my final thought is the most important ... give them your time! It's so easy when we're busy to just put them off, but you can always afford 15 minutes to engage with them more deeply on any topic. Have fun :) EDIT: Given the mind-set of the HN crowd, I should also point out that we also encouraged entrepreneurship in our kids. I've reposted an article I wrote six years ago on my site for those that care to read my thoughts on kids and business. See http://www.selesy.com/news/17 |