Words for the Weekend - The Wonderful Word, 'Why?'

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, 1933 - 1945

There is a wonderful word, why?, that children use. All children. When they stop using it, the reason, too often, is that no one bothered to answer them, no one tried to keep alive one of the most important attributes a person can have:  interest in the world around him. No one fostered and cultivated the child's innate sense of the adventure of life.

One of the things I believe most intensely is that every child's why should be answered with care - and with respect. If you do not know the answer, and you often will not, then take the child with you to a source to find the answer. This may be a dictionary or encyclopedia which he is too young to use himself, but he will have had a sense of participation in finding the answer.

But if you brush aside the eager question, the only way the young child has of learning to understand his world, and say, "I don't know... Don't bother me; can't you see I am busy?" or, worse still, "What a silly question!" something bad will happen in time. If the child's curiosity is not fed, if his questions are not answered, he will stop asking questions. And then, by the time he is in his middle twenties, he will stop wondering about all the mysteries of the world. His curiosity will be dead.

For curiosity, interest, and a longing to know more and more types of experience are the qualities that stimulate a desire to know about life and to understand it. They provide the zest that makes it possible to meet any situation as an adventure. Without that spirit of adventure, life can be a dull business. With it, there is no situation, however limiting, physically or economically, which cannot be filled to the brim with interest. Indeed, without interest, it is almost impossible to continue to learn; certainly, it is impossible to continue to grow.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn By Living, Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life