How Curiosity Shapes My Parenting

(SeaPRwire) –   My five-year-old adores The Magic School Bus. He enjoys it when I decorate my truck windows with planets, stars, and rockets to look like Ms. Frizzle’s transformative bus. He craves adventure, inquisitiveness, and playfulness. 

Not long ago, I took the family to the planetarium for a presentation about the spring sky. When the astronomer invited questions at the end, my son raised his hand so frequently that she had to let others participate. 

Raising my son and his two-year-old sibling is an ongoing practice of curiosity. They compel me to “Live the questions now,” a phrase coined by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. My kids have shown me how to be comfortable with not having all the answers. For me, living the question implies being open to the possibility that my self-perception could be incorrect. I welcome that potential as long as I am living. 

After all, I was mistaken about my sexuality for years. I was also wrong about being cisgender for even longer. However, my biggest self-deception was the conviction that I did not want to be a parent. 

I believed I was too self-centered, impatient, and quick-tempered for the vital journey of child-rearing. It is wonderful to be proven wrong repeatedly. If I am not curious about my own nature, how can I be present for my kids? How can I demonstrate an inquisitive life? And how can I offer them that same level of interest and care? 

Interpersonal curiosity is often mentioned only in the context of managing conflict and deepening bonds with romantic partners. This is because being curious helps prevent defensiveness, blame, and arguments. Yet, I rarely hear people advocate for applying that same curiosity to our children. 

Don’t they merit the same dedication and devotion? Absolutely they do. Maybe even more than anyone else. They are new to this world, after all. 

Curiosity paves the way for empathy, understanding, and respect. The greatest gift you can offer a child is to treat them with seriousness, consistently. 

Frequently, we view children through a framework of authority and control, sometimes unintentionally. What if we approached every action, outburst, moment of happiness, and fear with genuine interest and significance? 

When I refuse my five-year-old a pre-bedtime popsicle and he melts down, yelling that he no longer loves me, I could choose to argue. I could match his aggression with my own. I could shut my eyes and hope the behavior disappears. 

Alternatively, I could wonder: What is going on inside him, aside from the desire for a treat? Did he have a hard day? Did something occur at school? Is he grieving his hermit crabs? Does he miss his grandmother? Once he settles down, we can explore these questions together. 

We act like detectives. We search for clues. We attend to his sadness. We embrace it and refuse to make him feel ashamed. 

I haven’t always parented this way. When he was an infant and cried or refused to sleep, I often just wanted to fix the issue and stop the noise, which is understandable given how exhausting newborn care is. Yet, I seldom paused to consider his internal experience of this new world. I simply wanted to end his pain, much like I tried to do as a closeted teenager—suppressing my needs rather than addressing them with kindness and curiosity. 

That approach didn’t help either of us. Once I understood this, I adjusted my parenting style to make curiosity the central way to engage with the world and my loved ones.

Being curious is inherently an act of vulnerability. For most of my life, I feared what I might discover if I looked too closely. What if, when my kids started talking, I found out they thought I was a terrible parent? What if they didn’t love me? Asking questions is vulnerable; it marks the start of a journey into the unknown. 

It is fitting that “question” and “quest” originate from the Latin root “quaerere,” meaning “to seek” or “to ask.” Perhaps this is what living the question signifies for a parent: an endless quest. 

Ideally, we aim to make ourselves unnecessary as caregivers eventually, but that transition is beautiful in itself. I wonder how many different roles my children and I might grow into for one another, simply by asking questions.