Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Importance of the 5 W's

I was spending time with my 2 year old daughter today and she kept asking me what, why, when, where and who for the entire time I was with her. She asked the same question a million times even though I gave her the same answer all the million times.

The key is she never was shy to ask any question and she never got bored of asking a question. Which made me start to wonder - Do kids learn so fast because they are uninhibited in asking questions - they ask them with no fear. They have parents/grandparents/guardians that would answer the questions with patience till the answer is well engraved in their minds.

Learning is the key to growth. And learning happens only when you have questions and I feel that as we grow older we have so many hang-ups in asking the questions. When we stop asking the questions we inhibit learning. On the other hand as we grow up the number of people that will willingly give you answers all the time just like a parent/grandparent/guardian gives answers expecting nothing in return is also limited.

I feel this is the reason that as we grow older the speed at which we learn things also slows down.


Unknown said...

In my opinion:kids keep asking questions with just one intention of getting answers to their questions , but the grown ups bother much trying to validate if the question sounds silly to the other person and that's where the time is getting wasted and the learning comes down :-) As we grow up, we are encouraged to "ask 'right' questions" and the keyword 'right' seems to be the culprit ;-) 'coz a question is a question and there is nothing like a good question or a bad one.Putting it simply - "when in doubt, ask more questions"

Anonymous said...

The ability to ask questions comes only when you have an open mind - which all kids have.
If you think you know everything, you tend not to ask a question. And, as we grow older, we tend to think that we know everything. Soon, your daughter will stop asking questions, cause she's going to think that she already knows the answers :-)

Anonymous said...

Great post. Frankly, kids are thirsting to learn and they do have an open mind. As we grow older, we form our own opinions and that's what limits us sometimes. And yes, as we grow older, we do run out of people to freely ask questions of. I wonder if that's the reason that people who share a great relationship with their parents/grandparents are so much more richer/stable emotionally. I still ask my mom a lot of things and she pleasantly surprises me with her insight. Not to blow my own horn, but it so happens that I wrote a folktale related to this in my blog posting yesterday. Drop in if you have time. Cheers, Suma