I recently saw a fellow mom post about removing the screen from her kids when they were driving in town, and the amazing conversations that follow. It’s true – when you unplug and let kids drive the discussion, it’s astounding the places you end up together.
On a recent drive together to Vilna, my son and I had an amazing 40-minute conversation that ranged from how oil and gas impacts our economy, how both are formed from the decayed remains of plants and animals, how the stars are so many light years away that we are looking at history from thousands of years ago when we look at the sky. We talked about transmission lines we passed, radio towers and cellphone towers, and satellites in the sky, and how all of these structures enable us to do everything from make a call to watch Netflix pretty much anywhere.
Whenever my kids ask me questions, I learn a little more myself, not just because they make me think about things I have just taken for granted, but also because sometimes I have to stop and say, “I don’t know – let’s look it up together.” There’s so much in the world I don’t know or understand, that I wonder almost daily, “Whatever did we do before Google existed?”
And then there are the bigger questions that are not so easy to type into an Internet search engine and have it spit out an answer.
My son once saw Caitlyn Jenner on an awards show, beseeching people to be true to who they are.
“But you’re not being who you are – you’re a man!” exclaimed my son, who asked me what the heck was going on with this. Half an hour later, I found myself well down the rabbit hole and tied in knots in a totally different conversation.
My daughter has asked me more than once, “Why are we here? What’s the meaning of humans anyway, when all we do is destroy everything and then we die?” (Insert long pause here while I stare into space and try to figure out how to compress thousands of years of religion, reflection and philosophy into an answer an eight-year-old can appreciate).
I try and give her some of my own thinking on the subject, but feeling it inadequate, I say, “It’s a question everyone has to look inside and think and answer for themselves.”
It may not be a great answer, but I feel it’s an improvement than what I was told in Sunday school, in which I constantly pushed the button - which was, “At some point, you have to stop asking questions and just have faith.”
Personally, I hope that my kids never stop asking questions to understand the world. It’s the springboard for innovation, the lynchpin of self-reflection and discovery, and the spur for me, their mother, to stop, marvel and wonder at this amazing world we live in, and appreciate that every day, I have these little voices to remind me.
