Make Your Child Smarter

Developing Curiosity in Children - Some Simple Tips and Suggestions

By Andrew Loh

Curiosity is the most critical fuel for all-round development of your children. The power of curiosity helps your children assists them in clarifying innumerable problems, develop ideas and expressions, help solve riddles and problems and later use and apply them in their daily life. Curiosity also helps your children explore and probe how situations and scenarios of life could be different in their finer aspects. When your children explore the surrounding environment in active manner, they can be the most productive people in the world. Asking probing questions, investigating all possibilities, and owning a sense of thrill and excitement will also help your children become wonderful inventors and innovators.

Almost all children come equipped with a sense of curiosity. However, they need a gentle nudge to develop it further. Curiosity means questions after questions! It also means seeking right type of answer for all these questions. In all, curiosity is the combination of tough question and right answers. As questions are the most critical keys in developing curiosity, you may need to teach your children how the "why's and how's" of life can help them to solve many dicey and difficult problems.

When your children learn how to question, they can easily go deep down to seek very knowledgeable answers to the roughest questions. Your children can also learn how to relate these questions to develop new ideas and suggestions. Children are keen learners and they can learn more by developing curiosity. A burning desire to learn more will urge your children to start asking questions after questions in their mind. A natural quest for learning new things is always natural and it comes almost naturally to your children.

Another significant advantage of being curious is that your children can develop their brain to initiate learning new activities and ideas. When your children become inquisitive and probing, their body cells start producing extra amounts of a chemical called dopamine which so essential to induce a sense of contentment, bliss and happiness.
Here are some ideas and suggestions that may help your children develop and nurture curiosity:

On an average, all children ask as many as 400,000 probing questions by the time they become four years in age. How parents respond to these questions can influence the way in which their children can develop in their later life. The most important tip here is to get actively involved with them to answer their questions and provide appropriate solutions. The basic aspect of curiosity is to look at things in your children's way, that too in the right manner.

Your children can look at things in an exciting and thrilling way. In fact, they are too wonderstruck when they see something that is new, exciting and fresh. The issue of WONDER is that amazing thrilling moment that is so difficult to explain. For example, when you children see a beautiful flower, they will invariably utter a single and simple word – WOW. Soon after this exciting moment, your children will soon start asking a number of probing questions like, "why that flower is colorful" or "what makes this flower look so colorful and fresh".

Tips: When you see that your children is expressing his or her wonder at some things, events or objects, try and answer all the questions with proper answers. You must provide correct answers so that your children get an urge to develop an ability to satisfy their curiosity later.

Being curious is all about answering tricky and dicey questions. Knowing answers to all questions could be very difficult. Your children are too smart and intelligent; when they ask some questions, they actually mean them! They need right answers at the right time. They will never stop asking questions until you answer them in the right manner.

Tips: Make sure that you answer them in a proper manner. If you do not know answers to their questions, do not provide false answers. Be frank and honest to tell that you do not know the answers. Instead, tell your children that you are also very keen to know the answers as they are. Take your children to someone who actually knows the answers to their questions.

Challenges and riddles can help your children develop the power of curiosity. When your children confront tricky and challenging situations, they tend to find answers for them with a renewed vigor.

Tips: Ensure that you pose challenging questions and riders before providing answers to their questions. Let the questions you ask be open-ended and quizzical. When they answer your questions, you can ask many more questions that are open-ended. Ensure that you answer these questions if your children fail to find good answers.

All great prodigies and inventors have been the proponents of asking the right type of questions. These masters were patient enough to ask the right type of questions and seek right answers; perseverance and dedications were the hallmarks of some of the greatest scientists and inventors. Relentless efforts and attention to minute details made them the legends of the world.

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