Why? Why? Why?

"Mommy, what do sharks eat?"
"Where does the moon go?"
"How do boogers get in my nose and why are they crunchy?"

Ewwwwww...

Yes, questions. Just a few of the 3 million that I answer daily for my 4 year old son. They are endless and they cover every topic imaginable and most of the time I have no idea how to respond to them. Recently there was an article in Newsweek magazine about creativity in children and how it appears to on the decline. It stated that preschool aged children asked on average about 100 questions a day, but that by the time these same kids reached middle school the questioning stopped. Creativity, school performances and overall motivation also plummeted. The connection was that these students didn't do poorly because they lost interest, but in fact they lost interest because they stopped asking questions.

What??

I find this to be very interesting. Of course, I currently live in the realm of questions. "Why???" is a constant in my life with two young children. In fact...everything I say or do is "questioned" on an hourly basis. And let me make this very clear...it drives me insane. But after reading this article it also scares me to think that eventually kids will just stop asking...and then what happens? Sometimes I think that for myself it is tough when I don't have the answers or that I can't definitively say yes or no to what my kids need to know. I would guess that it is easier to just brush off the question instead of openly admitting that I just don't know. I'm the parent for god sakes...I'm SUPPOSED to know.

But that's just it...we don't. And really...that is just fine.

So today I am thankful for the fact that my son is curious and wants to know things. I'm thinking that in the future I might just give the simple response of, "I"m not sure but how about we find out together?" to the plethora of questions posed by him. Because truly I would rather be willing to dig a little deeper than to run the risk of my son checking out and losing interest completely.

Although, I'm not so sure about researching the "crunchy booger" question...I might just leave that for his dad.

Note: The article mentioned above can be found at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.print.html