Recently, we took our four-year-old granddaughter to the beach for an outing. She was having a grand time making sand balls and running in and out of the water chased by waves. When we settled down to have our lunch, she looked up at the warm sun and asked, Papa, “What makes the sun shine?” I could of course have given her the scientific answer about the relation of heat and light, but I know that would have gone over her head. I recalled that Jean Piaget, the famed Swiss psychologist, noted that young children believe everything has a purpose. So I replied to Heather’s question by saying, “the sun shines to keep us warm and to help flowers grow.” Heather was perfectly happy with that response.

Alternatively I could have asked her what she believed. Most children have their own answers to the questions they ask and are perfectly happy to share them with us. But if we employ this strategy we really have to listen to what they say, and to take them seriously even if their response seems silly or nonsensical to us.

Young children simply think about the world a bit differently than we do. Their perspective is not wrong, because all children of four or five think this way. It is an age appropriate mode of thought. It is only when we look at it from the viewpoint of adult logic that it appears faulty. This is a very important point. Too often I find parents, so eager to give the child the “right” answer that they miss the child’s intent. This leaves the child feeling frustrated and misunderstood. Equally important, it may make the child reluctant to ask questions. The young child’s questions are really an opportunity to build patterns of communication that are essential for healthy interactions as the child matures.

Some parents fear that giving the child the ‘wrong’ answer is not a good teaching strategy. In the first place, saying, for example, “that the sun shines to keep us warm”, or “that rain falls to make the flowers grow”, is not really wrong the sun does keep us warm and the rain does make the flowers grow. More importantly, as children develop they will spontaneously give up their earlier modes of thought. For example, children who once believed in Fairy tales, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, take great pride, when they get older, in saying, “I don’t believe in that anymore.” Giving up earlier modes of thought is an important marker of growing up, and children appreciate our understanding and support of that progression.