You have to love the brain of a child – inquisitive, curious, always asking questions. This is how we all should be through life, even when we become adults, and being inquisitive is certainly something that we want our children to do and continue to do.
I firmly believe that raising smart, thoughtful, well-adjusted role models starts with teaching them to think outside the box and be true to their instincts and individuality. Teach them to ask all the right questions – long before they have all the right answers! It is never to early to foster and encourage their unique qualities and their desire to seek knowledge. Here is some good parenting advice to encourage your young one to get on the path to a wondrous, awe-inspiring life!
Parenting Advice- 5 Ideas For Raising Inquisitive Children
Lead, Don’t Follow
I am a big believer in teaching kids to forge their own path. As a parent, encourage your child to be in front of the crowd and not follow it. We often tell our kids to blend in, make friends, and feel comfortable – which is great – but not when it comes at the expense of their own personality, thoughts, and intuition. Children should be challenged to find opportunities to take the lead, take on additional responsibilities, and get involved in life.
Respectfully Challenge Authority
Let your child know that it’s perfectly fine to have an opinion and to support that opinion, even to teachers and other adults. The key however, is the word RESPECT. Tell them to be informed, open minded, have an educated argument, and to respect the other point of view – even if they don’t agree. As adults, your child will face a world full of individuals ready to tell them how wrong they are, so let them learn early how to state their case – and stand up for their beliefs.
Support Their Passion
Sooner or later your child will become passionate about something – school, art, sports, music, theater, design, travel, cooking – the list goes on and on. Parents should support the passion and encourage it. Even if it is not something that we fully understand or know. Stand behind your child and that will teach them to stand behind their passion! A passionate kid with a love (no matter what that love might be) is always better than an apathetic child who cares about nothing. Let them dream big.
Failure Is Not Failing
Somewhere, somehow we have become a society where everyone has to win, everyone gets a trophy, and no one is allowed to celebrate a victory because it might upset those who are not victorious. Guess what – failure is a good thing and teachs a lot of lessons. At some point, every child will fail (and needs to fail) at something. When it happens, help your child learn from it, develop character from it, and understand that in real life many successful people have failed before achieving greatness. Failing is not the problem, giving up and not learning from the failure is the real issue.
Count on Accountability
Teach your inquisitive children to own their actions. Stand up and admit mistakes. Do the right thing, even when it might not get noticed and might not matter. Responsibility and accountability go a long way in life. Teach your children that being accountable will gain them respect (including self respect) and demonstrate maturity. Lead by example and teach them that doing the right thing is not always easy but – it is always right.
The last one is the biggie for me. Amazingly, when you teach kids to do the right thing – and when they consistently practice doing the right thing – all the other aspects of life just seem to fall into place. Funny how that happens, huh!? As adults, it is a good lesson to remind ourselves of as well! I hope you find this parenting advice helpful in raising inquisitive children. What is your favorite good parenting tip? Share it in the comments below.
Rob Youngblood is an Emmy Award Winning TV Host, Passionate and Inspiring Speaker, Communication Coach, Writer, and A Guy Who Talks for a Living! You can find him on Twitter.
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Anne Sweden says
Your tip about supporting a child’s passions/abilities is such a good one, because parents sometimes try to mold their children into something that just doesn’t fit the temperament at all. It makes much more sense to train a child in the way God fashioned him; develop the child’s strengths and don’t fight against them.
Nikki @ Tikkido says
What lovely advice! A life-long love of learning and insatiable curiosity is pretty much the best thing I can hope for for my girls.
Katie @ Pick Any Two says
Love the tip about failing. We really have become a society that’s afraid of failure, especially for our children. But if you never mess up—if you are ALWAYS a winner—how can you ever learn?
angela@spinachtiger says
I agree with all of this. I was just saying the other day how much Ryder thinks so much out of the box. Both boys are so creative and as identical twins are so different.
Nicole B. says
These are all excellent advice. I agree with every one – and also agree with Katie in the comments about especially loving the failure tip. I think my kids learn a lot of life lessons when they don’t have instant success.
Tammy @ creativekkids says
I love all the tips as well, especially the last one. “Do the right thing, even when it might not get noticed and might not matter” is what we say too. You just do right. We believe too that God notices even when nobody else does.