I remember when my boys were small and like most kids asked lots of questions.  Now you don’t have to have had your own kids to have witnessed this.  Maybe a niece or nephew, a siblings child or even a kid down the street.  They all ask questions.

My boys are now both in their twenties and attending college but I remember when they were in their early “inquisitive” years and thinking “why do they ask so many questions.”  The obvious answer is because they wanted the answer, they wanted to learn.  There were no dumb questions and nothing stopped them from asking anything that happened to pop into their mind.

Asking questions is how we learn, so why is it that as we get older, we find ourselves asking fewer and fewer questions?  It can’t be because we know it all, although we all know that guy who thinks he does.  Are we afraid that we might ask that “dumb” question and embarrass ourselves?  Maybe we see it as a sign of weakness.  Besides, we can find out just about anything on google, right?

Here are four reasons that kids ask better questions than adults and generally get better answers:

1.  CURIOSITY

Don’t you ever find yourself saying “I wonder why …..”  Of course you do.  We are all curious about things everyday.  Kids ask the question “why does it rain?”  Adults will state it this way, “why does it have to rain?”  See the difference?  Kids want to understand and adults want an explanation.  We have the need to justify the things that are going on instead of just accepting them.

2.  PROBLEM SOLVING

Certainly most of the problems we deal with as adults are different that when we were kids.  Kids want to know how to fix their broken toy or make their bike work again.  “Daddy, can you fix it?”  “Yes son, Daddy can fix it.”  Problem solved!  Nothing frustrates me more than another adult coming to me with a problem with no suggestion as to how to solve it.  We are adults, we are suppose to be the problem solvers.

3.  RESPONSIBILITY

Hopefully at an early age, you started to teach your kids about responsibility (you can do this even if you don’t have your own kids) so that they would understand what it means to help out and be a productive part of the household.  Kids ask lots of questions about responsibility – most start with “why”.  As adults, we should know the “why” and if you are being asked why, then maybe you have not communicated clearly enough to that person what their responsibilities are.

4.  RELATIONSHIPS

If you value your relationships, you better be asking questions.  Kids ask questions all the time about the other people they interact with.  “Why is Jimmy so mean?”, “When can Emma come over and play?”  They want to know why people act the way they do and when they can spend time with them.  As adults shouldn’t we be asking similar questions?  I think we have a tendency to assume what people are feeling and whether or not they even like spending time with us.

The point of all this … kids do not suffer from the self-limiting beliefs or dominating thoughts that adults do and therefore ask any and all the questions that allow them to communicate how they really feel.  Adults, most of the time, think about how others will perceive the question before they ask it.

Do yourself a favor and quit worrying about what other people will think about what you have to say, be respectful and positive but if you have a question, ask it.

You don’t know what you don’t know and until you find out what you don’t know, you won’t learn anything.

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Barry Smith   www.buildingwhatmatters.com   10/16/12            photo by author