A Hunger to Learn

One of the things that I really appreciate about my children is that they embrace learning new things and find great joy in putting into practice that knowledge. Like most young families, there's a great deal of time in the car with parents in the front and kids in the back seats. In the search for squeezing out some quality time in the midst of those car rides, we play a lot of "games".

There are games are typically played during longer car rides, such as the picnic game, when you go around the car and state, "I'm going to a picnic and bringing an (food that begins with the letter 'A')." The next person in car then follows with "I'm going to a picnic and bringing an (the same food time which was mentioned earlier beginning with the letter 'A') and (a new food item beginning with the letter 'B')" It's a great time-killer and insomuch it sharpens our kids' memory skills, or mine, that's a bonus.

Another game that we play in the car is the "question game", where I alternate between Daniel and Sophia (Carissa isn't quite up for many of these games yet) random questions ranging from history, current events, science and math. To me, it's the equivalent of getting them to beg to eat vegetables because I'm pretty much drilling them on key facts and they actually find this fun. Maybe it's not such an odd concept, given quiz shows have always been popular and Jeopardy! has been around forever. Questions that I'll ask might be:

• Name the first three United States Presidents
• What is twelve plus eleven?
• Name three kinds of reptiles
• Name five Disney villains
• Name five types of trees
• What is eight times six?
• Who is the current Vice President of the United States?

It's gotten to the point that they ask me to play this game in the car, which is pretty neat, and they're now making special requests around questions that they want to be asked. For example, Sophia recently was taught by Daniel the concept of multiplication by two, which Daniel explained was taking a number and adding it to itself. So Sophia asked to play "the question game" and asked me to lob a number of "times two" problems, most of which she got correct.

As I think of my children - and I think this might be true for children in general - I find in interesting how eager they are to learn new things, and how they embrace being challenged around these same new topics. It's almost an attitude of "I can learn that" followed by "bring it on!" In contrast, adults often view new things with great suspicion, and react with a mixture of fear, resignation and cynicism. I'm convinced that the axiom, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" was crafted by an adult as a cop-out refusal and unwillingness to learn and adapt to a new and changing world.

Perhaps this is because as adults, we'd like to believe that we "put in our time" and as people who are no longer children, we can claim intellectual mastery and the status of not needing to learn anything else. Of course this is not true, and if there is a cliché which rings true, it's the one that tells us that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know.

I think this also points to a broader perspective of life and how people deal with change, because any change in life requires tons of new things to learn - I know this first-hand. From making new friends to navigating through a new workplace, church and community to figuring the mundane things around the best place to buy groceries, housewares and gasoline, each day brings new things to learn. I hope like Sophia I can replicate that attitude of "I can learn that" followed by "bring it on!"