All children are born curious, with a desire to explore their world. When parents provide a safe base from which to explore, curiosity can be the engine for learning and mastery. The parent who shows genuine interest in their child’s ideas and efforts promotes the child’s trust that his ideas have value. This development is promoted by asking the child for her opinions and solutions to problems. Exposure to varieties of people, places and things stimulates curiosity. Helping children tolerate anxiety, frustration and failure and therefore overcome avoidance allows them to follow their curiosity, sustain their engagement and continue to grow. When a child can trust that his parents’ love is unconditional, he can trust his own thoughts and feelings and not fear that having his own ideas threatens his relationship security. When curiosity leads to well-developed interests and competence, that child will be less vulnerable to peer pressures to set his own thoughts and feelings aside. Curiosity can and should be the driving force behind the pursuit of greater understanding, intellectual depth, and personal and professional success. Curiosity gets sidetracked when children begin to worry more about judgment, embarrassment and failure than pursuing what they love.
