Explanations designed for young children are fraught with weird metaphors and "don't worry; I'll tell you the real truth when you're older" substitutes. I used to think parents were just being silly. Tell the poor children the truth! But - no. Those cheesy cartoon books explaining pretty much everything under the sun from sex to quantum physics really do serve a valuable purpose.
It's just hard. Watch:
Lyra: Mom? Why does it get dark?
Me: It gets dark because the earth rotaa... because the earth spins around, but the sun more or less remains in the same place... sort of, not really, but rela... um... the sun stays in the same place and the earth goes in a big circle around it and... ok, this would be a lot easier if I had some styrofoam balls and a flashlight. And then we could do moon phases! But anyway, the earth spins, so we only get daylight on half of the surface at a time, so when it's daytime on our side of earth, it's dark on the other side. Isn't that neat?
Lyra: Moon phases?
Me: Yeah! It's so awesome. Completely blew my -
Lyra: THE EARTH SPINS?!
Me: Wha... yeah! The earth spins. Oh wait, did you know that the earth is sph... that the earth is a ball? It's shaped like your soccer ball! Neat, right?
Lyra: The earth spins... so we have air up in the sky and we're people and Ginger's a dog and everything else is earth?
Me: Umm, most things aren't earth, but yeah, there's a lot of earth out there, the ground and... whatnot.
Lyra: Everything is earth.
Me: No... no, there's just a LOT of earth.
Lyra: EVERYTHING IS EARTH.
Me: Oh. Right.
I could go on for days about our weird dialogues. Mostly the problem is getting the proper information in without going overboard with silly things like exactness. This is hard for me. Also, I need a better vocabulary.
Lyra: I have a brain in my head.
Me: Why yes, yes you do.
Lyra: Why is my brain in my head?
Me: Umm, well, it isn't there for a reason, exactly, but... I mean, it's certainly useful that... Ok, so your brain is really important. And you have a lot of senses on your head -
Lyra: Senses?
Me: Yeah. You see, you smell, you taste, you hear through your ears... those are types of senses.
Lyra: My brain goes down through my neck, to my heart, and gets sent all over my body before it comes back up to my head again!
Me: Whoa. You mean blood. Your blood gets pumped through your heart up to your brain and all over your entire body. Blood's great. Your brain, though, that stays put.
Lyra: No, Mr. Reggie said my brain goes down to my heart and...
Me: No.
Lyra: No, my brain! My brain goes through MY BODY.
Me: Oh goodness. Unless you're talking about neural... no. We'll talk about this later.
This reminds me of the time I tried explaining sound to a six-year-old. She was a really clever kid, and always talking about science, so when she asked me how we hear I thought she'd enjoy a slightly more technical answer. And kids, they do this thing where they get really quiet and an adult (that's really more into what they're saying than anything else) assumes that means they're really riveted by all this exciting new information you're giving them, when really it's highly possible that they just imbibed one fragment of information and started daydreaming about Pokemon. Delivery is crucial.
I had just gotten to the inner ear when we got to her house.
Bonnie: Mom! Guess what!
K: What?
Bonnie: Jenny says my head is full of air!
K: WHAT?
Me: No! No I didn't! I was explaining sound!
K: What - what did you tell her?
Me: Just... you know... that it's a vibration, and some stuff happens and it gets interpreted as sound by... our brain.
K: Yeah. You know she's six, right?
Me: She was listening!
Sigh. But I mean REALLY, do you ever remember learning these things? No, probably not, because little kids are about as inquisitive as you get and they ask "WHY?!" about a billion times a day. And that's good - that means you learn so many things about the world. It's just... exhausting. For the parents, obviously.
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11 years ago
2 comments:
That sounds fun. I enjoy explaining things to kids. Probably because I need to break concepts down to their basic elements in order to understand them myself. A strength and weakness of mine is that I am forever re-inventing the wheel, and that I comprehend large concepts in a simple, child like way. You could always allow God back in your life and then explain the physics of the universe like this: "God made it that way - it is HIS will. We cannot even begin to understand the mind of God. All we can do is believe and have faith. Now go pray and stop asking so many questions..." That's how I was raised, and look I turned out fine!
Heh. One great thing about Catholics: we're always trying to make science and God coincide (yay Big Bang!). I got a top-of-the-line science education from my Catholic school.
But really, "BECAUSE" is truly becoming one of my favorite words. I know! You always swear that'll never happen to you. But when you reach the point where their "whys" are going to lead you both down the road to molecular biology? That's a good time for a "because."
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