Curiosity leads to knowledge.

"Don't touch that!'
"No! Come back here! Don't take the gate remote controller!"
Don't! Don't! and Don't! How is the child supposed to know things? Of course, he wants to touch things, hold them in his hands and use them just as the adult do. He is obviously curious about the feel of things and their usage, even perhaps how such things operate. And if he does want to know how such things operate, you are really lucky for you have a child who is more curious than others, who wants to know more than others, ending up being cleverer than others. Isn't that what we want our children to be?

Yet, how many parents kill that curiosity in a child so often just because they are afraid the children may break something or cause the adults some kind of inconvenience. Yes, "Break that and I'll give you a good spanking." is so often the words that warn the child, using fear to curb his curiosity. "You know I'll have to clean up the mess you leave behind." And that was the way some house-proud parents keep their house spit and span with not a pencil or crayon mark on the wall. All that pride for the price of their child's lack of experience and knowledge. Is it worth it?

"Never mind, my children will have the chance for experience and knowledge at the kindergarten or tuition center where teachers can teach them." Oh, yes, they can but where is the spontaneity of such creativity. What's that? Spontaneity? What's so important about that?

Great works and inspiration bringing wonderful knowledge are the result of a spontaneous flow of ideas and thoughts. That's when the flow is good and natural and expression, be it physical, mental or emotional, comes spurting out without necessity to exhaust oneself. When ideas comes spontaneously, we should immediately work on it and the least we should do is to write it down or have a rough sketch in order to capture it and prevent it from being lost. So often have I lost ideas and expressions just because work or duty prevents me from working on something that emerges spontaneously. At such times, I tried to get back to the ideas that came but they were lost or not as vivid as I would have liked them to be.

Nature has put into our children the urge to know. So, curiosity leads the child to explore and learn all about the things in his/her environment. The curious child learns fastest because he must satisfy this urge to discover and learn in the process. Therefore, every parent should encourage the curiosity in the child except when danger awaits as in a hot iron or an explosive fire-cracker.

When a danger is encounter, so as not to lessen or dampen a child's curiosity, it should be explained to the child why he was not allowed to touch the hot iron. Perhaps show the child what can happen to anything that touches the hot iron. This can convince the child that things which are hot ought not to be touched. Show the child how the iron when hot could be used to iron clothes. Then, let him know that the iron when taken off the electricity supply can become cold. that is the time when the child could be allowed to feel it, touch it and even handle it. In this manner, a parent can teach the purpose of an iron, when it is dangerously hot and so must be handles with care even when it is cold for it is really heavy.

The day a human loses interest in things around him/her, the person will not follow the developments of this world. He/She will know less and less. Without curiosity, a person loses interest and might as well be dead.