A child is a born questioner. He does not have to be trained to be a questioner; but he does need to be trained as a questioner. A child has been not inaptly called “an animated interrogation-point.” Before a child can speak his questions, he looks them; and when he can speak them out, his questions crowd one another for expression, until it would seem that, if a parent were to answer all of his child’s questions, that parent would have time to do nothing else. The temptation to a parent, in view of this state of things, is to repress a child as a questioner, rather than to train him as a questioner; and just here is where a parent may lose or undervalue a golden privilege as a parent.

The beginning of all knowledge is a question. All progress in knowledge is a result of continued questioning. Whence? What? Why? Wherefore? Whither? These are the starting-points of investigation and research to young and to old alike; and when any one of these questions has been answered in one sphere, it presents itself anew in another. Unless a child were a questioner at the beginning of his life, he could make no start in knowledge; and if a child were ever caused to stay his questionings, there would be at once an end to his progress in knowledge. Questioning is the expression of mental appetite. He who lacks the desire to question, is in danger of death from intellectual starvation.

Yet with all the importance that, on the face of it, attaches to a child’s impulse to ask questions, it is unmistakably true that far more pains are taken by parents generally to check children in their questionings, than to train them in their questioning. “Don’t be asking so many questions;” “Why will you be asking questions all the time?” “You’ll worry my life out with your questions.” These are the parental comments on a child’s questions, rather than, “I’m glad to have you want to know about all these things;” or, “Never hesitate to ask me a question about anything that you want to know more of;” or, “The more questions you ask, the better, if only they are proper questions.”

Sooner or later the average child comes to feel that, the fewer questions he asks, the more of a man he will be; and so he represses his impulse to inquire into the nature and purpose and meaning of that which newly interests him; until, perhaps, he is no longer curious concerning that which he does not understand, or is hopeless of any satisfaction being given to him concerning the many problems which perplex his wondering mind. By the time he has reached young manhood, he who was full of questions in order that he might have knowledge, seems to be willing to live and die in ignorance, rather than to make a spectacle of himself by multiplying questions that may be an annoyance to others, or that may be deemed a source of discredit to himself.

There are obvious reasons why the average parent is not inclined to encourage his child to ask all the questions he thinks of. In the first place, it takes a great deal of time to answer a child’s questions. It takes time to feed a child, and to wash it and dress it; but it takes still more time to supply food and clothing for a child’s mind. And when a parent finds that the answering of fifty questions in succession from a child only seems to prompt the child to ask five hundred questions more, it is hardly to be wondered at that the parent thinks there ought to be a stop put to this sort of thing somewhere. Then, again, a child’s questions are not always easy to be answered by the child’s parent. The average child can ask questions that the average parent cannot answer; and it is not pleasant for a parent to be compelled to confess ignorance on a subject in which his child has a living interest. It is so much easier, and so much more imposing, for a parent to talk to a child on a subject which the parent does understand, and which the child does not, than it is for the parent to be questioned by the child on a subject which neither child nor parent understands, that the parent’s temptation is a strong one to discountenance a habit that has this dangerous tendency.

That there ought to be limitations to a child’s privilege of question-asking is evident; for every privilege, like every duty, has its limitations. But the limitations of this privilege ought to be as to the time when questions may be asked, and as to the persons of whom they may be asked, rather than as to the extent of the questioning. A child ought not to be free to ask his mother’s guest how old she is, or why she does not look as pleasant as his mother; nor yet to ask one of his poorer playmates why he has no better shoes, or how it is that his mother has to do her own washing. A child must not interrupt others in order to ask a question that fills his mind, nor is it always right for him to ask a question of his father or mother before others. When to ask, and of whom to ask, the questions that it is proper for him to ask, must be made known to a child in connection with his training by his parents as a questioner.

It is to the parent that a child ought to be privileged to come in unrestrained freeness as a questioner. Both the mother and the father should welcome from a child any question that the child honestly desires an answer to. And every parent ought to set apart times for a child’s free questioning, when the child can feel that the hour is as sacred to that purpose as the hour of morning and evening devotion is sacred to prayer. It may be just before breakfast, or just after, or at the close of the day, that the father is to be always ready to answer his child’s special questions. It may be when father and child walk out together, or during the quieter hours of Sunday, that the child is sure of his time for questioning his father. The mother’s surest time for helping her child as a questioner, is at the child’s bed-time; although her child may be free to sit by her side when she is sewing, or to stand near her when she is busy about other household matters, and to question her while she is thus working. Whenever the child’s hour for questioning his parent has come, the child ought to be encouraged to ask any and every question that he really wants to ask; and the parent ought to feel bound to give to the child’s every question a loving and well-considered answer.

A child needs parental help in his training as a questioner. While he is to be free to ask questions, he is to exercise his freedom within the limits of reason and of a right purpose. A child may be inclined to multiply silly questions, thoughtless questions, aimless questions. In such a case, he needs to be reminded of his duty of seeking knowledge and of trying to gain it, and that neither his time nor his parent’s time ought to be wasted in attending to questions that have no point to them. Again, a child may be inclined to dwell unduly on a single point in his questioning. Then it is his parent’s duty to turn him away from that point by inducing him to question on another point. Whenever a child is questioning his parent, that parent has the responsibility and the power of training the child as a questioner, by receiving in kindness and by shaping with discretion the child’s commendable impulse and purpose of questioning.

When a child asks a question that a parent really cannot answer, it is a great deal better for the parent to say frankly, “I do not know,” than to say impatiently, “Oh! don’t be asking such foolish questions.” But, on the other hand, it is often better to give a simple answer, an answer to one point in the child’s question, than to attempt an answer that is beyond the child’s comprehension, or than to say that it is impossible to explain that subject to a child just now. For example, if a child asks why it is that the sunrise is always to be seen from the windows on one side of the house, and the sunset from the windows on the other side, there is no need of telling him that he is too young to have that explained to him, nor yet of attempting an explanation of the astronomical facts involved. The better way is to answer him that the one window looks toward the east and the other toward the west; and that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This will give the child one new item of knowledge; and that is all that he cares for just then.

A child may ask a question on a point that cannot with propriety be made clear to him just yet. In such a case he ought not to be rebuked for seeking light, but an answer of some kind is to be given to him, in declaration of a general truth that includes the specific subject of his inquiry; and then he is to be kindly told that by and by he can know more about this than he can now. This will satisfy a well-disposed child for the time being, while it will encourage him to continue in the attitude of a truth-seeking questioner.

A very simple answer to his every question is all that a child looks for; but that is his right, if he is honestly seeking information, and it is his parent’s duty to give it to him, if he comes for it at a proper time and in a proper spirit. A child is harmed if he be unduly checked as a questioner; and he is helped as he could be in no other way, as a truth-seeker, if he be encouraged and wisely trained by his parents in a child’s high prerogative as a questioner.