Born to EXPLORE!!!!

Children are curious creatures. Think about a baby, in arms, unable to crawl. He reaches for dangling or sparkling earrings, for your glasses, trying to pull them off your face, he tugs on your nose or pokes your eyes or sticks his fingers into your mouth. He leans and reaches and grabs at your food. His eyes follow the movement of people or pets or objects.
Think about crawling babies. They can find the tiniest speck of dirt in your newly vacuumed carpet. They find dead bugs on the floor that you swear were never there. They chew on shoes, toys, and yes, even electrical cords. They spin the toilet paper off the roll, splash in the toilet water and pull books off shelves and containers out of cabinets. They have no concept of mine or yours. Everything that is within their reach is theirs to explore; the visitor's purse, your guest's meal, a grocery bag

Think about young children. They touch everything. They want to pick up stuff off the shelves at the grocery store. They want to touch the pretty glass decorations at your neighbor's house. They ask questions: What is that? Who is that? What is that sound? What is that smell? How long until we get there? They "get into" stuff and can, if misunderstood, annoy their caregivers to no end. Young children, like babies and toddlers, are naturally interested in their surroundings. Without this driving curiosity, without this innate need to explore and understand what the environment provides, children would fail to thrive and to learn. Their ability to make connections and sense of their world would be jeopardized and it is plausible to say that their development would be compromised.

Children beckon us to teach them about what they see, what they hear and what they feel. A child's interest in his environment is limitless and most importantly, natural. To continually ask a child not to touch things in his world is like telling a starving man not to feast on the food laid before him. It would behoove us, as parents, to become more accepting of our child's need to learn through exploration. If we work to stay involved with our kids instead of working to deter their curiosity it may help us to become a bit more curious too.