Get a Child Addicted to the Real Wonders of the World

It’s easy to get a child addicted to real wonders if you start early enough. Simply point them out—they are all around us—and include a few references to what was once thought to be true. Take thunder. Explain that a bolt of lightning rips through the air, zapping trillions of air molecules with energy hotter than the Sun. Those superheated molecules explode out of the way with a crack! Then the bolt is gone, and all those molecules smash into each other again as they fill in the emptiness it leaves behind. That’s the long rumble—waves of air swirling and colliding like surf at the beach.

Forgive me if I find that completely wonder-full.

Then explain that people once thought is was a sound made by an angry god in the sky, and enjoy your child’s face as she registers how much less interesting that is.

Repeat steps one and two until college.

Dale McGowan, Ph.D., Teaching Kids to Yawn at Counterfeit Wonder (2007)

• sense of wonder
• wonder