A child approaches the world and marvels at the complexity of the world.
He is searching for his place, struggling to assimilate the constant changes happening in his body, mind and heart. He tries to understand the secret relationships of concepts, he stands dazzled by the beauty and horrified by the cruelty of the world.
He tries to explain the contradictions of the great.
Questions beget questions.
When we read a book, the first question marks the beginning of relating to the knowledge of what is written, the beginning of understanding the new and the desire for more knowledge. A child reacts accordingly, as he reads the world's great book for the first time.
Parents mediate between the child and reality. They become the first major translators of riddles. They have already approached the greatness and tragedy of life, they have tried to process their own parents' responses, they have already created their own relationship that affects and expands – in the case of good loving communication – their understanding of the world. However, they have not closed the chapter of their own questions.
The child invites them to be honest with their fragmented inner personal map and revise it.
How to answer about God to a child, if not through the experience of a personal relationship with Him?
How can you answer why we live to a five-year-old child if you don't allow his presence and the relationship with him to touch your whole being?
For the sake of the child, parents re-approach the world. If their truth cannot stand up to innocence, it has no substance. Their dark, tormenting parts resurface as the child reveals them, as irrefutably as their potential.
How can a parent answer "why do we live" if his heart is deprived of a partner, if he has just said goodbye to his parent in unresolved emotional situations? How can he answer why we live, if his work has become slavery without freedom and creativity, if he does not trust people and has been deprived of the good and fairy tale of friendship? How can he answer why we live if the joy that makes the walk light has been lost, if the stars that gave us the vision have gone out, if the house has become devoid of celebrations and surrendered to the wear and tear of routine?
But can this question finally raise demanding and redemptive mobilizations? Could it be that the parent's responsible commitment towards his child calls him to search for meaning in his own life again?
Parents and child in a constant interaction.
How will parents not abuse the power that their age and position gives them over the child?
How, while enjoying the grace and coolness of the child's question, will they not underestimate its seriousness?
How will they teach him to love his own questions as they become the key to unlocking life's secrets?
Parents who settle for a superficial, superficial, "liberal" answer do not realize how much they are abandoning the child. On the contrary, the point of view that has been produced through the arduous personal journey, allows close to the position and the confrontation, that is, it allows the freedom to the child to go beyond their own level. It seems paradoxical, but the condition of fruitful questioning is the certainty of the offered knowledge. These personal answers the child craves from the parents and this path that produced them longs to explore, so it asks for answers that cannot be found on google or wikipedia.
All the questions of the child are existential as in his innocence he asks to connect the simple things with the depth of existence.
Parents are asked to understand how the child's questions are connected to the experiences of the family or to their personal concerns. Why does the child ask now? What sparked the childhood question? Is it a birth or a separation? An illness, or a loss? A personal experience of the parents that is lived in secret, but has deeply affected them, consequently shaking the emotional security of the child?
Parents trigger or suppress the child's desire to learn. They define the direction of development in terms of the mental, spiritual or emotional level. Many times they get caught up in the charm of an intelligent child, meet him only in books and condemn him to move mainly among adults - especially if he is an only child - cultivating the intellect excessively, resulting in an uneven development at the expense of his emotional life. Gifted children are stuck in the role of the small and big, they lose their carefreeness and freedom, they are unable to use reality creatively, as they are unable to play. It therefore corresponds to a different approach to the questions of a child who grows up in this way, as education in experience and emotion takes precedence.
The loving microclimate in the relationship is the necessary condition to cultivate the trust that unfolds the child's questions. It is about parents' willingness to transcend their own needs and lean lovingly into the child's world, enjoying the process of relating with them, in awe of the wonder of a new existence.
It is fascinating that the same question can be answered differently. A good answer on the one hand reassures, on the other it triggers other questions. The good answer is produced within each process of a unique and authentic relationship.
The good answer is the one that the child can bear to metabolize, that respects his personality and developmental phase.
The continued development of the child is an ongoing challenge that requires the future to enter the present of the relationship. I love the growing child, it means that today's parent's responses are aimed at the long term, gradually building tomorrow's adult.
But it is fatal, as the parent enters the process of relating to the child, that he himself learns life again in a new way. He had not foreseen this, he had not imagined it, but it is true, that just at the moment when the child feels that he is becoming exciting for the parent, without of course underestimating himself, he begins to gain the most from him and connect with him with a deep and unshakable bond. An endless inexhaustible relationship of mutual learning begins.
And parents very often wonder about the way the child approaches life, especially during the period of necessary questioning in adolescence. But if parents survive the challenge with confidence in their personal journey, something children desperately desire, then the doors remain open and children will return again and again.
And parents wonder about the children's choices in a rapidly developing world, in the rapid changes of the seasons. But if they don't put themselves on the sidelines, then their children offer a continuous expansion of their view and understanding of the world, while at the same time they don't stop looking for life skills from them, with the attitude towards the final farewell at the top.
Both parents and children are looking for a meeting place that will expand in the course of life; what other place is better suited, apart from the bet of evolution, the bet of wisdom?

Eleni Karagiannis