assumptions.....

Kids have been known to question things. Why the grass is green and why the sky is blue. Sometimes adults don't have the patience to explain. And sometimes we assume that children are born with a database full of information and that they should already know the answers.

While reading something from a local author recently, he talked about how small children have to be forced to take baths and brush their teeth. They may not like it at first, but after awhile they figure out that this has value. (Especially boys when they discover girls.) Sometimes the things we learn from our parents are not fully appreciated until we become adults. Ask any college graduate how smart his father became from the time the recent graduate was a freshman to the time he took a job out in the real world.

A teenager I know asked me this weekend if she could get 2 drivers licenses - one for her purse, and another for in the car. That way she would never be without one. To a teenager, that makes perfect sense. To an adult, all kinds of red flags and bells go off. Fraud, forgery, etc. But she had no way of knowing all this.

If you think about it, age brings with it a bit of cynicism. Walls automatically come up whenever questions are asked, standards challenged. Creativity suffers and companies sometimes die due to a lack of asking enough questions. Remember Tom Hanks in the movie Big? He was a kid working for a toy manufacturer. What better person than a kid to tell you what kind of toy works or doesn't work?

Maybe all research and development teams should include at least one child. With questions come answers.....