“Why don’t fish get wrinkly in water?”
You blink. Pause. Stall.
“What do you think?”
It buys you approximately six seconds. Because they’re still staring at you like you’re Google with a snack drawer.
One day, without warning, your child starts asking questions like a tiny philosopher in pajamas.
Sometimes they’re silly.
Sometimes they’re smart.
Sometimes… you wish you’d listened better in fifth grade science.
You say “I don’t know,” and you mean it — not because you’re failing them, but because you’re learning with them.
And honestly? It’s kind of fun. You ask Siri together. You pull out the library card. You spend 15 minutes on YouTube watching a video titled “Why Don’t Fish Blink?”
You get to be a guide, not a know-it-all. A co-explorer, not a walking encyclopedia. And somewhere between “What makes rain?” and “Do cows have eyelashes?” You start to see how being curious together is one of the sacred joys of raising little ones.
It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about being someone safe to ask.
And that, mama, is a beautiful thing.
Maybe that’s why God tells us, “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.” Proverbs 9:9. It’s not about being smarter. It’s that questions are not something you outgrow. That “I don’t know” is not a failure, it’s an opening. That a person who is still curious, still delighted by the answer, still willing to sit beside a small child asking about fish wrinkles and say honestly, ‘I don’t know yet. Let’s find out,’ is still growing.
The weight behind the “I don’t know”
Here’s what no one tells you: saying “I don’t know” feels small in the moment, but it carries real weight. Because parenthood comes with this invisible pressure — the idea that you’re supposed to know everything. How to soothe, how to discipline, how to keep them safe, how to answer questions about the moon and the circulatory system and why the neighbor’s dog only has three legs.
It’s exhausting to wear the costume of “expert” when you’re really just figuring things out as you go.
So when you say, “I don’t know,” you’re not only admitting your humanness. You’re modeling something bigger: humility. Curiosity. The freedom to keep learning, even as an adult.
And here’s the gift: that humility doesn’t shrink you in their eyes. It makes you trustworthy. It tells your child: Mom isn’t pretending. Mom is real. Mom is safe.
And when you laugh together at a silly answer, or marvel at something new you’ve both discovered, you’re not just filling their head with information. You’re planting seeds of trust. Seeds that say, “I can always come to you.”
Why it matters later
Because one day the questions won’t be about ducks or fish or eyelashes. They’ll be about friendships that hurt. About choices that scare you. About who they are and who they want to be.
They’ll come with questions that don’t have quick answers — the kind that hang heavy in the air, the kind you can’t Google at bedtime.
And the years of little questions, answered with openness instead of shame? That’s the foundation. That’s what gives them the courage to keep asking when the stakes are higher.
If you’ve built connection in the lighthearted questions, they’ll trust you with the heartbreaking ones.
