This is hard to do. Kids are often interested in stuff that seems weird, mundane, or inane to us. They make things that generally qualitatively bad. It’s hard to be enthused about stories that seem pointless, art that seems ugly, insights that seem pointless, thoughts that seem bizarre.
But the best encouragement we can give is our attention. We need to see profferings as mustard seeds of creativity, empathy, acuity, and articulation. If we want them to find delight in craft and language and logic and work and beauty, we’ve got to stoke their fledgling enthusiasms.
That’s why we pin art to our refrigerators. Feign surprise at their tales. Repeat to our spouses their discoveries at the dinner table.
That’s why, when they give us a pocketful of unremarkable pebbles they collected on our walk, you display them as if in a museum.
Tom Kim 