Why are children smarter than us?

By Khushi Sharma

While an adult daydreams of leaving the rut, a child has already built a fantasy world in it. There is no limit to what a child can think, imagine and create in his little mind. A kid’s mind is like a lake, continuously flowing with ideas, not yet contaminated with adulthood and worldly concepts.

J.Robert Oppenheimer said, “There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.” Even Albert Einstein believed that he could think about problems of time and space only because his intellectual development was retarded. Thomas Edison agreed too that the greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.

According to Carl Sagan, kids are natural born scientists because they ponder upon deep scientific questions. Why is the moon round? Why is the grass green? Why do we have two eyes? Who was the mother of the first human? All of the questions which seem stupid or irritating actually hold deep importance. Imagine if Sir Issac Newton had never wondered why the apple fell to the ground.

Ideas are generated when we think in a new and creative way. We as adults hardly think out of the box. We hardly ask questions. It is like we are conditioned to worry, to not allow ourselves to think, imagine, wonder or ask like kids do. Maybe that’s why, most of the revolutionaries and geniuses were called childish for thinking something that only kids can.

Now is the time when we should think about that lake in our minds which got contaminated. Now is the time when we should give a thought about how to let the child in us come out; how to have fun; how to be smarter; and how to be a child.