Why?

Why should things be easy to understand?

~ Thomas Pynchon

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After spending some time with Zak, I realized that while there are many things that children don't understand, some of them are not understood with good reason - because they don't make sense. For example, why can't a kid stay up later than his parents. If his parents are asleep, he can do whatever he wants. Then when they wake up they can talk to him about what he did if he did something "wrong" like using the stove or driving the car.

Or maybe - just MAYBE - while the parents are sleeping the kid will use the stove and be a great chef who has prepared eggs Benedict when the parents wake up. Win-win. And MAYBE while the parents were sleeping, the kid will have learned to drive the car and will have taken it to the car wash and changed the oil so the parents don't have to.

But no. Parents have to assume kids don't know how to do those things. That's why so many kids' creativity gets stifled -- because parents need to sleep.