Nothing reveals the limits of your knowledge quite like a conversation with an eight-year-old who has a very specific interest. Mention the wrong Pokémon. Misidentify a dinosaur. Confuse two Minecraft characters. You will find out. And honestly, I love it.
Children spend a lot of time asking adults questions. At the library, they ask us where to find things, what they should read next, if their favorite book is available, and whether we have a book about the extremely specific thing they have suddenly decided they need to know everything about.
But every once in a while, the roles flip. A child mentions something I don’t know, and instead of having an answer, I get to say:
“I don’t know. Tell me about it.”
And suddenly, they are the expert.
Kids Know Things
I don’t mean this in the nice, encouraging, everyone has something to contribute sort of way. I mean children know things. A lot of things.
Spend enough time in a children’s room and you will eventually meet a child whose knowledge of dinosaurs makes your own look embarrassingly superficial. Another can identify what feels like every Pokémon ever created. Someone else knows Minecraft recipes, shark species, Greek gods, military aircraft, or the complete history of a fictional universe you didn’t even know existed.
Sometimes their knowledge is startlingly specific. You ask one innocent question and realize you have accidentally opened a door. Now there are evolutions. There are generations. There are rankings. There is lore. There may be charts.
And the child explaining all of this to you is delighted.
Ask a Question You Don’t Know the Answer To
When a child tells me something I genuinely didn’t know, I don’t feel the need to pretend otherwise. I find myself asking another question. Not because I’m quizzing them, but because I actually want to know.
Wait, there are how many kinds?
How can you tell them apart?
Which one is the rarest?
How did you learn all this?
There is a noticeable difference between asking a child a question when you already know the answer and asking because you truly don’t. Children spend a lot of time answering questions adults already know the answers to.
What is seven times eight?
What is the capital of California?
Those questions have their place. But a genuine question does something different. There isn’t an answer waiting behind my back. I’m not checking whether the child gets it right. I actually need their answer. That’s a very different position for a child to occupy in a conversation with an adult.
Imagine asking a child about their favorite Pokémon and discovering that the answer requires an explanation of types, abilities, and several generations of characters you’ve never heard of. You could change the subject, or you could ask another question and see where the conversation goes. For once, they’re the ones explaining something new, and we’re the ones trying to keep up.
And maybe we don’t create enough opportunities for it.
What Children Bring With Them?
Libraries are very good at thinking about what children might need to learn. We select books that introduce them to new ideas, create programs where they can experiment and discover, and build displays around topics they might not encounter otherwise. We answer questions and help them find information.
All of that matters. But there’s another question worth asking:
What does this child already know that I don’t?
That’s a surprisingly fun question to carry around a children’s room. Suddenly, the child enthusiastically explaining Pokémon isn’t just receiving a library experience. They’re contributing to it. So is the child who knows everything about dinosaurs. The child who has apparently memorized every fact ever published about the Titanic definitely brought something. Children don’t enter the library as empty spaces waiting for us to fill them with interesting things. They arrive with their own little collections of knowledge already under construction.
We just don’t always know what’s in them.
Expertise Doesn’t Have to Look Like Expertise
Maybe part of the reason we miss it is that children’s expertise doesn’t always look the way adult expertise does. There isn’t a certificate involved. It can be narrow, intense, enthusiastic, and occasionally exhausting.
A child may know very little about marine biology but an astonishing amount about sharks. They may not know the history of video games, but they can explain Minecraft mechanics in enough detail to leave you wondering how you’ve managed to know so little about it. But knowing something well enough to explain it to another person is its own kind of expertise, and children don’t always get opportunities to occupy that position with adults.
Think about how much of childhood is structured around adults knowing and children learning. Teachers teach. Grown-ups explain. Librarians help children find answers. There are good reasons for all of that, but the library can also be a place where knowledge occasionally travels the other way.
When we’re curious about what children already know, we begin noticing things we might otherwise miss. Their interests become more than topics we can help them explore. They’re invitations into conversations we couldn’t have planned ourselves.
And those conversations can change how we see the children who walk through our doors.
Resist the Librarian Reflex
This is where I have to fight one of my own librarian instincts. A child tells me something interesting, and I immediately want to do something with it. Find the book, recommend another one, connect it to a program, add a fact. Turn a nice conversation into excellent library service. And sometimes that’s exactly right. But sometimes I wonder if the better response is simply:
Really? Tell me more.
Librarians are supposed to be good at finding answers, but one of the best things to say to a child might be I don’t know. Not the end-of-conversation kind. The interested kind.
I don’t know. How does that work?
I don’t know. Which one would you choose?
And, of course, I don’t know. Let’s find out.
Sometimes we go looking for the answer together. But sometimes the child already knows it, and when they do, we don’t need to rush to reclaim our usual position as the knowledgeable adult. Not every interest needs to be redirected toward something we can provide. Sometimes the child already brought the interesting thing. Our contribution can be curiosity.
What Are We Missing When We Only Look for Questions?
We spend a lot of time thinking about children’s questions at the library. Maybe we should pay a little more attention to their answers. What do they know? What have they been figuring out on their own? What could they explain to us if we gave them the chance?
There is something appealing to me about a children’s room where expertise isn’t assumed to belong to the oldest person in the conversation. The librarian knows things. The grown-up knows things. The child knows things. And sometimes the most interesting conversation starts when we don’t know the same things.
So yes, please tell me that I have identified the wrong Pokémon.
Explain why that dinosaur hasn’t been called that since 2015.
Tell me everything I’ve been missing about Minecraft.
I’ll ask questions. Because I really do want to know.
(Photos courtesy of guest blogger)
Today’s guest blogger is Renee Kitson a Youth Services Librarian at the Mountain View Public Library in California. She loves creating hands-on programs that spark curiosity and encourage families to learn together. She enjoys sharing ideas that help make libraries welcoming, engaging places for children and their caregivers.
Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.
If you are interested in submitting a guest post, please read and fill out our Guest Blogging Interest Form. We would love to hear from you!
The post Curious Librarians Make Better Librarians appeared first on ALSC Blog.
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