People say that kids today cause them to worry about the future. But here are some stories of adorably inquisitive youngsters that might put those fears to rest.

This piece is based on a Quora Question. Link on the last page.

1/15. I remember a night when my son (who is currently 13, and now in 7th grade) was still in kindergarten. I guess he was 6 years old. I was watching him as he was standing by the sink, brushing his teeth, getting ready for bed. He seemed to be somewhere else, lost in thought.

Then he paused for a moment, spit into the sink, looked up at me, and said: “Dad, how do we know we aren’t actually just a bunch of puppets, and somebody else isn’t pulling our strings?”

Dumbfounded, I remember sitting down on the toilet seat next to him, grasping for words, searching for an answer, and thinking to myself, “Wow, I’m screwed – he’s already smarter than me…”

-Joe Chapuis

2/15. My Daughter aged 6 was tasked with selling cookies for girl scouts. I asked her where she was going to start selling them, maybe our neighbors would like them.

“Nah, Im going to set up my table outside the bank downtown. People cant say ‘I have no money’ as an excuse there.

She sold a lot of cookies that year.

-Joe McCracken

3/15. My young son, commenting on my teenage daughter, as she was struggling through an emotionally difficult high school peccadillo:

“She is much more popular than I am, but she doesn’t have as many friends as I do.”

That insight has proved invaluable to me in parenting each kid.

-Andy Erickson

4/15. A few years ago when I was teaching a class of five and six year olds, a child came in and asked to do show and tell. He showed a wrapped candy.

He told us that he had taken this candy from an art gallery, from an exhibit that was a pile of candies in a corner. The artist’s idea was that anyone could come up and simply take one.

A few of the kids then blew my mind completely by having an intense debate about whether or not such a piece actually counted as art. (continued…)

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I felt like it should have been three o’clock in the morning and we should have all had glasses of shiraz in our hands. It was unbelievable. I just sat back and marvelled at the amazing depth of their discussion.

But then….a young fella said (and please bear in mind that he was five years old at the time…)

“I keep wondering if it’s still art when all the candies have been taken and it’s back to being an empty corner.”

Some of the other comments I remember specifically are: “It can’t be art because it’s not in a frame.”

“It’s art because it’s in an art gallery.”

“But people are in an art gallery and they’re not art.

“Yes they are! (This one went on for a while: are people art or not? The general consensus seemed to be that if people wore colourful clothes they were ‘art.)

Then they debated whether the candy was still art: “Your candy is art because it was in the art”

“No it’s not art now because I’ve taken it. It’s just a candy now.”

“No, it’s an art candy.”

I prompted absolutely none of this discussion. It was entirely spontaneous. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the most awe-inspiring moment of my teaching career so far.

-Emma-Francis Rutherford

5/15. My son was 8 – to pass time in the car I asked him if 1,000 monkeys with infinite time would eventually type out The Lord of the Rings. He thought for a little and said, “Yes. But would they understand it?”

-Reuben Steiger

6/15. Yesterday I read how Donald Trump defended the size of his phallus in the presidential debate, and then I ranted about it to my wife: telling her that surely, when potential future world leaders refer to the genitalia of others as diminutive, or to their own as substantial, Armageddon is imminent, and we are in the deepest and darkest throes of Kali Yuga.

My four-year-old son, who was listening in, waited for me to finish and then offered his opinion. (continued…)

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“Dont talk about Donald Trump. Donald Trump has his own life, and you have your own life. Donald Trump has his own things to do, and you have your own things to do. If someone needs your help, let them come to you and ask for it. Otherwise don’t talk about other people–live your own life.”

Wow. My four-year-old son had just delivered what was probably the soundest advice I’ve ever heard. He taught me that instead of focusing on and criticizing others, I should concentrate on my own life. I was humbled and speechless.

-Ben A. Wise

7/15. I was putting on my makeup and my four-year-old, Cruze, was playing on the floor beside me.

Out of nowhere he said, “Mommy?”

“Yes Honey?” I replied.

“Thank you for my life.”

“What did you just say?” I asked, incredulous.

He repeated it.

I’ll never know why he said this. He was much too young to grasp the statement he was making. But I will tell you it was one of the most profound, touching moments I’ve ever experienced with my children. Incredible.

-Elisa Christensen

8. When one of my sons was four, I was impressed by how much he remembered from when he was younger. I kept going back and back in time, question after question, to when he was in a crib.

To my amazement, he remembered the cornfield out the window that he hadn’t seen since he was less than a year old. Finally, I asked him if he remembered being born. “Yes,” he said. “It was like being flushed down the toilet.”

-Doc Searls

9/15. When my daughter was 3 1/2, we had just visited my wife after she was recovering in the hospital from her C-section delivering my son. On the way out, there was an open door where two doctors were discussing a x-ray pinned up on a light-box.

My daughter ran into the room and got on top of a stool that was in between the two doctors. She said, “I know what’s wrong with this patient.” (continued…)

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The two doctors looked at each other quizzically and one said, “Yes, and what is your diagnosis?” I apologized: “Excuse me, we were on our way out.” The other doctor said, “We’re not in that much in a hurry and we would like to hear what she has to say.”

My daughter pointed at the x-ray and named off the bones she was able to see – femur, tibia, fibula, patella. And then she pointed at the top bone and said, “this man has a broken femur”, pointing at the fracture on the X-ray.

The doctor said, “Perfect diagnosis. However, we have one problem. The patient in this x-ray is not a man” She responded “How was I supposed to know she’s a woman?” The doctor explained briefly, “Women on average have shorter femurs than men. This femur is only 17 inches long.”

By this time, I was completely embarrassed by the interruption. The two doctors turned to me and asked: “How does she know so much about the human anatomy?”

I told them that I ran out of body parts to teach her when she was two, so she started learning all of the major bones and muscles. She absorbs everything like a sponge.

We parted ways after the two doctors said to each other, “Get ready to pay for medical school, Dad!”

Well, my daughter is now 16, loves math, physics and is now going to college taking the basic courses to be a scientist, engineer, or maybe even a doctor. Time will tell.

-Konrad Roeder

10/15. I had a friend’s small child (perhaps 4-5 years old at the time) over, and he discovered my piano and banged on it a little.

“What’s that?” said an amused parent, who probably intended to introduce the word “piano,” if he didn’t already know it.

“Sound,” replied the child, and wandered off to explore the next curiosity. Nobody corrected him.

-Betsy Megas

11/15. I had a wonderful conversation with my 5-year-old daughter today after school.

Like most kids, she’s eternally inquisitive. Like me, she desperately seeks the truth and doesn’t have much patience for hogwash. She blows my mind every day! (continued…)

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She was asking about her spine.

Me: We have nerves in our body that connect everything to our spinal cord, so our body can send messages to our brain. Sort of like little wires. If we touch something hot our finger sends a message to our brain that says ‘That’s hot! Don’t touch!’

Isabel: Thinks for a moment… When they made us they thought it would be a good idea to give us nerves?”

Me: When who made us?

Isabel: I don’t know. The people that made us?

Me: Well, people didn’t make people. We most likely evolved over time from different species. Evolving is when something changes over a long period of time. We think that people evolved from monkeys.

Isabel: Totally flabbergasted. MONKEYS?! People used to be monkeys?!

Me: Yep, that’s what it looks like. Thousands of years ago we didn’t have houses and cars. We were really hairy and lived in caves.

Isabel: Still flabbergasted. I can’t believe people used to be monkeys daddy!! So some monkeys decided not to become people?

Me: Well, we don’t decide how to evolve. Its about survival.

Isabel: Thinks for a moment… So some monkeys learned how to run and they didn’t get eaten? But the ones who didn’t never had kids so they never got to evolve?

Me: Flabbergasted. Exactly. Just wait until you learn about quantum mechanics.”

Isabel: What’s quantum mechanics?

Oh boy, look out. This one is too smart for her own good.

-Gabriel Harper

12/15. This conversation (translated in English) was between my dad and my sister in 2002, when she was just 6 years old.

Sister: “Why aren’t you laughing daddy?”

Dad: “I have a lot on my mind.”

Sister: “If you lose some of your mind, maybe then you can laugh.”

If that doesn’t perfectly describe the paradox of human thinking then I don’t know what does.

-Tanay Vora

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13/15. My nephew Jay, age nine, was reading a book titled The Universe and Dr. Einstein. This was somewhat impressive itself, but next he said, “Einstein said space is curved, isn’t that kind of dumb? How can space curve something?”

I replied, “Well things follow a curved path in space when near a massive body because the body distorts the space around it.”

But Jay said: “How is that different from saying ‘things follow a curved path near a massive body, unless you can say how space causes this, which Einstein doesn’t do.”

My answer: “Well umm ahh.”

-Carl Grant

14/15. Once I was doing my makeup in front of my 9-year-old nephew.

Kid: Why do you have to put make up on, are you going on a date?

Me: Yeaahhh Well, I have to look pretty to increase my physical attraction when out with a guy.

Kid: Noooo! That isn’t love.

Me: Then what is love to you?

Kid: Love starts from being a good friend and someone who won’t kick you in the butt.

Guess thats what love is.

I’m impressed and touched by hearing him say that. Love does not just driven by physical attraction, but who you are and how you feel when you are next to him or her.