Let Your Child Ask the Questions: A Science-Backed Way to Build Curiosity
Most advice about raising a curious child focuses on how you answer their questions. A study published in December 2025 in the journal npj Science of Learning looked at the other half of that exchange: what happens when a child is encouraged to ask the questions in the first place, rather than just listen and absorb.
The short version: children who were prompted to generate their own questions during a learning activity ended up valuing the new information significantly more than children who were simply told to listen carefully. The effect was strongest for children who knew the least about the topic beforehand — exactly the children adults might assume need to be told things, not asked to wonder about them first.
It's a small shift with a genuinely practical use: before you explain something to a curious child, try asking what they're wondering about it first.
What the study actually found
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University-Newark and Harvard's Graduate School of Education ran a preregistered experiment with 103 children aged 5 to 7. Each child took part in eight one-on-one science lessons over two weeks. Half the children were encouraged to ask their own questions during the lessons. The other half were asked to listen carefully instead.
Afterward, the children in the question-asking group rated the new information as significantly more valuable and interesting than the children in the listening group. The researchers also found that the benefit wasn't evenly distributed: children who started with less background knowledge or vocabulary on the topic showed the biggest jump in curiosity and engagement from being encouraged to ask questions, compared with children who already knew more going in.
That last point is worth sitting with. It's tempting to assume a child who doesn't know much about a topic needs more explaining and less asking. This study points the other way — for a child who's starting from less, being invited to wonder out loud first may matter more, not less.
It's one study, with a specific age range (5 to 7), a specific format (one-on-one science lessons), and a specific outcome measure (how much children said they valued the new information, not long-term test scores or academic achievement years later). It doesn't prove the technique works identically for every age, every subject or every child. What it does offer is a genuine, peer-reviewed data point in favor of a very low-effort habit: pausing to ask before you explain.
Why "ask first" might work
The researchers didn't claim to fully explain the mechanism, but the pattern lines up with something curiosity researchers have suspected for a while: curiosity tends to show up more strongly when there's a small, specific gap between what someone already knows and what they're about to find out — and that gap feels more real when a person has just tried to name it themselves.
When a child is only listening, the information arrives as something to store. When a child is asked to come up with a question first, they have to locate what they don't know before they hear the answer, which seems to make the answer land differently. It's less "here's a fact" and more "here's the thing I was actually wondering about" — even if the child needed a nudge to notice they were wondering about it at all.
This is a different idea from the more familiar advice to always answer a child's spontaneous "why" questions patiently. That advice is about how you respond when a child already has a question in hand. This study is about what happens when you invite the question to exist in the first place, on a topic the child might not have thought to ask about on their own.
How to actually use this
None of this requires turning every outing into a science lesson. The practical version is small and repeatable.
Before you explain, ask what they're wondering. Heading into a museum exhibit, a nature walk, a new book, or even a familiar topic at dinner, try "What do you think this is going to be about?" or "What's something you're curious about here?" before you start narrating facts. Give it a few seconds of quiet — the pause is doing real work.
Let the question be a little off-topic. A child asked to come up with a question about, say, a spider's web might ask something unrelated to what you'd planned to explain. That's fine. The study measured engagement and perceived value of new information, not whether the question matched an adult's agenda.
Don't rush to correct a "wrong" guess. If a child guesses something inaccurate before you get to the real answer, resist fixing it immediately. The value in this technique comes from the act of wondering, not from getting the prediction right. You can still give the accurate answer afterward — just let the guess stand for a moment first.
Use it most with topics your child knows least about. It's counterintuitive, but the study's strongest effect was for children with less starting knowledge. If your child is a total beginner on a topic — dinosaurs, a new country, how something works — that's actually a good moment to ask what they're wondering, not a moment to skip straight to explaining.
Expect it to feel slower at first. Explaining directly is faster than waiting for a child to formulate a question. That's the trade-off. The technique isn't about efficiency; it's about the difference between information a child receives and information a child was already leaning toward when it arrived.
Where this fits into ordinary moments
This isn't a technique that needs a dedicated lesson or a special setting. It fits naturally into a walk where something catches a child's eye, a shared book where you pause before turning the page, or any back-and-forth exchange where a child has room to wonder out loud before being told the answer.
It also fits naturally into screen-free conversational play, where the format is already built around exchange rather than passive viewing. Tovuli, Tovuli's interactive AI plush, is built around that kind of conversation — a companion designed for stories and dialogue rather than a single fixed script. In practice, that can mean giving a child a moment to ask their own question about something before getting an answer, rather than only receiving information. It doesn't replace the value of a parent pausing to ask "what are you wondering about?" directly — that attentive pause is something only a person can really offer — but it's one more everyday setting where the same basic idea (ask before you explain) has room to happen.
FAQ
Does this work for toddlers, not just 5- to 7-year-olds?
The study specifically tested children aged 5 to 7. Younger children may not yet reliably form their own questions, so the technique may need to be simplified — for example, offering two options to choose from ("are you wondering why it's that color, or why it's that shape?") rather than an open "what are you wondering?"
Does this mean I should never just explain something to my child?
No. The study compared question-asking encouragement to instruction-to-listen within a research setting; it isn't a case against ever explaining things directly. It's a case for building in more moments where a child gets to ask first, especially on topics that are new to them.
Is this the same as the "why phase" where kids ask constant questions on their own?
Not quite. Spontaneous "why" questioning (typically peaking around ages 3 to 5) is a child-initiated pattern. This study is about adults deliberately inviting a child to form a question about something specific, which is useful at a wider range of ages and doesn't rely on a child already being in a question-asking mood.
Does asking my child to come up with questions guarantee they'll learn more?
The study measured how much children valued and engaged with new information immediately afterward, not long-term academic outcomes. It's reasonable evidence for a helpful habit, not a guarantee of any specific learning result for an individual child.