Many adults don’t listen to kids, because they’re kids. But then, at some arbitrary point on the way adulthood, adults start listening to those people who were once kids. Dave Winer observed the idiocy of that.

If you’re an adult, you should listen to kids, especially younger kids, for a whole bunch of reasons:

  1. They’ve not lost their innocence, so they approach and interpret things with an open mind. Adults, on the other hand, are jaded.
  2. They’ve not succumbed to self-consciousness, so they solve problems and create things with extraordinary creativity.
  3. They’ve not yet been told what they can’t accomplish, so they’re more optimistic and visionary.
  4. They’ve yet to experience many things we take for granted; if you stop a minute and see things through their eyes, you can get excited and intrigued, again, about those little things.
  5. If you listen to them, you can assimilate with them, which will make you feel, act and BE younger. This flip side: not listening to them makes you older, crustier in spirit.
  6. They are forced to inherit what you and their other elders left them, and because of that they are particularly astute when it comes to older people.
  7. When you are decrepit, you will rely on them — not only to put up with you, but possibly to take care of you.
  8. When you listen to kids, it makes you not a loser.
  9. They will run the world someday.

As a parent, I confirm these reasons above are among the benefits of having and raising kids.

Photo: epSos .de

Published by Max Kalehoff

Father, sailor and marketing executive.