Encourage curiosity

In the book Brain Rules John Medina writes:

from dinosaurs to atheism

I remember, when I was 3 years old, obtaining a sudden interest in dinosaurs. I had no idea that my mother had been waiting for it. That very day, the house began its transformation into all things Jurassic. And Triassic. And Cretaceous. Pictures of dinosaurs would go up on the wall. I would begin to find books about dinosaurs strewn on the floor and sofas. Mom would even couch dinner as "dinosaur food," and we would spend hours laughing our heads off trying to make dinosaur sounds. And then, suddenly, I would lose interest in dinosaurs, because some friend at school acquired an interest in spaceships and rockets and galaxies. Extraordinarily, my mother was waiting. Just as quickly as my whim changed, the house would begin its transformation from big dinosaurs to Big Bang. The reptilian posters came down, and in their places, planets would begin to hang from the walls. I would find little pictures of satellites in the bathroom. Mom even got "space coins" from bags of potato chips, and I eventually gathered all of them into a collector's book.

This happened over and over again in my childhood. I got an interest in Greek mythology, and she transformed the house into Mount Olympus. My interests careened into geometry, and the house became Euclidean, then cubist. Rocks, airplanes. By the time I was 8 or 9, I was creating my own house transformations.

One day, around age 14, I declared to my mother that I was an atheist. She was a devoutly religious person, and I thought this announcement would crush her. Instead, she said something like, "That's nice, dear," as if I had just declared I no longer liked nachos. The next day, she sat me down by the kitchen table, a wrapped package in her lap. She said calmly, "So, I hear you are now an atheist. Is that true?" I nodded yes, and she smiled. She placed the package in my hands. "The man's name is Friedrich Nietzsche, and the book is called Twilight of the Idols," she said. "If you are going to be an atheist, be the best one out there! Bon appetit!"

I was stunned. But I understood a powerful message: Curiosity itself was the most important thing. And what I was interested in mattered. I have never been able to turn off this fire hose of curiosity.