When my son was 9 years old and in the 4th grade he had to go through a series of psychological and intelligence test in order to identify a learning disability. When the school psychologist reviewed the tests with us one of the first things he noted about our son was the depth of his general knowledge.
The psychologist said, "There wasn't a topic I asked your son about that he wasn't familiar with, from subjects as diverse as patents to who was Gandhi."
It dawned on me that both of the topics he gave as examples we had talked about at dinner. My husband and I have never limited our dinner conversation to kid only topics. We will discuss science, politics, current events, etc... and the kids usually ask questions about what we are talking about... and we explain. We don't brush them off, and we never assume that they can't understand. Of course there are levels of understanding, but as our son surprised his school's psychologist... you never know how much they may actually learn just from dinner conversation.
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