The world can be a wonderful learning place, but unless we teach our kids to see all that wonder as we do, we’re shortchanging them.

As a parent or caregiver, you can find room in your child’s routine to incorporate wonder and its advantages. In our fast-paced modern lives, missing or passing up opportunities for wonder is easy. What a loss that can be if we fail here. And, while you’re teaching kids, you benefit from wonder, too.

You might be more concerned with ensuring that a child moves on to the next event, competition, or tutor. However, when you learn more about the value of wonder experiences during development and understand what children need, you probably notice that children thrive when we prioritize awe experiences.

Some of life’s situations can push us far beyond our comfort zones and the confines of our identity. This category includes awe-inspiring events, making us feel like we are witnessing something enormous beyond our present understanding. An illustration might be looking at the starry sky at night and realizing the vastness of the universe is not a canopy over us, but something that appears to go on forever. We wonder how the universe can have no end. Is that even possible?

Researchers have paid minimal attention to the perception of awe-inspiring experiences in early life. One study took a social cognitive developmental approach by methodically investigating how kids between the ages of 4 and 9 experience visually stunning acts of amazement in an effort to understand where our ability to feel awe first emerged.

Awe-inspiring events should stand out more and more in the middle years of childhood. During the years 4–7, self-awareness takes on more tangible, emotional forms. Perception of conceptual (rather than merely physical) vastness may be possible when the capacity for abstract thought and introspection grows. It is an important developmental step.

What Awe Provides to Kids

For children’s knowledge development, the knowledge-enhancing function appears to be crucial. Inherently inquisitive and information-hungry, children are explorers. Because children’s knowledge is always expanding, they will frequently encounter things that are both incredibly large in comparison to themselves and surpass their prior understanding—two essential components of wonder.

Around the ages of 8 and 10, kids start to develop more solid ideas about the world and themselves and feel more independent. During this time, the child’s cultural self develops further, defined as their view of themselves concerning a broader group. Preteens and teenagers exhibit heightened social awareness, introspection, self-reflection, and extreme self-consciousness.

Awe can change how kids feel about themselves and how motivated they are to learn. Therefore, it is an opportunity to spark learning, inquisitiveness, and thinking ability in children and adults. Some researchers have separated the areas where awe would be inspired, and they include natural disasters, nature, slow-moving objects, and may include art, music, science (especially microscopy), and space.

How Can We Provide Awe Experiences?

Several areas for exploration for kids and adults alike can be easily found in things we may take for granted until we are directed to them. Consider:

1. The latest episode of the BBC’s Planet Earth series and similar shows like The Blue Planet have many pictures like this.
2. You could look at the videos of Louie Schwartzberg. You may know him from his time-lapse work on the highly acclaimed 2019 film Fantastic Fungi.
3. Watch educational, artistic, or time-lapse movies that show the huge, mysterious space. In the NASA Image and Video Library, you can also find interesting sky pictures.
4. Collections of ocean photography, like this one from National Geographic, can show you and your child how big and deep the seas on Earth seem to go on forever.
5. You can watch educational videos with your child that show amazing natural events, such as tsunamis, volcanoes, avalanches, and more. You can also think about how nature can strongly affect our society.

The internet is a vast resource for these and many more awe-inspiring sites that will provide a wealth of new knowledge for children and adults alike. It is a means to easily inspire and motivate the wish to increase knowledge and motivate everyone to learn more and to experience it together.

One experience I had with several young relatives occurred in a movie theatre. I took them to see a Disney film and as the action began to use a Ken Burns effect to zero in, one kid exclaimed in wonder, “Are our seats moving?” For her, it was a new experience that sparked a wish to learn more and begin studying science.

Find the awe in your life and experience the joy of discovery and wonder.