100 Questions From My Child

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In this touching book, Mallika Chopra explores 100 questions children ask sometimes whimsical, often mystical shares insights on how you can craft your answers in a way that will foster a child's imagination, creativity and sense of self. Chopra writes:

As a mom, I realized early on that my children were looking to me for answers. Even before they could speak, they were asking questions questions about how to interact with the world. And it was my reaction to these questions that began to shape their worldview, their sense of security and trust.

Chopra teaches us that each question a child asks presents a chance to change the future. With warmth and wisdom, she shares her own quest to answer her children's questions with lessons that last a lifetime.

MALLIKA CHOPRA, mother of Tara and Leela Mandal, is a media entrepreneur and producer. She is the creative force and architect of www.intentblog.com, a popular website that features blogs by Mallika, her father (Deepak Chopra) and many others.

One of the most basic human instincts is the desire to know. We want to know about ourselves, about our relationships, and about the world.

We begin this process as soon as we become even a little self-aware. Every child asks the most basic existential questions: "Where did I come from?", "What happens to animals and people when they die?", "How does a rainbow get its colors?", "Why do you love me?", "What makes me happy?", "What makes me sad?"

Asking a question is the most fundamental human activity because in the asking of the question is the key to knowledge, understanding, intuition, imagination, creativity, the power of intention, and conscious choice making. When a child's question is met with indifference, a child loses her/his creativity and becomes a victim of the hypothesis of social conditioning which, at best, can lead to a banal and trivial life.

Every wisdom tradition says, "Ask and you shall receive." Whom do you ask? Everyone. You ask yourself, you ask those whom you trust and admire, and ask those who have opinions quite different from yours. Ultimately, you take all of the answers given to you and come up with the deepest truth from the depth of your being.

For a parent, nothing is more important than encouraging your children to ask as many questions as possible and, in turn, to also participate in the questioning of everything we take for granted. At the deepest level of our being, our soul has a knowingness of all that exists. The knowingness that results with intimacy of our soul results in spontaneous right action: the ability to make the most evolutionary choice in every situation that happens. But the soul must be nurtured through questioning.

As a mom, I realized early on that my children were looking to me for answers. Even before they could speak, they were asking questions questions about how to interact with the world, about what was safe, what was good or bad in their world. And it was my reaction to these questions that began to shape their worldview, their sense of security and trust.

And, of course, as Tara, my elder daughter, became more vocal, she was actually able to put her questions into words, unleashing an unending hunger for information, explanations, justifications, and confirmations. Question after question after question!

While it became exhausting to constantly answer her questions, I also saw how my answers really shaped how she reacted to things. With almost every action and word, I influenced how she processed information and reacted to everyday stimuli. Once I gave her an answer, that explanation stuck with her for a long time. When I became impatient and gave her a haphazard answer, it could take months to convince her to think another way!

There were what seemed to be the casier questions: Why do I have to cat my vegetables? Why do I have to go to bed now? Why can't I watch TV? And often, I realized even these questions were difficult, and the answers would result in tantrums and lots of distress.