Curious Chase

Curiously Chase

Lessons for Adults from Curious George

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Curious George is one of our favorite bedtime routine reading characters. If you're unfamiliar with Curious George, he's a monkey that lives with a man with the yellow hat and is a representation of a toddler: affectionate, kind and...curious!

In all of the situations, George is constantly in discovery mode, which often results in a "big mess". The adults would scold him for making a mess, followed by them praising him if there was a positive side effect of the mess. These big messes never end in physical harm or safety issues, rather, they're an inconvenience to the adults (something almost always needs to be cleaned up).

My takeaways from this as a parent:

My takeaways from this as a parent for other parents:

My takeaways from this as a working professional in software (especially in developer experience):

When discussing with my wife about how the adults scolded George when he messed up, she asked "does it bother you that Curious George (the show) is that way?" My response was: "I actually think this is exactly how it should be because it models reality for both the exploratory nature of kids and how adults generally to try to maintain order. I just wish there was a better resource to help adults learn from Curious George too."

I'm using this as an opportunity to grow myself into being better at supporting my daughter (and myself) to experiment and grow through curiosity without being afraid of the mess!

This post is brought to you from the takeaways of a Slack conversation with my good friend Dave Cadwallader.

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