Yesterday, my little daughter’s magic wand broke. But she’s a smart girl, so she decided to fix it herself.
When I saw her mingling with duck tape and a glue stick, I was about to suggest a different approach using my beloved hot glue canon, but I paused.
I think we all know, children need to learn by doing. They need to experiment, and actually feel what works, so I let her go on.
After she was done, her magic wand looked way different.
And she loved it!
The thing is, I knew the value of her learning things herself. But I was fully prepared to then fix her wand myself.
But I didn’t need to.
The result was something entirely different, something outside of my conceptual frame.
And that’s the true value of experimentation. Experiments don’t just confirm or disconfirm your hypotheses; they often will take you out of your little tiny box!
