Having been a teacher for more than one and a half decade, I have taught students of all levels and age groups. Ranging from primary to university level, I have enjoyed lecturing, discussing, and interacting with students equally in all my classes. Except on some few occasions, I have never had a tough time with my students. Almost always, I walk out of my class fully contented. I have convinced even the most inquisitive students with satisfying answers even though the job sometimes appears to be quite tough. But my four year old son has been the most challenging student for me these days. I find his questions more difficult than any of those that I face in my classes everyday.

Every day I spend about four hours solely with him. I fetch him from school at 3 p.m., and there are only two of us at home until 7 p.m. when his mother returns home from office. Bringing him home after his school, I feed him, help him with his homework and play with him. Or let’s say I do whatever he wants me to do.  Being with him is real fun. Everything he does is fascinating and pleasant to watch.  Just the glimpse of an innocent smile in his tiny lips takes away all the exhaustion of the day.

But sometimes he makes life really hard, especially when his childish curiosity is at play. He appears to be like a difficult student to handle. This is when I feel he is testing the real teacher in me. Anything may set him in the question mode: a toy car that he is playing with, his favorite cartoon character, the fairy in the story told to him by his teacher or anything that he finds confusing and unconvincing.  And once when he starts, it is really difficult to stop him. He has got an unending series of questions--a bundle of whats, hows and whys.

To the best of my ability and the understanding of child psychology, I try to answer his questions in the language he understands. I never give him the wrong information about anything just to hush him. But it is not easy to convince him and he doesn’t stop until and unless he gets a convincing answer. Sometimes it is difficult to know what he has seen or been told by others about different things. When he asks questions about them, and if my answers differ from what he knew about them before, he starts arguing. He goes on repeating the same question until he gets a convincing answer. But sometimes his questions are so logically connected that I wonder how a four year old child can think so rationally.