The Wild Gift of Not Knowing
What if the most radical thing we could offer our children isn’t answers, but appetite? Not certainty, but the courage to live inside questions?
In a culture obsessed with early specialization and predetermined paths, curiosity emerges as quiet rebellion. Mark Cuban, despite his billions, chose something surprisingly ordinary for his children: he wanted them hungry, not for success or achievement, but for the simple, transformative act of wanting to know more.
“I want them to always want to learn something, and figure things out,” Cuban shared. Notice he didn’t say what to learn. The direction matters far less than the movement itself.
The Neuroscience of Wonder
Research reveals what mystics have long known: curiosity changes the brain. When children encounter something genuinely new, dopamine floods their neural pathways. Wonder becomes biochemical reward. The “hungry mind,” as scientists call it, predicts academic performance as powerfully as intelligence or effort.
But here’s what the studies can’t measure: curiosity also predicts something far more precious—the capacity to remain alive to life.
Children naturally live in this state of open not-knowing. Watch a four-year-old encounter a butterfly, and you witness pure presence meeting mystery. No agenda. No need to categorize or control. Just this moment of mutual recognition between awareness and aliveness.
The Four Foundations of Curious Parenting
Cuban’s approach, stripped of its billionaire context, reveals four surprisingly simple principles:
1. Release the Timeline
“Don’t pressure them to choose careers too early.” In Enneagram terms, this is about not forcing premature crystallization of type. At eighteen, even twenty-two, the personality is still forming. To demand a life direction from someone still discovering their basic emotional patterns is like asking a seedling to choose its final shape.
What if instead of “What do you want to be?” we asked “What makes you come alive?”
2. Knowledge as Living Power
“Knowledge is power” sounds clichéd until you realize that “Cuban” means something more profound: the more a child knows, the more choices become visible. Knowledge expands possibility rather than narrowing it.
This isn’t accumulation for its own sake. It’s about giving children enough familiarity with the world’s textures that they can recognize where their particular gifts want to express themselves.
3. Befriend Uncertainty
“Change is the only constant. Get used to it.” In our rapidly shifting world, adaptability matters more than expertise. The child who learns to dance with uncertainty will thrive where others freeze.
Neurologists Dean and Ayesha Sherzai note that only five percent of people are natural “future seekers”—those who are comfortable with 360 degrees of unknown. The rest of us are “past protectors,” clinging to familiar patterns. However, this capacity for embracing uncertainty can be cultivated, especially during childhood when the personality is still in a state of flux.
4. Honor Their Unique Unfolding
“Let them decide their path.” This requires tremendous faith from parents—faith that each child carries their inner compass, their way of making sense.
The Sherzais discovered this practically with their children, Alex and Sophia. Instead of forcing a curriculum, they scattered possibilities—maps on walls, periodic tables on shower curtains—and watched for what sparked natural attention. When Sophia became fascinated with California missions, they let her dive deep for three months rather than rushing to the next subject.
Depth over breadth. Immersion over coverage. Letting a subject become part of a child’s “fiber and experience” rather than just information to be memorized and forgotten.
When Schools Forget How to Wonder
Sir Ken Robinson’s famous observation haunts every parent: children don’t grow out of creativity, they get “educated out of it.” A six-year-old confidently drawing God because “they’ll know what God looks like in a minute” becomes a teenager afraid to make a mark without permission.
Traditional education, with its hierarchical subjects and standardized assessments, often treats curiosity as inefficiency. The natural learning rhythm—wonder, explore, integrate, wonder again—gets replaced by external pacing and predetermined outcomes.
The Sherzais eventually pulled their children from even progressive schools when they realized the institutional setting was inhibiting rather than nurturing their natural learning velocity. Sometimes protecting a child’s curiosity requires creating environments that don’t yet exist in the mainstream.
The Courage to Not Know
Perhaps the deepest challenge in curious parenting is our discomfort with uncertainty. We live in a culture that equates not-knowing with failure. Parents feel pressure to have answers, plans, and guarantees.
But what if our children need something different? What if they need us to model the beautiful vulnerability of not-knowing? The willingness to explore together rather than pretend we’ve already figured it out?
Curiosity isn’t just a learning strategy—it’s a way of being alive. It’s the quality that keeps us fresh, responsive, genuinely engaged with what’s actually happening rather than what we think should be happening.
Questions That Open Doors
The goal isn’t to raise curious children and then gradually train it out of them. The goal is to protect and nurture their natural investigative spirit while helping them develop the skills to explore safely and effectively.
What sparks your child’s attention? Where do they linger? What questions do they ask when they think no one important is listening?
These aren’t problems to be solved but doorways to be honored. Each child arrives with their particular way of engaging with mystery. Our job isn’t to redirect that engagement but to support it, resource it, and celebrate it.
In the end, Cuban’s favorite word isn’t “billionaire” or “entrepreneur.” It’s “Dad.” The ultimate measure of curious parenting isn’t what our children achieve, but who they remain—themselves, fully and unapologetically, equipped with the courage to keep learning, growing, and wondering.
In a world that will continue to change in ways we cannot predict, curiosity becomes the most practical gift we can offer. Not answers, but the capacity to stay interested. Not certainty, but the willingness to keep exploring.
The future belongs to those who can remain open-minded and receptive.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach teacher, Enneagram guide, and human development student whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.