Sometimes raising a kid can be real hard. You have to be incredibly patient, you get asked tough questions, and you try to figure out how to explain things in a way the kid will understand (while not setting them up for misconceptions that are hard to reconcile later!). It is, tho, generally not too hard, because kids are a) smart b) clever c) resilient d) ask a million clarifying questions and e) often make their misconceptions clear enough in play that you can correct them when they occur.
There is a category of correction that flummoxes me, though: the really really cute, harmless, and/or advantageous ones. Do I correct this so she can be Right but unhappier with something that brings her joy? What if correcting her makes her abandon the thing she's enjoying? But also, will leaving this misconception alone embarass her later in life when she realizes her mistake or recalls her naivete? What if someone else corrects her in an even more crushing way?
For example: multigrain cheerios. There's the lightly colored OG oat one, and then the slightly darker one (corn? wheat?), then the really dark one (rye, I assume). To my perfect little child, the lightest ones are vanilla (good), the medium ones regular (acceptable, especially given the semi-sweet coating multigrain cheerios have) and the darkest ones are chocolate (best-in-class, highly desirable, must eat first)
...I'm leaning towards "naw leave it be".[1]
honestly, the ideal form is probably working to foster a value of change and improvement that looks at the greater understanding as a joy of development and the previous misunderstanding as the precious drop of innocence it is, but I don't know how (or if it's even possible!) to build a firm enough bulwark against the cynicism of the internet nor the meanness of an illconsidered comment to prevent it, especially when the first is likely to land right when someone really should not be on the internet developmentally speaking but at the same time is also when one wants to be there the most ↩︎