“Schools are finally re-opening, mate,” my volleyball friend Sardar announced, grinning with unmistakable relief. It clearly had nothing to do with how we played that evening – we lost badly. This joy was about classrooms, routines, teachers and the quiet order that schools bring back into families’ lives.
For us, it also meant something else entirely: my youngest, Naveed, is starting school for the first time.
Over the past few days, we’ve been wandering through shopping centres and uniform shops, trying to dress and equip him for what feels, in his mind at least, like a major mission. Judging by his choices – bold backpacks, superhero-themed drink bottles – I suspect he believes some special powers might be required. Watching him prepare has been tender and amusing in equal measure.
In the midst of all this, I’ve noticed something quietly beautiful. Whenever I take Naveed shopping with me – whether to big bookstores or op shops – he drifts instinctively towards children’s books. He already has a tiny collection at home, which he reads aloud to his favourite teddy, Mr Lion, whenever there’s nothing interesting on television and the older siblings are glued to their screens. There’s something grounding about seeing him like that: cross-legged, serious, absorbed.
Watching him step towards this small but enormous threshold has stirred a question I’ve been carrying for years: how much of curiosity is innate, and how much is shaped – patiently, deliberately – by those who raise us?
When I was a child, we were refugees in Pakistan. Material comfort was absent. Books were scarce. Stability even more so. And yet, it was there that my elder brother developed an extraordinary love for reading and writing. He read anything he could get his hands on – old newspapers, battered textbooks, scraps passed between families. This was the 1990s, before screens and easy internet access. His handwriting – meticulous, elegant – bordered on calligraphy.
During the day, he worked long hours in a factory. In the evenings, he read, wrote and listened to music on an old Japanese cassette player, as if words and sound could hold the world together. That love didn’t fade with time. It sharpened. Years later, it would lead him to become a prolific writer in Afghanistan, shaping powerful stories under conditions of censorship, threat and political collapse.
Looking back, it’s tempting to romanticise his trajectory: the gifted child who flourished against the odds. But that story has always unsettled me. Because if curiosity simply blooms under hardship, why doesn’t it do so for everyone?
Now, my own children are growing up in materially comfortable Melbourne. Their shelves are full. Libraries are a weekend habit. Schools are safe, resourced, predictable. These are, we’re told, the ideal conditions for cultivating young minds.
And yet, curiosity in our household is anything but uniform.
One child devours books and asks questions that stretch late into bedtime. Another is thoughtful but resists reading, preferring movement, conversation, observation. A third drifts in and out of interest – deeply absorbed one moment, completely indifferent the next. The fourth was once a class topper and now seems far more invested in games and anime than schoolwork. Same household, yet entirely different relationships with learning.
It is stated explicitly and implicitly that good parenting produces curious children. That reading every night, choosing the right school, limiting screens and modelling intellectual engagement will yield predictable outcomes. But curiosity doesn’t operate on a neat input-output system. Still, parental encouragement matters. I believe this deeply. Early, sustained, belief-driven support can be decisive – especially for children navigating marginalisation or instability. Someone must notice the spark and protect it long enough for it to grow.
Years later, I finally asked my brother what drew him so fiercely to reading and writing when no one around him seemed to care. He told me it was our late father. Even before I was born, Dad encouraged him to read and write – quietly, consistently, without expectation. That habit stayed. Those small acts of faith mattered.
I’m sure my father encouraged all of us. And yet, some children arrive in the world with an appetite for ideas that feels almost bodily. They engage with the world differently.
In his own way, Naveed feels different too. I love how he communicates – how he never walks away from a conversation halfway through. Even when he doesn’t like the answer, he’ll pause and say, “Ah, alright”, or “Leave it – don’t trick me”, before calmly changing the topic. There’s attentiveness there. Presence.
As Naveed steps into his first classroom, I wonder what version of curiosity the Australian education system will recognise in him. I wonder how he will navigate his own path – and how much I must nurture and how much I must learn to let go.
• Shadi Khan Saif is an editor, producer and journalist who has worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany and Australia
