“Don't answer their questions. Kids ask questions all the time. And as a good parent, you want to be like, oh, my daughter wants to know why the sky is blue or whatever. It is not useful for you to answer their question. They will never remember the answers. Just say, why do you think? What do you think? Why do you think it's blue?”
How I Invest with David Weisburd · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Harris, a father of six, says almost every parenting belief he had was knocked out by one kid or another. Only two rules survived: send them to a Montessori preschool, and don't answer their questions. He admits his kids find the second one incredibly annoying.
Transcript
…because I have 18, 15, 13, 9, 9, 7. So I've got kids that are doing stuff. I certainly have kids who have this sort of ineffable quality that people in the valley refer to as agency. And just because it's commonly said doesn't mean it's not important. I find it to be actually the defining. Do you
get credit for that or were they just born that way?
…priors get knocked out by the kid number four. Turns out that rule isn't true, et cetera. In terms of parenting? Correct. In terms of human nature in general, but certainly in terms of parenting. The two rules that actually survive. One is Montessori preschool is just good. Just do that. They're actually very, very consistent. Wherever you live, you can find one, send your kids there. Two is don't answer their questions. Kids ask questions all the time. And as a good parent, you want to be like, oh, my daughter wants to know why the sky is blue or whatever. It is not useful for you to answer their question. They will never remember the answers. Just say, why do you think? What do you think? Why do you think it's blue? And so our kids find it incredibly annoying, particularly as they get older. They just want to know what subway stop to get off. That I would just commend that to you as a new dad. And congratulations, by the way. Just you have no obligation to answer their questions and you're not doing them any favors.
And that builds in them these processes to answer their own questions. Correct.
And it's all about this agency. I mean, this is what the world demands right now: when faced with a blank screen, what are you going to do? And you have the ability of everything at your fingertips to do anything you want. Anything you don't know how to do, you just ask it and it tells you. And so…
experienced parent, at least.
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