Looking Before Judging: The Lesson Children Have Never Stopped Teaching Us

I often watch children as they listen to a story or leaf through a book, and notice something that nearly always escapes us adults: they do not immediately judge what is in front of them. First they experience it; then, if needed, they give meaning to what they have seen or heard. They do not attach a label in advance; they wait for meaning to emerge on its own.

A recent conversation prompted this reflection. Someone made me realise how uncomfortable, yet necessary, it can be to be less judgemental. It led me back to the way we adults often behave: we attach labels before we have even understood whether something concerns us, interests us or has value for us. Judgement comes before experience, not after it.

From there came a question that stayed with me for days: if we set judgement aside, would we still be left with an assessment, one that was cleaner and more useful? And would that make us cynical?

The word cynicism carries an idea of cold, almost selfish detachment, as though choosing without judging meant ceasing to care. But perhaps that is not the point. Perhaps it is instead a matter of responsibility: choosing without loading every decision with morality or the need for someone else's approval.

An episode that has always struck me came back to mind: Jesus driving the merchants from the temple. He does not mediate, try to make himself understood or explain: he acts. In that immediacy I see something that is not cynicism but clarity; a clarity born of having already lived through the experience, rather than judging it from afar.

Perhaps the point is not to become cold, but to become essential. To return to seeing things for what they are before deciding what they mean, just as children do whenever they encounter something new.

It is a thought I recognise in the way I tell the biographies in the Little Great Heroes series. When I introduce children to a real life, such as that of an explorer or a scientist, I do not begin with a judgement already made: I tell the facts and the choices, without hiding the difficulties, and let each child form their own view. No label in advance, no moral written on the cover. Only the experience of the story, before any meaning is assigned.

How many of our choices are truly our own, and how many are filtered through the need to judge before we have even looked?