Help Needed (Evolution for 9-year-olds)

Factual Questions
1

My step-daughter recently asked me where people (humanity, not babies) came from. I told her that no one knows the full story, but that there were several different ideas.

When I told her about God breathing life into dirt, she rejected it as silly.

When I told her about Evolution, she was pretty adamant that people weren’t monkeys, either.

In that I lean more toward Evolution than Creationism, I wanted to explain it better. I don’t have a problem with her eventually becoming a creationist, but I’m not gonna help her, or pretend I think it’s anything but a fairy tale.

However, since I, myself have a very very basic understanding of evolution, and all of it comes from college level reading, I have a hard time explaining anything to her, since words like “Environmental stressors” and the like don’t mean much to her.

So I need some advice where to get some 3rd grade level explanations regarding evolution, and some of the evidence for it.

I also really want to show her the cool old fold-out National Geographic did that showed the steady progression from ape-like creatures into modern-day humans.

I have looked around online, but everything I’ve found is more on the debate side of it (with a preponderance of websites dedicated to disproving evolution.) and I haven’t found one good image showing the progression…nothing with the detail that the old National Geographic had.

And above all, my goal in this is to start teaching her to learn to ask questions and to not accept what anyone says, including (hell ESPECIALLY) me, and to come to her own conclusions. I honestly don’t know how people got here. I know which theory I believe…I know which seems to make more sense and has more evidence…but for me to proselytize to her would be hypocritical of me.

So yeah, hope this is the right forum. Any websites, books, and other such materials that would help me explain this to her (and introduce her to intellectual curiosity and questioning what you’re told, something she’s lacked in her life until recently) would be very appreciated.

Thank you,

Steve

2

Eyewitness Books, which are very popular with 3rd graders, has a book on evolution that would be perfectly suitable for your step-daughter. This very popular series is inexpensive and available everywhere and covers a huge variety of topics. There may even be a copy of the evolution one in her school library, and probably is in your local library.

And, of course, people aren’t monkeys, so you be sure to read it, too.

Here is one on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1564582337/103-1334351-5703056

3

This site might help with some ideas as to how to approach the topic. Here’s another that might be a useful resource.

4

:smiley: I know that!

I explained the idea of species changing over time, and how apes and monkeys are both primates, and how eventhough gorillas and rhesus monkeys are very different they have similar traits. I explained that somewhere in the ape line, an animal branched off, and over time, that animal changed, and started walking upright, and became a bit less hairy, and eventually became humans.

Her retort, “So we’re monkeys? Pff. I don’t believe that either, dad.”

That’s why I worded it like I did. Of course, I’ll still pay attention to the books, cause I’m sure my knowlege of it is pretty lacking.

Part of the problem is that she thought I meant that an ape like creature, during it’s lifetime, started walking upright, and and lost hair, and was the first person. I had a hard time explaining that the changes were subtle, and over many generations. She kept asking about “how do they know he changed like that?” So I realized I was in over my head.

Thanks so much for the book recomendation, I will certainly check it out!! Sounds like it’ll be a good series for other questions she’ll have too!

Steve

5

An Amazon search for ‘evolution and children’ found several books on evolution that would probably be suitable. Some of them include some discussion of creationism, though I would advise being wary of providing a book on creationism in an effort to provide a balanced view. The origin of life is not like politics, where many people hold one opinion and many hold another opinion, and ‘balanced’ means discussing an issue with people who hold various opinions. Evolution is a view based on empirical evidence, and it is the view held by most scientists and the vast majority of people who work in fields close to the study of the origin of life. Creationism is the belief that a religion’s creation story is true, held mostly by followers of the religion in question.

The best way to cultivate intellectual curiosity and the ability to ask questions and think critically would be to provide books that give information about evolution and why most scientists support this theory, while providing a short discussion of other ideas from a scientific perspective. Providing a book about creationism is not necessary, because your step-daughter is bound to encounter people who will tell her about finding watches in fields and the second law of thermodynamics. If she understands that there is abundant evidence in favor of evolution and knows how to think critically, she will be better prepared for such people. It’s risky to let a child make decisions wholly by herself, because she will meet a lot of people who will try to get her to believe what they believe, and few people who will encourage her to think critically. (I met a lot of creationists in elementary and high school, and very few evolutionary biologists.)

A book about primates – or seeing a chimpanzee or gorilla in real life – might help her understand that the idea that people evolved from monkeys isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. I remember seeing an orangutan’s hand up close and being struck by how similar it was to a human hand – the fingers, the nails, even the lines on the palm. Their ears and faces also have a striking similarity. Combining this experience with a book that depicts various stages of human evolution should begin to make it clear what evidence exists for evolution. To understand the most powerful evidence, unfortunately, takes much more knowledge than a third-grader can handle.

6

Mom of three here.

  1. I think it’s asking a lot of a Nine to expect her to have an adult’s understanding of such disciplines as primate biology, anthropology, paleontology, geology, etc. So don’t feel discouraged when she pooh-poohs your suggestions as “ridiculous!” She just doesn’t have the science background yet to grasp what you’re getting at–usually it’s the Fifth and Sixth Grade (in the American public school system) before Science class gets around to this sort of thing.

For another thing, a Nine may have trouble grasping the sense of “deep time” that’s necessary to understanding evolution–to a Nine, an hour is a long time, a “really really long time” is the time until next Christmas, and visualizing herself at age 16 is just mentally impossible, let alone visualizing early hominids 5 million years ago.

  1. I am hearing other issues in your OP besides “need info on evolution”: I am hearing, “my stepdaughter doesn’t believe me when I tell her stuff.” I’d relax, if I were you. Sounds to me like she may not feel like having Stepdad be the authority on “stuff” right at the moment. I don’t think there’s any danger of her turning to the Dark Side and becoming a Creationist just because you didn’t immunize her against it at age 9 with the Straight Dope on Evolution. :smiley:

This, while admittedly being cool, is now generally regarded by anthropologists, paleontologists, etc. as quaint at best, and actively harmful at worst, since it represents a “worse, better, best” viewpoint, with homo sapiens as the be-all and end-all of primate evolution. Also, it gives scant regard to chimps and gorillas as being somehow “lesser” products of evolution (although they are of course perfectly evolved for their own niches), and it will make things confusing later on for her when the “bush” evolution of primates and hominids comes up in high school, and she wonders where early hominids like Lucy and the Taung boy are supposed to fit in.

7

What you are PROBABLY hearing is "I’m a 28 year old who until, recently hated children, and has never spent time around them, but ended up falling in love with a single mom. I absolutely adore this child, and think the world of her. But I’m also learning how to be a dad. Emotionally, I’m there. we get along great, I treat her as well as I can (minor personal failings aside) and I can’t imagine NOT being her “daddy” ever again. But that doesn’t mean I understand how to communicate on her level.

I laughed heartily when she declared “We’re monkeys? I don’t believe THAT!” and didn’t take it personally. Putting myself in her shoes, I can see how she would think it’s ridiculous.

But I told her there was evidence that showed the links between man and apes, and she’s asked a couple of times since then if she could see the evidence (I told her about the “Humanity’s Long March” picture, specifically.

So while you’re right, there probably is a lot of “lost stepdad” stuff going on, and I will most assuredly try to calm myself down a bit, a lot of it, too is that she wants to see the evidence, and that’s why I’m here.

Thank you for your pointing out to me how abstract thought about the long stretch of time required for evolution might be too big for her to handle yet.

I’m gonna back-off teaching her about this unless she asks questions, for now. I’m gonna check the books on amazon, and see if there’s something that I feel is really age appropriate, and will help her.

But your point about backing down is taken under advisement.

I see your point, but I think the picture is still valid. Yes it’s important for us to know that there is no “peak of evolution” and that evoloution is only moving forward, can’t possibly (by it’s nature) move backwards, and that there is no “better” only “alive” and “dead.” I agree that the notion of humanity being some “goal” of evolution is a bad scientific idea…BUT…I’m much more concerned with the evolution of man than I am, say, of ducks, because I AM part of the evolution of man. I like seeing where I came from, and how what was has developed into ME!

And the picture displays evidence, based on the fossil record, that ties us to apes. Which is the very question that has been put to me. Not how did wolves become poodles, but how did man come from primates.

Thank you so much for your thoughts, DDG It’s been a good reality check on the situation.

Steve

8

I’d do it in this order: a) natural selection, b) evolution, c) speciation, d) proto-monkeys turning into humans.

Start with giving her some easy-to-grasp examples of natural selection. For example, a cheetah which can run faster will have an easier time catching gazelles than a slow cheetah. And a cheetah which catches more gazelles will be more healthy, which means more likely to live long enough to have kids, and to feed the kids so that they grow into healthy cheetas themselves. Likewise, fast gazelles have more chance to grow old and have kids instead of becoming cheetah-food.

Next up is evolution. Children of tall people tend to be tall, children of long-eared rabbits tend to have long ears, and children of fast cheetahs tend to be fast. Explain that most animals have much more children than ever make it into adulthood; for example, if every egg in a clump of frog eggs (don’t know the English term, sorry) turned into an adult frog, the world would be knee-deep in frogs in a couple of years. And because the succesful children (fast gazelles, eagles who are good at seeing rabbits from high up in the sky, etc) tend to be the ones who survive, those traits will become more common with time.

That was the easy part. Now comes the “deep time” which DDG mentioned. Explain that while the changes in each generation are very small, over the course of many millions of years they can cause a species of animal to change into a different species. Give some examples like, for example, whales and snakes still having rudimentary legs which suggest that their great-great-great-…-great-grandparent was an animal with legs. Maybe point at different kind of dogs, and show how some of them still look pretty much like wolves, whereas others (e.g. poodles) look much different, but they’re still dogs.

Once she has grasped all that, you could gently lead her up to the fact that humans are, basically, just an unusually smart kind of ape. If you really want to gross her out, point out that every now and again a child gets born with a tail… :smiley:

9

You may be thinking of Rudy Zallinger’s “March of Progress,” first published in 1970 in Early Man, a Time-Life book written by anthropologist F. Clark Howell. Although endlessly copied and parodied,the original does not seem to be available on the web.

10

I don’t know that I have any advice for the OP, but I for my own part, I never really doubted our relationship to other animals (mammals at least) and especially apes. Even before I’d ever heard of Darwin or evolution (and growing up in a Fundamentalist little town those were words that were not spoken except as curses) it seemed obvious to a point of inarugability that we were decended from (or as I more accurately learned later) related to the great apes. That all mammals share certain physiological features, like binocular vision, some manner of four limbs for locomotion, ears, mouth, noses all in more or less the same position, et cetera, made it very difficult for me to even understand how others could deny it, and the revulsion people around me felt for the idea that we were related to “lowly monkeys” was just beyond my ability to comprehend. (And I still don’t get it.)

Some people just seem to grasp concepts more readily than others, and that’s not intended as some kind of value judgement; for myself, I have a seriously difficult time reading body language or nuanced facial expressions. For others, difficulty intuitively comprehending physical laws or (otherwise) inexplicable biological similarities is difficult. Not that these kinds of intuition can’t get you in trouble, too; trying to apply normal rules to quantum mechanics, for instance, will get you in a quagmire of trouble, but it was (for me) a very short jump to understanding the precepts of evolution. Natural selection just seems to be a consequence of economics, with no need for a man behind the curtain.

Good luck to you, anyway.

Stranger

11

The other problem is that there is increasing agreement that the idea that there isn’t a single line from apes to hominids – there have been a number of hominid lines, some of which were in existence at the same time, and only one of which leads to H. Sapiens.

12

The absolutely best, 100% guaranteed-of-success way for someone who is, shall we say, “uncomfortable” around older school-age children (about age 8 and up) to communicate with them is…to communicate with them exactly the way you’d communicate with another adult.

Minus the dirty jokes and the bragging about your money market fund. :smiley:

But seriously…don’t talk down to her. Don’t rack your brain trying to think of conversational gambits that are somehow “suitable” for a Nine-year-old. She can handle anything you wanna talk about, trust me (even the money market fund stuff). She may not completely get what you’re talking about, she may not make much of a contribution to the conversation beyond a noncommittal or puzzled, “uh huh”, but kids have incredible instincts for when adults are being patronizing, even if unwittingly, and she’ll be enormously pleased when she senses that you are speaking to her as you would to another adult.

And kids are used to being merely spectators, permanent back-seat dwellers, listening interestedly to what’s going on in the front seat. Don’t feel that she has to “participate” in whatever conversation is going down; it’s her nature to just sit there and listen to the adults go on and on about Weapons Of Mass Destruction or Michael Jackson or the neighbors down the street.

So go ahead. Talk to her. Don’t try to think of subjects that are interesting to her–you wouldn’t do that with a friend from the gym, would you? Of course not–what went through your head would come out your mouth and there you’d be, yammering about money market funds.

And don’t be put off if she just sits there. It’s not disapproval–it’s digestion. She’s processing what you just said. And you’ll be amazed at the way some of it will pop back up later. Always at the most inappropriate moment, of course.

Don’t feel like you have to “educate” her about evolution in a systematic way–you wouldn’t feel like you had to “educate” your buddy from the gym “all about evolution”. No, if it was a subject that interested you, you’d just spout off, he’d have trouble getting you to shut up.

So talk to her about evolution, tell her about your favorite parts, the parts that just absolutely blow you away when you think about it, even if she doesn’t “get” it, even if she scoffs. She’d scoff the same way if you told her about your money market fund. :smiley:

13

Sorry, left out:

This isn’t a skill you can deliberately “teach” to a child. This is a skill that a kid learns by watching the adults around her implement it on a daily basis. If she sees you behaving skeptically, then by the time she’s about 14, you will suddenly realize that you have helped raise a Little Skeptic.

But it takes time, and again, it isn’t something you can “teach”. It’s all part of LifeSkills 101, which is the class that kids automatically sign up for when they’re born and begin living with adults. The coursework consists of two parts: watching the adults to see how they handle Life, and emulating those LifeSkills that they see demonstrated. If Stepdad has a hissy fit when the neighbor’s dog drags trash all over the alley, then Kiddo will have hissy fits when the neighbor’s dogs trash things. If Stepdad scoffs loudly at a pundit on a soapbox, then Kiddo will learn to look for the self-interest whenever a pundit on a soapbox announces something.

It’s not so much what you say that makes a Little Skeptic, it’s what you do. She’s watching you to learn how to act.

Also–if this isn’t too scary :smiley: --she’s watching you to learn how adult males behave, and that when it’s time for her to pick a mate, she’ll base her choice on what she learned from you, about what the standard of behavior for adult males is. And if she learns from you that adult males express skepticism, then she’ll look for a mate who expresses skepticism.

14

I think this is the key. People are just another species of animal. We are different in degree, not in kind. Once you grasp that everything else follows.

15

No real advice to offer the OP, save a personal anecdote. Due to a) me being a weird kid who read like a fish drinks, b) my parents (who worshipped at the altar of Science) toting me to the local science museum all the time and buying me every science and mythology book in sight, and c) me not having spawned.

I remember learning about evolution when I was approximately the same age as the OP’s kid. That came approximately hand in hand with my addiction to learning about dinosaurs at the time, BTW.

I wonder if the kid likes dinosaurs – perhaps learning about them would help her get the concept of evolution down, even if she doesn’t know the right words for concepts like ‘evolutionary stressors’, ‘climactic changes’ and so forth. I know that in all the dinosaur books I read, there was an implicit acknowledgement of evolution, even if it wasn’t spelled out in so many words.

For example, all those illos that showed the major eras – Precambrian, Cambrian, Jurassic, Triassic, etc – and samples of the animals that lived in each. From trilobites to little critters to not so little critters to T. rex.

That might be an interesting avenue to check out, if you’re up for the explanations likely to ensue. **Duck Duck Goose ** has pretty good advice wrt talking to the kid.

16

Dinosaurs, yeah. And dogs, too.

I’ve been sitting here this afternoon pondering how my kids learned about evolution–I don’t remember ever having to sit them down and give them [air quotes] The Talk about evolution, the way I sat them down and gave them The Talk about using birth control if they were gonna be sexually active (well, two of 'em so far).

I think they just absorbed the information about evolution through the pores of their skin, mainly because I have always liked “nature stuff”, meaning plants and animals and earthquakes and tornados and the National Geographic and PBS and knowing the precise name of that weed you’re yanking up by the handful. So because Mommy was interested in “nature stuff”, and because when it was time to check out books and videos from the library, Mommy generally went for books like “The Wonderful World of Bats” and episodes of NOVA, the kids got interested in “nature stuff”, too.

And we always had all sorts of critters around our house while they were growing up, hamsters and guinea pigs and goldfish and whatnot. And Bonzo went through intense phases of loving first, dinosaurs, and second, dogs, which Mommy and Daddy were happy to enable by bringing him birthday presents like The Complete Dinosaur Dictionary (oy, he demanded bedtime stories for two years outta that puppy) and by taking him to an actual AKC dog show. And we went to zoos at every opportunity. And our TV viewing choices tended to be NOVA and Nature and the National Geographic specials. And our vacation choices tended to be animal- and nature-oriented: we looked for zoos and science museums and natural attractions that had hiking loops with factoid stops every 100 feet, not theme parks and tourist attractions.

So I think that one way or another, the whole idea of evolution just got mentioned so many times in passing, in all those episodes of Nature and “Learn About Spiders!” books, that it got familiar.

Also, during the intense Dog Phase, we had many discussions about dog breeding–how exactly does a dog breeder start out with a 35 lb. proto-wolf and end up with a Chihuahua or a Great Dane? That’s “selection” in action right there.

And during the Dinosaur Phase we had many discussions about “what happened to them?” Well, “they didn’t survive the cut,” and once the five-year-old Bonzo understood the idea that there was a “cut”, and how the dinosaurs had failed to survive it, he was well on the way to grasping “evolution”.

17

I don’t mean to be a party pooper, but did your kids ever ask you whether it was possible for a dog (of whatever size and appearance) to become (give rise to) another animal, say a horse. Or did they ever ask what dogs that weren’t being bred, i.e. wild dogs in, say, the Canaries, were in the process of evolving into?

Those, especially the latter, are to me the really interesting questions.

By the way, I asked my daughter quite recently if she believed that God made all the animals as the are today or if they evolved from older forms, and she said she believed they evolved. And that’s cool with me. But I’ll sure get her to ask some of the questions that no one seems to ask re evolution, and to “unask” some of the questions that currently get churned out.

She likes nature programmes too, but sadly not as much as soap operas. Now, there’s a species I’d like to see evolve to extinction!

18

roger, look, I understand your beliefs, and I respect them. But remember that thread when you first showed up? Where many, many people spent 13 or so pages debunking the notion that these sorts of “questions” (I use scare quotes since you amply demonstrated at the time that you weren’t interested in the answers) have real validity? I’m not bothered in the least that you don’t believe in Darwinian evolution (even though it is literally better-proven by science than the theory of gravitation) but why can’t you let your beliefs stand on their own, without constantly trying to justify them through nonsensical objections like these? They only demonstrate the failings of your own knowledge, since they were more than adequately answered before you were born.

19

This will be my final post on this topic here, as I don’t want to further derail the subject. No, the question of which animals are currently evolving into another species has not been answered. With regard to humans, it has been argued that it’s probable that the species has stopped evolving becasuse of technology and other environmental factors, though that leaves open the question of whether non-technologized peoples, such as those in very remote places, scarcely touched by modern life, are not still evolving.

If there are definitive answers to this specific question, then perhaps someone could start a GD thread. Indeed, if it is so well proven that it is effectively a certainty, then perhaps the thread should go in GQ. Either way, I would read it avidly.

20

Well, I don’t recall any specific instances of any of my kids asking me whether a dog could evolve into a horse, but if they had, I would have simply told them, “No”, and that would have been an end to it, because a kid who asks that question isn’t looking to open a debate on evolution–he just wants to know, “yes or no”, whether a dog could ever evolve into a horse. And Mommy would say, “No, a dog could not evolve into a horse” and Mommy’s word would have been good enough.

However, if it had seemed like a more lengthy response was called for, I would have told them that an early canid could evolve into a dog.

http://www.nhm.org/exhibitions/dogs/evolution/canid_evolution.htm

Or that a four-toed horse could evolve into a one-toed horse. I was a horse-crazy little girl myself, and I do remember the first time I found out about horse evolution; it was fascinating to think of those itty-bitty “dawn horses” scampering around on little paws instead of the hooves I was familiar with picking manure out of.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html#part3
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

And if my kids ever asked me what feral dogs in the Canaries were evolving into, I would tell them the truth: “We don’t know, and we don’t have any way of knowing, because we can’t predict the future.” We can make some educated guesses, such as that natural selection is favoring feral dogs that can scavenge from garbage dumps, and get along with human activities, and is selecting against feral dogs that need quantities of fresh-killed meat, and cannot co-exist with humans.

The reason wolves in the United States are endangered, and coyotes are thriving, is partly because coyotes were able to co-exist with humans through their behaviors of scavenging and tolerating close contact, whereas wolves remained red-meat primary carnivores and needed large hunting territories which humans persisted in filling up with dairy farms and Wal-Marts.

The coyotes figured out how to survive in the waste ground out behind Wal-Mart. There are coyotes living in a tiny patch of scrubby park surrounded by subdivisions, here in Decatur.