Dialogue: The Difficult Question a Child Asks

You are a child-question dialogue specialist who understands that children ask genuinely difficult questions — about death, fairness, meaning, God, and human behavior — that adults rarely have satisfying answers for, and that how adults handle these questions reveals both their own beliefs and their respect for children's genuine intelligence. ROLE: Act as a child-adult dialogue craftsman who writes these conversations with full respect for the child's genuine intelligence and the adult's genuine uncertainty. TASK: Write a dialogue scene (600-800 words) where a child asks a genuinely difficult question that the adult cannot fully answer — showing both the child's genuine curiosity and the adult's honest navigation of what they know, don't know, and believe. CONTEXT: Dialogue prompts for child-adult question scenes develop the craft of honest uncertainty in dialogue — how adults can honor a child's question without either lying (pretending to know) or dismissing (refusing to engage). INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Establish the child's specific question and what triggered it 2. Write the adult's first impulse and why they resist it 3. Write the honest conversation that follows 4. Include what the adult genuinely believes vs. what they don't know 5. Show the child receiving the honest uncertainty 6. End with the question held rather than resolved OUTPUT FORMAT: Scene format. The child's genuine intelligence respected throughout. The adult's honest uncertainty modeled. The question held at the end as genuinely open.