Q: Our seven-year-old son is in third grade. When given an open-ended question, he tends to respond with an answer he believes the teacher wants to hear instead of what he actually thinks. It's as though he has "figured out the system." How should we handle this? Is this okay?

A: If your son has figured out the system of how to please his teachers by giving appropriate answers to open ended questions, he is doing more than okay — he is thinking appropriately and learning well, and in the developmental place he should be for a smart seven-year-old boy. Even as he gets older it is important to learn to play the game of school.

Teachers do try to teach children to learn and think, and the curriculum is usually set up for them to flourish in both of these areas. As he matures, — and more creative individual responses are required — if he continues in this positive direction, he will separate out his thinking approaches and will understand when a knowledgeable response is required and when a more creative response is expected. In other words, young children who want to please their teachers will learn to work hard, develop a positive attitude and become excellent students. I do not see much wrong with that kind of good student at the appropriate developmental age.

Parents who assume that children should think differently than what the teacher expects can unintentionally teach children to become oppositional and rebellious only because they are accidentally teaching them too early to think differently than adults. Your son is at the "good girl, good boy" stage when developmentally healthy children are supposed to want to please loving parents and respected teachers. You might say that a strong sense of respect for adults provides a fairly effective tool for teaching foundational school information that is not particularly exciting, like math facts and how to print letters and spell words. It also enables parents to teach children to be honest, kind and responsible.

More independent and creative thinking can begin to come at a young age, but it comes more effectively when children have already learned some important basic values and skills. From middle grades on, children gradually individuate and become more independent in their thinking. Even then there is a great deal of factual information they simply must learn, but there should be many more opportunities for critical and creative thinking.

Your son seems to be doing well, and I doubt you would feel as pleased if he did the exact opposite of what the teacher wanted him to do or if he gave purposely wrong answers. I think you're more worried because he isn't quite as independent as you imagined he would be, and you don't need to worry. That will come with adolescence and unfortunately, with all the media and technology, adolescence seems to arrive sooner than it did in earlier generations. I hope you can enjoy and appreciate your child at every developmental stage.

For free newsletters or articles entitled What's the Hurry? Learning Disabilities, ADHD, and/or Children With Fears and Fearful Children, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address below. Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.