Later that year, we had two 11 year old girls staying over with their mother during a weekend. I showed them some fossils and stones we have in the house. One was constantly filming snapchat videos of her self in a fancy environment while the other was intrigued and asked questions. She was curious.
A good friend of mine who copy/pastes anything nerdy/cool with only some knowledge of what he posts and its context, used to occasionally bring his kid to the office where we work. The kid never asked any question about anything, seemingly having no curiosity at all.
I suspect all babies are born with a good measure of curiosity to explore and understand the world around them. They are encouraged or frustrated by how their environment (mainly parents) deal with that curiosity.
The joy of knowing and understanding new stuff thus develops or shrinks. The confidence to boldly explore the world is enhanced or diminished.
In my wider family I have cases of excellent people who never ventured beyond places where they speak their language, who never learned another one.
Others study at university in fields that are highly political, yet seem to have no interest in any societal issues that we face as humans.
How does this come about? Is it fear of not understanding in this ever more complicated world? Has their curiosity been frustrated by parents who felt overwhelmed by the questions asked, time constraints to answer or just ignorance?
Or is it school education on which our societies reduced spending for a generation to spend on short term other needs?
How curious are your kids and how do you deal with their thirst for knowledge?