Nothing in my life has prepared me to answer that question, let alone to a 5-year-old.
Some things are pretend, like unicorns. Reality is all the real things you can see, touch, smell, hear, and taste.
Maybe I’d add “and that others could see/touch/smell/hear/taste” - clarifying around vivid imagination, synesthesia, and that reality should be shared. It’s the things all reasonable folks can agree about (given sufficient time and access).
This is my favorite answer so far.
How about “all the things that are true and none of the things that aren’t true?” (Not sure how well the latter part would go over.)
That’s a pretty good answer, but I think it might be beyond their desire to process.
It can help to ask in what context they thought of the question. For instance, what if they just want to know what makes “reality TV” different from regular TV?
It’s like when the sitcom kid asks, “Mommy, where did I come from?” and after a whole birds-and-bees talk it turns out his new friend is from New Jersey.
Definitely.
In this case I had on the music video for the song “Transcendental Cha Cha Cha” which features several lyrics that mention the word “reality.” Probably my kid was just asking the literal meaning of the word but they got distracted before we could discuss it further.
