Eurovision, identity and the conversation I wasn't expecting.

My daughter is eight and she had opinions about Eurovision this year. Strong ones. She had been following the semi-finals in a way I hadn't fully noticed, watching clips, asking about the countries, developing allegiances that seemed to shift daily. By the Saturday of the final she had a favourite and a theory about why they should win.

The theory had something to do with sincerity. She said: they mean it. About the song. That's why they should win.

I thought about this for a moment. Sincerity as an aesthetic criterion. Eight years old and already using sincerity as an aesthetic criterion.

Eurovision is easy to dismiss as kitsch, and kitsch it sometimes is. But I've noticed it does something in particular for children: it presents people from different countries, all trying to do the same thing — make an audience feel something through a piece of music — in a context where the effort is visible and the stakes are clear. You can see who wants it. You can see who is nervous. You can see the work.

I sat with sincerity as an aesthetic criterion for most of the rest of the evening. She's right that it's a valid one. Most criticism of Eurovision is that it's insincere — too much artifice, too much staging, the songs designed to be spectacles rather than felt experiences. My daughter cut through to the one counter-argument: some of them mean it. And meaning it counts for something.

Sincerity as an aesthetic criterion. From an eight-year-old, unprompted, at eleven on a Saturday.

The conversation I wasn't expecting happened halfway through the final. My daughter asked: why doesn't every country get to be in Eurovision? I explained about qualifying. She said: but America does it too? I said no, Eurovision is specifically European, though Australia competes.

This opened something. Australia? She wanted to know about that. And then: what is Europe exactly? And then, quietly: I've never thought about where we are before.

She was born in Barcelona. She has dual nationality. She speaks two languages as native and a third with reasonable fluency. And watching forty countries compete in a televised song contest in Liverpool produced, at 11pm on a Saturday, the beginning of a conversation about identity and geography that I had not expected to have for several more years.

That's Eurovision. Kitsch, yes. But also: unexpectedly useful.

The question about where we are — which came from watching forty countries on a stage in Liverpool — is one I've thought about every week since. Not the question of European identity specifically, though that's interesting. The question of what it takes to make a child of eight think about geography and belonging for the first time.

The answer, in this case, was a televised song contest. Not a lesson about geography. Not a visit to a museum. Not a deliberate conversation about where we live and what that means. A song contest with forty flags and a lot of sparkle.

I think this is important to notice: the things that produce genuine curiosity in children are not usually the things we design to produce curiosity. They're the things that catch children sideways, from an angle they weren't expecting. Eurovision caught my daughter from the angle of: I've never thought about where we are before. That sentence, said quietly at eleven on a Saturday, is the beginning of something. I don't know what exactly. But it's the beginning.

She wants to watch next year. I have no objection.

What cultural event has opened a conversation with your child that you weren't expecting?

What did the event make visible that you hadn't found a way to talk about before?

This week: watch something competitive with your children. Ask: who do you think wants it most? Why? Listen to how they reason about effort.

My daughter's favourite didn't win. She said: next year we'll know who to watch from the beginning. She has a plan for Eurovision 2024.

Names of people and brands in these editions are changed. Whoever was there and reads this knows what we are talking about.