Look closely at a newborn's head and you can feel a soft, unfinished spot where the skull has not yet closed — the fontanelle. The ancient scribes drew exactly that: a small child's head left open at the crown, balanced on a pair of kneeling legs. That open head is why 儿 has meant "child" for three thousand years, and why the same kneeling legs also sit at the bottom of 见, the character for "to see" that you already know.
A piece of culture
The suffix that softens a language In Beijing Mandarin, tacking 儿 onto the end of a word does something no spelling rule can: it softens it, the way English adds "-y" to turn "dog" into "doggy". 花儿 (huār) is a flower spoken fondly, 鸟儿 (niǎor) a little bird, and 一点儿 (yìdiǎnr) is just a little bit. This habit is called erhua (儿化), and it curls the tongue back mid-word — a sound so distinctive that a Beijing accent is unmistakable the moment someone says 玩儿 instead of plain 玩.
Use it in a real word
儿子
érzi · ji4 zi2
son — literally "child" plus the noun-forming suffix you already know from 子