A miracle happens you have a baby! She gurgles, smiles and gets excited when she sees you. Then you urge her to say “dada” and “mama” and make sounds of animals. You get so excited that she is saying words and you know that she/he is beginning to communicate. But with your child’s great achievement of talking he/she will also say “no” and “why”.
These are powerful, new words for children but not so great for new parents and not so new parents. We all wonder how we might get around this “why” question or “no” answer. Well, to be truthful, its not that easy. We (parents) will have to bring out or polish our skills of debates or discussions in order to get the result we need.
The way we get to the end result might be on how we decide to approach the topic at hand…for me there is always one of 3 ways for the “why” question:
1. We must remember, children of this age are new at asking questions and being able to disapprove. We as parents do not have to answer or react with great complicated sentences. Children of this age will not be able to store all the information you give. Simple sentences are best. For example -” how are babies born?” a possible answer can be “they grow in your tummy and when they are ready they pop out of mummy’s tummy”. You will surprised how many say “Oh – Okay”.
If your child asks you “why” and you give the full explanation, they will not be able to absorb all the information you provide or even to relate to it all. However, if you wish to squash all future “why” questions this might be the best approach. But I don’t think is your aim. You would like your child’s brain to grow and understand the world around them.
2. Possibly ask what your child thinks. Why do you they think it happens or looks like that. For example, “why do fish have fins?”. The answer may not be 100% correct but encourage their opinions and maybe suggest what you may think but never say they are incorrect. For example if they say “its where they have extra bones”, you could answer “well yes, fins can be hard but when they move the fins it helps them move in the water”.
3. (this one is great if you don’t know the answer yourself) Go and find the answer together! Google is great for plugging in the question and it comes out with wikipedia or other related links that you can find. For the younger, not so patient but very curious ones, you can enter a phrase into Google, and select Images. Google will show you all the images that have been tagged with your word/phrase. Here you can talk about the topic. It might not answer the question that was asked to the end but that doesn’t matter because you have answered many other questions by just talking about it.
Please bear in mind, the “why” question are great insights to what or how your kids are thinking. Sometimes it even answers your own ”why” questions. Why they are not eating (too cold or too sweet). When you ask what they think, you may receive an answer you thought would never be logical but for an innocent mind there are no boundaries. It is beautiful to see a world through their eyes with a different angle or logic to a topic or an idea.
