I see this on every list for identifying gifted children. I would like to ask whose gifted kid did NOT ask "why".

I have four children and two ask "why" nonstop, and two never do. They are close in age, so I can sort of study them and compare and contrast (two sets of twins age 6 and 7). The two who ask "why" seem to use extroverted intuition and probe their environment for answers. The two who do not ask "why" appear to have introverted intuition and intuite from their own internal database for solutions to problems.

Example: at age almost 3, twin boy says "why is the sky blue?" He is my twin who asks questions. Frequent and often. His sister says "To contrast with the clouds!" . She had wondered this as well, took the information she had already been given, and came up with an answer.

As these two children progress in school, this has been a problem for both of them. Twin boy never intuits and asks others to give him answers (I turn to him and say "why do you think?" And work out from there), and twin girl daydreams and internalizes problems and comes up with wildly fascinating but completely inaccurate solutions (I ask her often to explain how she came about her answers, and encourage her to investigate her environment).

Twin girl is in the gifted program, her brother is not (I qualified into the gifted program in first grade, my husband who says he processes information the same way as our son entered much later).

I am now seeing this same pattern play out with my younger set of boy twins. I am wondering if anyone else has a gifted child who answers questions internally only and does not vocalize them, or if I am seeing a unique dichotomy associated with twins.

DS5.5 never went through asking why when he was younger (when all the other kids around were asking why why why). He always asked "how does it work?" "how is it made?" and many other specific questions. But never simple "why". He goes on asking questions non stop all day but they are always to the point where he's looking for more of a technical answer.

DS11 (2e, ASD) did not ask questions until well past age 5. Otherwise linguistically more or less on track. He was figuring everything out under his own steam. Now he asks.

DS4 does not ask questions. He obviously wonders about things and analyzes things a lot because out of the blue he will explain why a certain thing is the way it is. Lots of the time completely wrong, but usually a very detailed explanation...

DS6 does the same thing although he is not interested in explaining his theory to us...:-)

DS took a while to ask why questions...most often it was 'how questions', like Mk13's DS. He does ask 'why' now but we don't really get "why is the sky blue" type questions, for the most part. I also wondered about that phenomenon, how some gifties are 'why why why' and others not - but then again, it seems like any time you try and pigeon-hole your kid into a gifted description, it ends in failure. (for a fun example, Ruf says that gifted infants don't mouth toys, or chew on books. tell that to my DS who LITERALLY ate hunks out of his board books. But now I'm straying off topic. :D)

My twins (both are gifted; almost 7 yrs old) asked questions all of the time as toddlers and still do, but rarely is the question a simple "Why" type question. Like squishes, though, I have always explained things to them in detail, so maybe they didn't need to ask a lot of questions - LOL.

DS7 asks questions non stop and has since he started talking. It can be exhausting and I'm truly grateful for our library and google. As someone who considers herself reasonably intelligent it is rather humbling to try to keep up with him We've had to resort to digging out university textbooks to satisfy his interrogations on more than one occasion.

DD5 isn't tested so I don't know if she is gifted but she isn't like that at all. I often wonder if it is because she's been stuck listening to DS's questioning for years and either isn't interested or that she now has all the info (and more) that one could ever want after listening to our answers.

DS11 never did the "why" questions. In fact, he had problems with questions in general -- understanding the difference between the types. I'm sure it's his Asperger's. I would ask, "how do you..." and he would answer, "because...". It was extremely frustrating, trying to explain why "because" was not an answer to "how".

DD7 didn't start at two, but somewhere along the line (5?) became attached to "why" questions and every other kind, and she still is.

With our DD it was "If you give {DD} an explanation..."

the bottom line is that she LOVES didactic interaction and learning from it so much that it's like catnip to her to see how many different tangents she can create using a single answer to a question.

She does it to everyone, though, not just us. Most other people seem to find it charming, probably because she loves to elicit people's intellectual passions (whatever those might be), and people love to talk about their own passions.

Yes-- and DD has always been my little skeptic-- she does NOT accept answers that don't make sense, and truth-tests out loud by asking follow-up questions. She sometimes asks for OPINIONS-- and is relentless with others until they 'confess,' coming at things from all different angles until the person cracks...

Nobody expects {DD}, basically.

This sounds like DS2.25 and me. I don't hear "why" so much as "how do you think this works...", "what is meant to happen when...", "where does this come from...", "how is this similar to/different from X...", "what would happen if I/you did X...", etc.

Another big habit of DS' is to state a hypothesis and go about testing it. Sometimes these are big proclamations like, "I think there is no gravity in space", or little things like, "I think red and blue make pink". We spend a LOT of time discussing what information we'd need to test our hypotheses and, where possible, modeling things out with blocks or drawings. I scaffold with extra information to help DS move from thinking about his hypothesis to testing it, so that may cover a lot of the "why". A few weeks ago we acted out planetary orbit in John Cleese style silly walks. Answering the "why" just happens organically.

And as for the Ruf levels, I think they're a general guide. For example, for ages DS had zero interest in puzzles. Then, a few months ago, he started randomly doing 24+ piece puzzles when bored, and quickly (like under 5 minutes). Now he's totally disinterested in them again. It's so individualized.

Since no one ever put this information seeking in a different context (how instead of why), I will have to watch and listen. I had not thought of this! Thanks.

My kids are the form their own theory type. Mostly they are very logical but often wrong. Sometime I can see where they went wrong as in "i can see how you got there but you were missing a piece of information", sometimes they were funny - hatchbacks have windscreen wipers at the back because they go both ways like those double ended trains. Ds4 asks a lot of "what does 'word' mean questions. But like a lot here i talk to my kids and read to them and don't dumb down or assume they don't understand.

Database is a great analogy. Amusingly enough, I'd say that a key trait of many gifted kids is they keep their database fully indexed and normalized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization

DS8 doesn't question nearly as much as he used to. Don't know if he grew out of it, was socialized out of it, or has just shifted to a more internalized approach. Or maybe he just doesn't do it so much at home unless we've accidentally bought an argument from him.

DD was the same way. One day, I randomly said, "Oh look at these poor (jigsaw puzzles) dinosaurs. They are broken into pieces. We should fix them!" She was into her vet kit back then so putting jigsaw puzzles together became performing pretend surgeries. Until that day, I thought she couldn't do jigsaw puzzles. She did puzzles off and on for 6 months so the stage lasted for a bit but now, she refuses to do any. With LEGO, she happily helps me build sets but what she is really into is modifying the sets after they are built and free-play. She says following instructions is boring and there is no point in doing lego if she can't use her imagination.

DD asks a lot of why questions but they do not pertain to scientific inquiry. She uses them to question our motives and our reactions as in "Why are you getting so upset? Go calm yourself down and think about the bigger picture." She is on a musical theater and LEGO phase right now so she hasn't been talking about science much lately but when she was, instead of asking questions, she learned what she wanted on her own and processed them by "teaching" me. We're trying to balance her learning style through music lessons and so far, it's been an interesting process.

Saw this after reading this thread...

http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2014/01/26

DS 6, asked unending "why" questions that I used to think that my ears would fall off due to the high intensity of those questions. Now, for the past year, we have the "what is it" and "how does that happen" etc thrown in with equal intensity. Sometimes, I patiently try to explain every single thing that I ever knew on that topic. At others, when I get tired of talking and need a break, I ask him to first figure out what/how/why and come up with his theory and then I would help him out to check if his answer was on the right track or not. That usually buys me a few minutes of quiet time. And then , we discuss and analyze and find the correct final answer. DS is identified as gifted.
Today's "why" question was: Why does Michael Phelps not learn martial arts and compete in the olympics now and win 22 medals in martial arts? And that led to an hour's discussion on how supreme atheletes are talented in one field and how they train for a lifetime on every single aspect of their skill and how their bodies are primed for one sport and it is mostly impossible to switch from one sport to another later on in life for them and how there are a few exceptions and who they were etc. That discussion went into greater detail than I could provide - DS is making me better at googling for info

Well, my DD likes those best of all-- because there it's a vast territory of grey area waiting to be explored... endlessly, --er, or until her victim target's energy flags, or the person manages an escape.

"Have you ever thought about..."

"Have you ever wondered..."

"Hmmm-- yeah, but what would happen if..."

Often she opens like this with some observation about world politics, human geography, environmental/political/economic theory, religion, etc. Or best of all, some intersection of them.

She has been doing this since she was about 3yo. It seems (to me) to probably be the quality that made it so difficult to consider her a young child unless you had her in your line of sight. If you were working on the bench or in a hood while you chatted with her, eventually she'd slowly turn up the level of the discussion until you were both working on an adult intellectual level before you knew it.

I also realized something just now about my DD's seeming relentlessness with adults regarding their OPINIONS. She likes to invite speculation-- often on edgy or nebulous, or just plain uncomfortable/controversial topics.

Adults are seldom comfortable saying "I don't know" to children.

I think that we like to give them "answers" to their queries, not speculation.

The DD-Inquisition often results as DD tries to ferret out their speculative side on topics of interest. But first she has to convince them that she won't just accept that opinion as gospel truth or anything, that she's just interested in what they think, and wants to discuss it.

O yes. I have one of those. It's so much fun!

DS24 used to ask endless why questions. Every car trip I would be peppered with questions. He was also really great at coming to the defense of others' bad driving if I happened to say anything. "They may be looking at a map, Mom," or "You should always be ready in case someone pulls out in front of you, Mom."

DS12 did not ask many questions at all, which really surprised me and misled me to think when he was in preschool and younger that he would be very happy but only slightly above average in intelligence. He seemed to be very interested in how things moved and worked in his early years. Then in preschool interpersonal dynamics began to interest him and at that point I guess the OE began to show.

He's now beginning to ask us the why questions and he's 12.

I always felt with him that when he was younger he just doesn't see us, his very bright parents, as adequate authorities on anything. haha!!

DS12 also ate hunks out of his books. There goes that theory.

Yes! We do, indeed, have this problem. We inexplicably find ourselves making muffins or painting things for no apparent reason. It's the Rube Goldberg theory of children, I believe.


Really? That's practically the only answer I ever manage to come up with! Followed by "why don't you look it up"?

Aside from the endless questions, Do any of your kids have the constant need to comment on everything? DS5.5 is always commenting on everything he does, analyzes everything he sees on tv or what'a happening in his games, he just cannot stay quiet for 5 seconds. He even admits to it saying "no mommy. I can't stay quiet. I have so much to say!" It doesn't matter if it's a cartoon, his homework, him playing with favorite toys, he keeps on talking and talking and talking!

Yes. We're a family of talkers, save for DH.

No. The two who ask why also talk all the time. The two who don't ask why, also don't talk and are the mist like myself personality wise. We go shopping together and its enjoyable because we all can drift and daydream and not have to talk. Extrovert is exhausting for me, and my two boys who seem to have extroverted intuition want to talk about their observations. My two who don't ask questions just want to day dream. They are also oblivious to their environment. I can shop for Christmas with my daughter with me. I just point to something and ask her a question, and stick stuff in the cart. This is a description of introverted intuition. Introverted intuition can look aloof and daydreamy. Lol.