Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school "whowhatwherewhenwhyhow?" ;

This is one of my best parenting tips ever -

Around age 3 DS started to ask 'why' -
I realized that almost every question could fit into 2 basic answers -

((drumroll))

Nature or Custom

Why can't we have Pizza for breakfast - Custom
Why can't we breath underwater - Nature

So he would ask, I would think, and then say "Nature" or "Custom"

Sometimes that would be all he wanted to know. Other times he would ask more questions about the same topic. I'd come back with -

Well, What do you think is the reason why?

I'd use this to access, what vocabulary does my child know, what concepts has he already figured out for himself that I can 'compare/contrast' with my understanding of the situation.

Then I'd give an answer based on his answer.

We had fun that way.

Sometimes we still joke about 'nature or custom' or try to find a 'why' that doesn't untimately boil down to one of those 2.

We talked about how the nature of humans is usally to defend custom much more fiercely than nature.

Smiles,
Grinity

Yeah, it's definitely when he's bored. And he does the same not-waiting for the answer to be finished thing. But once he hits the REALLY hard questions he kicks into incicive mode & thats when it gets really painfull, becauswe there's a construction worker over there on the other side of the bus listening in while I try to explain why cement is grey from a mechanical, optical, and ontological perspective, and somehow I feel more bound to answering thought-out questions and also more stressed out by it. And someone's ALWAYS listening in! With other kids the endless whys feel like a quest for knowledge in genreal, with DS it always feels like he's trying to get to something specific -- that I really don't seem to be ably to address.

He won't wait for me to finish speaking ever. as soon as he thinks he gets it he cuts me off. arrrrggggghghhhhhhhh!!!!!

Ok, so I wrote that last night, but never hit post. The current set of frustrations is being set off by a really really bad flu. Please excuse any incohearence & blame it on the fever. I don't have this excuse often, so just let me use it, eh?

-Mich

I like the nature/custom thing. In fact, I like it very very much

I will add that to my arsenal. Not so much different from my "it's arbitrary" response ("Why is it called a 'shoe'?" "It's arbitrary, people before us called it something that sounded a bit like 'shoe,' so we call it something that sounds a bit like 'shoe'")


And I've already been using "tradition," too, which isn't quite the same as "custom." Ok, I'm probably not supposed to be thinking about writing an "Opposites" book including "arbitrary/determinate" "nature/custome" "tradition/inovation," and "Predictable/unpredictable," am I?

("Predictable" is my response for things like "why should we wait for the little walking figure?" "Because to make traffic safe, it's best to be predictable, so it's worth following an arbitrary set of rules.")


-Mich

I think you are supposed to - afterall if you don't who will?

I'll put it right next to the equally fictitious 'Nerd Baby's Milestones Book'
...first Spoke quote
...first use of reference material
...first Google search
...first SF convention
...first use of sarcasm
...first thoughts about G-d

Regular baby milestone books just seem really to miss the point to me.

I'd buy both books. But I think the Nerd Baby book also needs a special chapter on "Parenting a Nerd Baby - Rites of Passage," where I could put things like:
*received first blank stare when talking about my child (oops, every ___ month/year old isn't interested in ____?!)
*first time I advocated for my son
*reached one million explanations today
*first time my child sighed and gave up trying to explain something to me



I was explaining stoplights and traffic (and modelling it with a pink motorcycle and a man riding a squirrel) to DS2 in a play area today and looked up to find four other mothers staring at me. I could feel my face turning red, but I had to laugh about it when I read Michaela's post. I'm so glad for this place.

First time child interupts a long winded explaination and says says "Oh, you mean X" where X equals vocabulary you had no clue your child would know.

JohnLaw: Yeah, he gets those a lot. He thinks I'm *pretending* not to know. And he thinks it's rude. And he asks me why I don't know. And what I don't know, and what is don't know, and... yeah.

DS asks the forum if "fun" is nature or custom.

And doesn't everyone ride squirrils?

-Mich (getting squirily)

PS: DH points out that DS's first google search was long ago, and ew have no idea what it was, but probably train-coupling related. And I thought i still had time to buy the book. <sigh>

* First time you described something your child was doing and your mom said, "Yeah, right."

I think that some kinds of fun are definitly nature - learning something new for example (a few more 'R' rated activities come to mind as well)

Belonging to a group is a nature kind of fun, and getting fun from doing the things that are associated with belonging to one's group is a 'custom' sort of fun.

I would venture that behind every kind of custom fun there is a nature fun - in the manner of conditioned responses, see
http://psychology.about.com/od/cindex/g/condresp.htm

Even Schadenfreude is a nature sort of pleasure - I think this because on the rare occasions when I feel it, I'm very mad at myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude

I suppose in this day and age, "Let's Google It" is also an appropriate response.

Fun is customarily found in nature, but some customs by their nature are fun.