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I enjoy being stumped by my kid, and would enjoy being stumped by other people's kids, so I thought I'd start a thread for ammusing and stumpful kid-quesitons.

DS3 today, after a conversation about a guy on crutches wound up in Broca's area (explicitly, I suppose it started out there, technically speaking!):

"I don't want to be a[play at being] backhoe-loader right now, is my brain having to think 'do not be a backhoe-loader'?" Pause "Why not?"

So I explained that most actions need to be actively initiatied, but some are different, like breathing, which can be supressed by an active signal from the higher brain.

Oh so many to chose from...
Having explained the meaning of "your eyes are bigger than your stomach" a few days previously I was amused when DS (then 2) told me that "my brain is bigger than my stomach". "really" was my reply. DS "oh yes- I think that I can eat more than I can"
DS at 3 "I really need some chips". Me "how can you be hungry already. You just ate a huge plate of food not that long ago". DS "it was 2 hours ago and all that food has now moved from my stomach to my small intestines." How could I argue with that!

It's not a good question, but, he started a word problem with, "if u had five poopy pants and one poopy underwear..".. I interrupted with, "then I'd wonder why you weren't wearing undies the other four days."

He also told us the other day, "we need to buy those pills (prostate pills on a tv commercial) because they make you not have to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, or when you're in the car, or when you're in bed".  (the hubby's launching a campaign to tell him not to believe the tv commercials).

Now I feel weird because all my post was about potty stuff.  Ok, here's one.  He picked a flower for me and wanted to plant it.  I told him it wouldn't grow because it didn't have roots on it.  Then he asked for the glue and dug up another weed and broke off the root and glued it on the flower and planted it.  

La Texican...my DD2 is potty-training. My DS5 assumes this means he has carte Blanche to discuss her potty habits: if she went, where she went, how much, what kind...ugh.

This was more of a request than a question, but it cracked me up. A few months back, my DS5 looked at me sincerely and requested, "Mom today let's talk about the difference between impossible and improbable."

You can also tell him that even a lot of "voluntary" actions have to be actively inhibited, or they would start on their own. In ordinary life we call this "force of habit," where a stimulus just triggers a response without thinking (like when you walk into the bathroom and start putting toothpaste on your toothbrush even though that's not what you meant to do).

People with frontal lobe damage have a real problem with this. They are extremely "stimulus bound," so for example if you put a fork on the table in front of them they may pick it up and make eating motions. The frontal lobes are all about inhibiting all the various behaviors that we could do in a situation.

[Brought to you by the Department of More Than You Wanted To Know]

My 2.8yo dd watched lion king the other day. That night she said," mom, simbha, Mufasa and simba's mom are good lions. Scar is a bad lion."
Me: really, why do you say that?
She: because scar wants to fight with everyone.
After a moment of silence," mom, why are some lions and some people bad?"
Ummm.. How do I answer that? I just said we will have to think about that one. Thankfully, she was real sleepy.

There's a poetic answer to that one that I very much like. "the impossible is no problem, we do it every day. the improbable, well, that's very unlikely and probably not going to happen."

I like this. I erred and went a more concrete route to which my DS decided that everything was, at the very least, improbable because, "With God, all things are possible." ...I believe this was a predetetmined debate

[DS IS the dept of More than You Wanted To Know]

And that's a good point. Maybe his brain was actually having to think "I do not want to play at being a backhoe! 8P