Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Asking "Why" - What Was Your 3 Year Old Like?

My lo is now 3 years and 3 months old. She's hit most of the milestones I see listed for 4.5+ years, and when I read the "kindergarten readiness" lists, she hits all that stuff, too.

It just occurred to me that she doesn't ask "why" all that often. I mean, she certainly asks it, but it seems like she just knows things. She asks me what things are or what certain words mean, but her vocabulary is pretty large.

My friends are complaining about toddlers / preschoolers who ask "why" non-stop, and I realized that's yet another milestone I'm not experiencing. She asks "why", just not incessantly...that kind of bothers me, because kids are supposed to ask why constantly. We didn't have the "terrible twos", either. She's just now started throwing the occasional tantrum, but can often be reasoned with. (But when she really loses it, it can suck. Like for the first time ever while at Starbuck's the other day. )

Were your kids all about asking "why"? What were they like at this age? She probably watches way too much TV, and she memorizes a lot of stuff from there. She's doing some basic math and started sounding out words at 2.5, but I haven't been pushing it. She just started being able to write letters without frustration, so I'm trying to get my act together and do some lessons from that 100 Reading Lessons book.

Haven't been here in a while. *waves*

I had that experience, too. I epected whys; I had great answers to some classics: it never happened. DS8 also watched a good amount of TV at that age, and was pretty headstrong. He'd do a lot of strange things and seek out a lot of factual information.

At some point it became apparent that he was almost hard-wired for the scientific method, and his core m.o. is to test and experiment and discover answers. He has a strong need to figure things out himself even to his own detriment. It's like life is a novel and any bestowed wisdom is skipping pages.

I don't know if it's because he got a lot of questions answered to his questions. Or a lot of praise for making connections himself. Or something innate. But I know now that he constantly asks "Why?" It's just to himself and it drives him. Though frustrating at times, I see it as the very trait of intellectual curiosity that I wished for him to have even before he was born.

Both mu boys, now 6 and 4, has never really asked questions like that either. My older would just figure things out on his own and not really discuss it. My younger would also figure things out and then give me and explanation why, in his mind, things work the way they do.

It is not until the past week or so DS4 started asking a million questions. I am not sure what happened but as an example; the other day he was "stuck" on a pair of soccer shoes (He had never seen a pair before) asking probably 20 questions about the shoes??? Everything from why are the seams this way, asking it the logo sign was "a mirror, because it kind of reflects"....

Very interesting but....sigh...

My DYS dd 11 asked why ALL THE TIME! Charming as it was, I remember it drove me bonkers. She still does it, as in she and I are watching Downton Abbey together, and she can't help herself, but has to ask out loud, "Why is Rose kissing him?!" My husband jokes that her nickname is "why?" And ds 9's nickname is "but...!" We are thinking of getting t-shirts made that say "But why?"

yeah we had a pediatrician give us a health index when our dd was 3, and one of the questions was, does your child point at things in books? and of course it was no, or 'not much' anyway. This is a red flag for poor development, but the pediatrician, knowing my daughter said, "so that is because she is just able to ask in full sentences 'what is that', right?" Doesn't need to point.
And yeah, that was why. So it is odd, but the pointing phase might have occurred for a bit much earlier and we just didn't notice.

Around 2 or so she was asking 'wha's dat?' over and over, it was amazing how often that would come out of her little mouth. Just building the huge vocab I guess.

It might still come. We never had questions until fairly recently with DS4. But now we get lots of questions, such as "what is inside of stars", "why is water liquid" etc. . We tended to give age-inappropriate answers, often wondering if it was too much info; now that we know his test results, we think it's probably just right.
DS2, on the other hand, is asking questions now - probably imitating his brother. But he already asked questions like "what's that" in books much earlier, as a 1 year old.

I don't remember with DD, but she started with the why questions at around 3-4 I think.
I was worried about DS because at 4-5, he still hardly ever asked why, and when he did it was usually me saying something like "We can't go outside right now." and he would say "Why not?" It wasn't questions like "Why does the earth orbit the sun?" or "Why do police cars use sirens?" At age 6-7 we started getting more "Why" and "How" questions but he seems content to read books and ponder things on his own rather than talking/asking about things.

I read once that this stage is a consequence of a child wanting to keep the conversation going without the verbal skills really to do so. A kid with conversational skills that come on line before this stage can keep conversations going in other ways.

You might be interested in this thread:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/180637/1.html

I don't hear "why" often so much as, "How did you know that?" from my DS2.25, and he expects lengthy explanations of how I arrived at a given conclusion. I'd call it reverse-engineering the scientific process. Like 1111's younger son, my DS also will ruminate and then bombard me with a detailed hypothesis about why something is the way it is, and then we discuss it in detail. Maybe your DD has developed her own more efficient hacks for getting at the information she craves.

DD has never been all that fond of "why" either. She was highly verbal quite young, though-- and had a million tricks to keep people interacting with her.

She apparently figured out quite early on that adults in particular were more likely to respond naturally (and more informatively) to more subtle forms of interaction.

She was a great observer-- not always an INQUISITOR. She always seemed to know that the latter was off-putting, whether people "expected" it or not. LOL.