Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Do your kids ask questions like this?!

I can always tell when my DD6 has had a day at school where she didn't get interested in things becasue she asks all sorts of "tough" questions on the ride home. A few months ago she told me she had a really really tough question for me and she didn't think I'd know the answer, but she'd let me have a shot at it anyways (nice to be told your dumb by a kindergartener): "If God made everything and everyone, who made God?" My response was that we didn't really know but that she should ask her Sunday school teachers maybe they would know. She then quickly followed that one with "Ok Mommy, now I have have a super tough one, even harder than the first one." (How can it get harder than this? was my thought). SHe then asked "What started the big explosion that started the universe? If there was nothing before the big bang, what could have started it, because things can't just explode for no reason." I sent her to her dad for the answer to that one, he's a astrophysicist.

I agree with BWBShari my research skills have improved a ton lately.

yep, research skills have greatly improved here too. When DD was 3 she would ask so many questions about gravity. She wanted to know all the details of how it worked, why it worked, what would happen if it didn't work. Wouldn't it be fun if it didn't work just a little? At 4 she asked me what the first state of the union was? Back to the computer, it is Delaware, then she wanted to know what order the states came into the union. Printed it out, then she would read it over and over until she had it memorized. When she started Kindergarten (she goes to a private school) they are learning stories from the Bible in the new testament, I watch her one night memorize of the books of the new testament, it was the most amazing thing. Anyway this one keeps me on my toes and on my computer looking up stuff.

This one stumped me yesterday..

We were at the pediatric optalmology dr's office for DD4's first official eye check up. They showed her pictures on a screen to identify; teddy bear, boat, christmas tree etc. When that was done, she asks the Dr.. Were you showing the pictures to test my eyes? Like the eye chart? Were you showing pictures instead of letters because you thought maybe I was a baby? I am now a kid you know and can read. We were stumped! I wondered where she had seen an eye chart before and can only imagine that it must have been at her cousin's playing with a Doctor toy set.

Dh brought home a bunch of croissants from Costco. Ds(3) interrupted me while I was on the phone because he had an emergency: he needed to know "which company made the croissants?"

(You should have heard the reaction from the person on the other end of the phone.)

That one made me laugh, Ds4 is always doing that! For some reason he's interested in brand names and stuff. He also constantyly had those kinds of "emergencies" and is constantly inturrupting. At 3 years we told him he needed to say excuse me to be polite, when he wanted to inturruped to tell people things or inturrupt. I wonder if that was a mistake, because excuse me is like his most over used word. He always has something to say, or ask. Drives us a little crazy.

don't remember the exact question

Kid @5 Will the days go on forever?

like, at 5 or 6
"dad, if you were travelling at the speed of light, would you see your shadow?"

Or, "if a cardboard box got too close to the sun would it catch fire, since there is no oxygen in space?"

Or "which is heavier, my Action Man model or the sun ?" (A question about mass)

It goes on and on - I ask him questions now :-)

DS4 (last night at bedtime - when all the questions seem to appear) "where did the first person on earth come from?" I could deal with that one.

Today I had "who dresses up as the Easter Bunny?" DH and I just sat there grinning, we didn't know what to say. I don't like lying to them because they trust us so much and it is such a fine line! I still remember when my older DS (who was then 5) asked me if we pretended to be the tooth fairy, but then he said "that would be ridiculous because why would you pay me money for my old teeth - what would you do with them?"

Now the big question that DH and I try to avoid answering - "how does the sperm get to the egg?" It is hard to know how much detail they can handle at such a young age.

Yes, questions are relentless in our house!

FWIW...

My usual approach to those tricky sex questions is to give them short answers containing any info they specifically ask for--using the clinical terms for body parts, nothing cutesy or incorrect--but no more. If they keep asking, I keep answering. But the second they stop asking, I stop talking.

For a 4yo, I'd probably respond that a Mommy and Daddy have a special hug they use to make a baby. If he pressed on, I'd explain interc0urse in the simplest terms: pen1s meets vag1na, and that it's something only people old enough to handle a baby should do. (Values teaching, too...) Nothing more.

That was the response that satisfied my kids and wasn't too much detail for them to handle. And I think it's good that they will know that they can't get a girl pregnant by kissing her or any of those things that so many kids think.

Oh yeah my DS(5) is working on the concept of infinity. I get questions like
"When is the end of all the days?"
"What is the biggest number of all the numbers?"

But my favorites are
"How does the brain know what the eye sees?" @4
& recently "What is water made of?" Which led to a discussion of the elements.

Wow is his Kindergarten teacher in for a surprise!