How do you deal with SO MANY QUESTIONS that they make your ears bleed?

[bintofbohemia]

Before I had children I thought I'd never be the sort of parent to fob a child off, I imagined myself answering everything and havign lovely intelligent chats along the way.

Then I had DS1 who has just turned four and oh my good god. He asks the same question 19,487679 times, even if you give a sensible answer, then he'll ask it again. Some of his questions are absolutely insane, some totally nonsensical and yet he expects a coherent answer immediately which he then wants to find fault with and argue about. Yesterday, whilst trying to get a wasp to get off DS2's face (no mean feat, am shit scared of wasps) DS1 carried on the whole time:

"Mummy, does FL begin with FLY? Does it mummy? Mummy?"

It takes every fibre of my being not to yell at him "Will you just bloody shut up for three seconds please!"

What do I do? Obviously he's bright and trying to learn but he is literally shredding my brain and I lovel nothing more than 7pm when it all goes quiet.

Help!

ds1 is just turned 4 and exactly the same... good luck to his teacher in September

I too assumed i'd be the sort of parent to lovingly explain the answers in detail and enjoy precious moments with my children as i encouraged their young minds to grow and develop.

Bollocks to that!

DD asks the same questions over and over and over, but promptly forget the answers or simply doesn't listen in the first place as something shiny across the room has caught her eye.

DS1 gets bored halfway through the answer and starts a completely tangential conversation while you're in mid sentence... often with another person/cat/toy and simply walks off leaving you trailing off and feeling a bit crazy

ds2 doesn't talk.... but he does a fine line in gestural communication and will bring you things and grunt at you wanting to know what they are and then snatch them back and throw them across the room as you clearly haven't given him the answer he wanted

[sighs]

[twitches]

"mum, but why don*t you know the answer?"
"just because"
:)

all that to look forward too, hah?

scary, very scary

to think that i was a terrible case of that, why?

I have two at the moment who won't stop asking questions over and over again and I know how irritating it can become. As a Speech and Language Therapist if parents asked me the sensible advice I would give would be: (not that I follow it all the time - I have been known to ask for quiet time please on many occasions

Asking 'why?' questions is part of their language development and it involves the start of 'verbal reasoning' i.e. making sense of the world. You can sometimes turn the questions back at them and get them to try and figure the answers out, more often than not they know the answers. It is a sign of intelligence which I am sure you all know by now (no consolation when they have drove you up the wall by 7pm I know)

Dd is 4.

"Why are there people mummy?"
"Which people?"
"All the people in the world!"
"Why do you think there are people dd?"
"So we can wear clothes?"

It's a phase and it does end (but it ends in fits and starts iyswim). I have had two like this and it has done my head right in. The answer is wine. I remember reading on here that someone thought it was impolite to tell her small son to stop talking. I beat myself up for a while after reading that, then decided that it's probably better to bring a child up to realise that people have limits (ie tell them to be quiet every now and again and why) than to foist a windbag onto the world.

DD1 is like this - I can usually fob off the 'why is the sky blue' questions with - we'll get a book out of the library. The ones that drive me mad are when we're driving along she'll see some random person walking along:
'who's that mummy'
'I don't know'
'why don't you know?'
'I just don't'
'where are they going?
'I don't know - where do think?
'I don't know thats why I asked you?'
'oh'
'who's that.......
me banging my head on steering wheel with frustration

'I don't know' is only to be used as a last resort.

You say 'It's a person with a blue skirt' - why? - 'because she decided to put it on today' - why? - 'because people decide what to wear in the morning, you will too when you're older' etc.

Or some variation. I'm not saying it's not stupefyingly dull but it feeds the imagination

@ scrappy... do you find yourself making up details about random people's lives? Along the lines of...

Where is that man going mummy?
I don't know, maybe he's going home.
Why?
I think he's going to have his dinner.
What will he have for his dinner?
Um, maybe sausages.
Why?
Because he likes sausages.
Are they his favourite?
Yes.
Why?
Because they're yummy.
Will he have tomato sauce with his sausages?
Yes, definitely...

And so on.

DS age 7 asked is the reflection is the mirror three dimentional.

If the fourth dimention is time how is there anything three dimentional because wihtout time it would never have existed.

If I don't know the answer he says how have you been on this earth so long and learned so little.

I Love google

This thread is lovely - My DS has a speech delay and so we are not at this stage yet, but I hope we will be sometime and I cant wait :)

ShadeofViolet... my third has a speech delay and to be perfectly honest I'm enjoying the peace

I honestly don't mean that to be flippent but my other two talked from 6/7 months and never bloody stopped and much as I worry about ds2, there is a silver lining to that paticular cloud

Today in the car:

DD: 'Why are the trees slower out of my window than out of DS's'
Me: Don't think they are DD.
DD: But WHY are the trees slower on my side?
Me: Maybe it just seems like that cos they are further apart.
DD: Yes, but WHY are they slower?
Me: Well we are moving and they aren't and....
DD: Yes but WHY are they slower..........

10 minutes pass, whilst I try to drive in heavy traffic and DD asks same question over and over again.

Then I remember the perfect answer to all questions (although not from a feminist point of view!!!): I know DD, why don't we ask Daddy when he gets home. He is bound to know!

DD: Hooray. Daddy knows everything!

Thank you all, esp. Scrappy and Jacks* I too have a ds with constant questioning syndrome. I think it is definitely important enough to be a syndrome! I will have to start making more stuff up, cos I get asked similar stuff about random people/ducks/other small creatures!

Where is that duck going? being one of my favourites, although it wasn't at the time!!!

I love the clothes comment ruddynorah

I definitely go with "lets ask Daddy" too! I would have been stumped at the trees question. I also passed "Why don't paragliders have roofs?" onto daddy!!

Depends what kind of mood I'm in - if I'm in a creative mummy of the year type mood then yes I make up stories most of the time I'm just too tired.
Classic one was when dd asked why that lady was so fat - I made the fatal mistake of saying she wasn't fat she was pregnant - which led to the whole where do babies come from conversation. I am more careful now. (although she did ask if it hurt when dd2 came out of my front bottom and when I said yes she went all quiet for a good 2 mins twas bliss)

I don't mind the curiosity and learning type questions. It's when they ask the same question over and over ad infinitum, clearly expecting to get a different answer?

"Can I have some apple juice please?"
"I haven't got any, sorry. Would you like orange juice instead?"
"Oh Mummy pleeeeeez can I have some apple juice?"
"There's none left, I need to go and buy some"
"Please please PLEASE can I have some!??!"
repeat ad nauseaum...

Do they think we're lying and have a sneaky carton stashed away somewhere?

I'm totally with scrappydoo here, in that my child asks the same completely unfathomable questions and always seems to ask them whilst I'm doing something else that requires a modicum of concentration, like battling wasps or reverse parking up a hill in rush hour or the like. I'm not very good at multi tasking...

love this thread.

DD's (4 and a half) current favourite is 'Mummy what am I doing?' afraid that rather than being honest, creative or even nice I tend to grab fist fulls of my hair and mock scream 'asking mummy crazy daft questions, AGAIN'

Gets me some funny looks but defuses the question with laughter, evil DD likes to see me stressed!

My favourite answer:

• I don't know. Let's do some research when you have tidied up the living room because otherwise I can't get to the computer.

That buys at least 2 hours of peace.

I have 2 doing this at the moment and they actually bounce off eachother so I have answered DS1 and then DS2 comes up with an equally irritating inquisitive question.
DS1 favourite atm is death (thanks UP!)
It's such a cheery way to spend a wet tuesday afternoon discussing mine & Dh's demise and what will happen when we die and where do we go and what will happen to him & DS2&3 and will we see eachother again and on and on and on.....I was nearly crying by the end! I KNOW its important to talk about these things but my word when its constant and so bloody depressing I do revert to the old "ask Daddy when he gets home"!

My DD is only just 2 (25 months) and so hasn't reached the "why? why? why?" stage, but her equivalent is "dat called?", wanting us to name a zillion things a day.

Eg

"Dat called, Mummy?"
"That's the door frame darling"
"Dat called?"
"What do you think?"
"My socks. Dat called?".
"Er, that's the bit underneath the pepper grinder, er, it hasn't really got a name, er..."

etc

At least she is satisfied if you either tell her what it's called (if you know) or attempt to describe it (if you don't - see small part on bottom of pepper grinder).

Loving this thread ... My DD has been at this for 6 months odd and is only just 3. I thought I had a clear year before I had to deal with this. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
We have the variant "what's xxxxx for Mummy?"

What's that for mummy?
To sharpen the knives
What's sharpening knife for mummy?
For making it easier for mummy to use
What's it easier to use for?
on and on and on and on ....

Car radio is good - sound suddenly goes UP!

But "What do you think?" sometimes answers it - with varying degrees of exasperation.

My sister swears that the answer to the last "why" should always be "because I LOVE you" [through gritted teeth]