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!

We had gay friends visiting this weekend and had the inevitable "which one is the mummy?" -thankfully before they arrived.

DD (2.7), sometimes has a tantrum for no apparent reason, complete meltdown with wails and tears. Stops for breath and says 'Whyyyy my crying mummyyyyyy?' Me: 'Maybe its because you're tired darling'.
DD:'Oh...ok!' Wanders off happily, tantrum over

i can remember asking why a lot.

i can also remember getting confused when my mum got annoyed with me, when I just wanted to know. One of my favourite ever questions was, why are words called words?

my 2 yo has a good answer for things at the moment. She just says ' because I am'. to almost everything. or she ignores you, which drives nme mad and sets off my twitch.

DD (4yo) is the same. Asks questions or just talks without stopping. That's a very good idea to ask her to tell me the answer! Can't wait to try it!

We are in US visiting family and have to drive a lot, so I am trapped in car with her. After 2 hours driving yesterday, she said,
'Mummy my voice is worn out now. I'm going to stop until I yawn next time'
(5 minutes of blessed peace)
'OK, I'm better, now I'll tell you a story, but I don't have any pictures...' then I got a recap of recent Dora episode.

I got 'what are Kangaroos' teeth like?' from nearly 3 dd this morning at 7.30 am - thank goodness for google images on the iphone. (kind of pointy.)

We had talked a lot about listening to what your body was telling you in relation to potty training now DD thinks everything has some kind of internal monologue -
'what's the ant saying now?'
'what's he saying when I'm poking him with my finger?'
'what's the pasta saying?'
'what's the pasta saying now I'm eating it for my lunch?'.

I find the car hardest to concentrate and answer questions at the same time..

i told my nephew, 3, that the answers are always in the books, very clever of me, now he won't believe anything we say unless we can probe it with a book, wait till he learns to read and you can't just point to anything

My DS is 4.2

Current favourite conversation:

"Mummy why does the dog like food?" (Insert any random collection of words to make a sentence starting with why)

"Well DS, because he is very greedy and hungry and food is tasty."

"Mummy...but how do you know???"

"I just...do...."

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

"What noise does a Zebra make? Why?"

My Mum used to answer "Why?" with "Z!" Used to stop me in my tracks. I plan on using that one with really irritating questions from DD. She's not too bad with it at the moment, thank god! :)

Me: "Please, don't ask me "why?" for five minutes."
DD: "....why?"

They do grow out of it but if memory serves me correctly, the 'why?' phase is followed by the 'but, actually...' phase where they will contradict everything you say on principle! Be careful what you wish for!!

ludog, I think we are nearly there. ds (3.8) asks why, I explain, and then he says "But daddy said..."
I don*t answer to just "why", only if it is a properly worded question. we like to look things up on the internet ( the volcano was a good opportunity) and he is genuinly curious and remembers stuff.

What noise does a Zebra make?

like a horse? clickety clock? that*s what I tell ds anyway.

Jacksmybaby I do the whole making up stories thing:

For example in the car on the way home from nursery

DD: Mummy, the sheeps have gone from the field, why?
Me: (resisting the urge to say they've probably gone to make lamb chops) The farmer's taken them back to the farm
DD: Why?
Me: Because they've gone home for their dinner.
DD: Did he take them on the tractor?
Me: Yes
DD: Why?
Me: Because it's too far to walk
DD: Where does he live?
Me: over there somewhere (whilst pointing in the vague direction of the hills and resisting the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel)

Finally satisfied until the next time...thank god. It's bloody mentally exhausting! Revising for my finals was easier

noise d

Oops.

Emmanicola my MIL also answers DS's "why?" with "because after y comes z"!

Here are the questions DS managed to ask this evening in the course of just ONE bedtime story:

Why is the girl called Sophie? Why is she drinking tea? Is tea for grown-ups? Who is the boy from the grocer's? Why isn't this the day he comes? Why does Daddy have keys? Why is the tiger so tall? Will his tummy be poorly? Why is he drinking from the tea pot? Why doesn't he pour it into a cup? Why doesn't he wait until the food is cooked? Will he burn his tongue? Is there syrup in the cupboard? Why is he drinking all the drink? Why is he thirsty? Is that a winter coat? Why is she going out in her nightie? Why is it dark? Why are all the lights on? What is that cat doing? Why is there no-one looking after it? Why have they put their umbrellas there? Why is Sophie's mummy's coat orange? Are Sophie's sausages hot? Why have they put their shopping in that basket? Why doesn't the tiger come back? Why is he blowing a trumpet? Why is he saying goodbye?

Is this some sort of record?!

Thank you for the link! What a very bizarre noise

Gah - DD came out with:
'Why is that stone not moving' (because stones don't move)
'Then how did it get there' (perhaps a bird dropped it).
'But why did the bird drop it' (because it was heavy I expect)
Why is it heavy' (because it's made of stone).
So why is it not moving (because mummy glued it to the garden with superglue).

Grockle - you are welcome.

The next thing I want to know is whether zebras eat/love carrots. One of DS1's baby clothes had "zebra heart carrots" all over it. It is a great unsolved mystery.

Uptoapoint, I thought it was donkeys that love carrots?

I am not going to argue with the baby clothes.

on a recent train journey a man came up to me before he got off and said " you are doing really well" - so nice!

I had spent the entire journey coming up with reasons as to why people were wearing certain things, why that lady was getting off at that stop etc and i started off with intelligent responses interspersed with "what do you think?" but by the end I was just saying "I really don't know" all the time!

lol

A young niece once said to me, after being told off

Why does there have to be swear words?

Good question

L O L at GabbyLoggon! Why indeed? Why?