How do I make DS listen? ARGH!

[Trazzletoes]

DS is 3. He is currently having a phase of, for example, asking what's for dinner. I answer with pasta and sauce. He asks why and I explain that I thought it would be nice and that's what we have in. Fine.

Then, he asks why we're having pasta and sauce for dinner. I give him the same answer.

He will ask over and over and over and over and over again. I keep giving him the same answer. He is perfectly capable of understanding the answer. Eventually I ask him why he thinks we're having it. He says he doesn't know and asks me again.

This happens with every single event in our day: why are we having breakfast, why are we putting our shoes on, why are we going to the shop etc etc.

It drives me round the bend. I'm sat here fighting back tears because the only way I could get him to stop asking just now was to ignore him. I don't understand why he does this. I worry that my reaction to it (getting increasingly frustrated until I just tell him I'm going to ignore him) is very unhelpful, but I know he can understand what I'm saying. ARGH! Please help me, someone...

Anyone? Please?

It's a phase, both my kids have done this. I always answered with 'what did I say last time you asked this?'.

My 4 year old is a big one for why too .

I often try to say something silly ie after he knew what you were having for dinner and asked again, you could say something daft, like are we having worms?! He would probably laugh and say no, we're having X. (of course you'd probably have to then explain why you weren't having worms, but at least it changes the subject a bit, and makes it a bit more of a game when you are getting frustrated)

I used to retort with ' why do you think?'

Seemed to stop the questioning pretty quickly as half the time they don't actually want an answer, just your undivided attention

My dc3 is also three and does this all the time. My two elder dc's did too. Last night the poor thing tried and tried to ask me a question to which I just could not give her a satisfactory answer. Eventually after changing my answer several times I finally hit the nail on the head. So I suggest trying to answer in different ways. As for those infuriating times when you know they have understood and are just asking for the sake of it, take a deep breath and answer again. No doubt it is just part of their development and will soon pass.

Why? Because Y has a long tail. Standard answer in my family.

After the initial explanation or if I know he knows, I sometimes go with 'you tell me'. But this backfired with my DS(3) now insisting 'no, you tell me Mummy'.

If it goes on a bit I think that he really just wants to chat, but can't yet work out how to start conversations. When we get into a 'why' loop, I give him a really daft answer and lead him onto a different topic. I compete with myself to see how far we can get from the original question before he loses interest and goes back to the original 'why'.

Really frustrating though, isn't it?

Poor you. I think after answering the same question 2 or 3 times I would have reached my limit! It's probably a way of getting attention, and perhaps even seeing if the answer is the same (perhaps at that age they don't know this i.e that the answer might change?) Eg with the tea thing you could have said ' because we like pasta and sauce' or you could have possibly said ' becuause this is what we eat on a Wednesday', I think it's also because their minds are so inquisitive, maddening but a good thing in the long run.

If all else fails you could try turning it on it's head. You ask him something over and over again, 'why are you watching CBEEBIES?', ask them fifty times and maybe they will get the message!!

I get the same question over and over too with my just turned 3 year old. I break the cycle by giving him silly answers like 'What's for tea?' 'Worms on toast' 'No! we don't eat worms, that's silly'.

As others have said, I repeat answer 2-3 times, then I just ask the question back to them and they answer it with the answer I gave them!

Sounds completely normal.

Some children need a lot of reassurance in understanding the world and 3 is a time when the art of language and conversation really kicks in. So, for him, asking "why" isn't necessarily because he wants to know "why", but he's developing conversation an learning he can have a conversation just by saying a simple word.

Ds1 is nearly 6 and he can sometimes ask me the same question in 3 different ways, immediately after one another.

So I might get,
Does spiderman have the strongest webs?
Spidermans webs are the strongest aren't they?
Why does spiderman have the strongest webs?

And I'm being serious-drives me mad at times. However, if the "whys" get too much and I've explained more than 3 times I can sometimes just say, "why not?" - and he says "I don't know", and that's he end of that!