my 6yo has a hole in his head filled with questions....this is why he cannot get to sleep.....please help me answer these Q's so I can have some peace....

[psychomum5]

as otherwise, I may be forced to sell him!!!

question number one.....

why are they only girls and boys in the world??

Now, I said that there are more than just girls and bos, there are lions and tigers and elephants and mummies and daddies etc etc.

nope, says he, all these are animals and they are still all just girls and boys. why is there something that is not a girl or a boy???

.....my boy, the philosiphor(sp?)???

question number two......

who got the first headlice and how??

now, this comes after lots of nit combing this year. I comb them after each and every bath....whether they have them or not....as it keeps them at bay I find (well, of sorts!)....he asked why after the bath tonight and I told him (why I comb him that is).....he has been wondering since then who it was that got the first nits and why they let them live on their head, and why they shared them, as it is rude to share nits.

please help me satisfy his unending need for pointless knowledge.

answer to question 1, cos there are, i don't know
answer to question 2, don't know.

These are honest answers.

but those honest answers have been given, and he then told me that I am a mummy and I must know as I went to school and I tell him all the time that school is for learning......(teach me for telling him that I know it all)

Q1 - we need boys and girls to make more of the species. Any more would be superfluous.

Q2 - haven't got a farking clue - something to do with evolution if one is a Darwinist and I would guess either Adam or Eve if not.

Message withdrawn

Well the headlice Q is the same as the chicken & egg Q

Tell him they are such brilliant Qs nobody knows?

There are mainly boys and girls in the world because thats all the world needs to keep going

The first person who had nits did not know he had nits as he probably had very long hair and washing was not as important a long time ago as it is now. They shared the nits because they slept in one big room altogether and the nits liked to jump from sleepy head to sleepy head in the night.

I made the mistake of once saying to ds(7) that "I'm a Mummy and Mummys know EVERYTHING".

I'm in question hell now too.

"Mummy why do we have a chin?"

ok, he will not understand big words like evolution or superfluous, and after 2hrs almost of trying to explain, my head is now wooly and I also do not understand those big words.

tell me in 6yo language please

Tell him there are not just boys and girls, there are boys who used to be girls but are now boys, and there are girls who were born boys but are now girls. And there are some that haven't decided yet. Tell him the jury is still out on Mars.

Headlice needed somewhere to live and they found the head the nicest of all the places they had seen so far. The first head they found was in roman times and since then nits have been jumping onto peoples heads. People don't share them it's the nits that share heads.

Well the answer that my DTD2 came up with to question to is....."Jesus must hav had them first"

Is my last post in 6yr old language, or do you want me to alter it slightly??

"GO TO SLEEP YOU WEE F####R. IT'S AFTER 9!!!"

Obviously I wouldn't swear. That would be done inwardly.

Message withdrawn

Tell him there are boys, girls and hermaphrodites.... should keep him awake for a few more hours!

Califrau - I think I opted for the teeth one. But the classroom one would have had much more impact! lol

If you get these answers can you also answer "Why do girls have girly bits, and why does it always make me feel I should poke it with my finger?"

How about....

Girls need boys to help them make babies. People who aren't either girls or boys couldn't make any more people like them , so there aren't any

Many thousands of years ago people didn't have shampoo or scissors so they had long, dirty, itchy hair. They also shared their houses with animals, to keep warm as they had no heating. One day some nits, who lived on the animals, climbed into a mans hair. He didn't notice as his hair was long and itchy already. The nits had babies who then jumped into other people's hair. If he asks how the animals got them then you could say that the nits used to live on the ground but they got cold too so they jumped onto the animals to keep warm, and then decided they quite liked it there so stayed??

Sorry, probably not much use.......

Question 1, there are two types of sex chromosome. One is bigger than the other and is called an X chromosome, the other is smaller (is a cut down version of the X chromosome) and is called a Y chromosome.

Women have XX, men have XY. when we make sex cells you can only pass one of each pair. If an X egg meets with an X carrying sperm you get a girl. If it meets with a Y you get a boy.

In actual fact it can be more complex than this, some people can be XO and XXY, XYY etc.

there is a thing called androgen insensitivity. But atm the X and Y thing will probably 'do ' him.

Head lice.

Insects evolved before people did.

Some insects had a chance mutation in their DNA that allowed them to be very good at holding onto hair. Some may have landed on the heads of early proto humans. these lice became geographically separated from other lice (allopatric speciation). Further chance mutations that made them vary good at hanging onto human hair happened. This trait allowed these adapted lice to survive and pass on the new improved gene

nell....I cross posted with you....yours is indeed rather good for 6yo language

twas all the superfluous and evolution talk that threw me!

he has since finally fallen asleep lying across my legs since I came here to find the answers to his Q's (thank christ for that), but I am saving the answers for tomorrow as he is like an elephant and will no doubt start asking as soon as he wakes....

however, thomcat's answer may just blow his mind so much he will never ask anything again....

The control system for our bodies are called genes - every one and every animal has them. Theres two sorts of genes that make boys or girls - X and Y and everyone has two lots - girls have two X, boys have an X and a Y. You can't have two Ys as they don't have enough information, so theres only two ways to be.

Nits - no one knows what the first nit was, or where it lived. But all animals and insects change over very, very long times and so maybe once they liked living on dogs, and then some went to live on a person and found that was really nice, so the ones that liked it best changed to be really happy on peoples heads.

Had he not just fallen asleep... I'd have opted for Martianbishops answer...

Simple and straight to the point.

MB, I think your answer has just blown MY mind!!!

very good tho

Ah now I can indeed help you with this

In my house a stock answer is "it's all done with mirrors" - it works wonders and you can smile smugly as they look in awe

(Although, he sounds a bit too clever for this but worth a try surely? )

also you can't have two Y on their own because eggs can only carry an X chromosome.

and you need the egg.

I suppose there could be a vanisfingly small chance of a O egg being produced due to an error in meiosis that was then fertilsed by two Y chromosomes, but that would be a vansihingly small chance