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.

I will never look at flowery pants the same way again MB

MB -one day when you have the time, could you explain on here about sand dune formation, because I'd love to know.....

One day, Rusty, when you can't get to sleep, I'll do just that!

if you answer questions like this the hole will just fill up with more so it's a pointless endeavour

My DM is a teacher and her stock answer was always "Go and look it up in a book"

Funnily enough she has been doing some IT courses in recent years and keeps coming to me, DH and DB with questions.

Guess what we say ?

lol!

My school kids play 'let's fox Mrs Bishop'

My version of MB's explanation to ds, 6, was that the bits of information that come together to make a human being are two strands which zip together like a zip. That each bit of info has two parts - one fom the daddy, one from the Mummy, and like a zip, there is not room for any more parts, just one one ne side of the zip and one on the other - only the XX or the XY.

What abou beehives, with a queen, drones, all those non-sexual worker bees?

that seems quite a good model to me.

That is a nice explanation.

You can get them to play toss the coin. Heads are X chromosome Tails are Y. Do you 'make' a boy or a girl?

This can be really good to help them understand that every time is just down to chance, and that you can get 'runs' of all boys or all girls.

Loads of kids think that if you have 4 kids 2 must be boys and 2 must be girls, because that is what the diagram in the book says.

Or that if you have 3 children without CF and both of you are carriers the nexy 'must' have CF....it is sometimes hard for them to grasp the randomness of it all

(I've just planned a series of 6 lessons on this for september!)

bee genetics are nmore complex than humans!

"who got the first headlice and how??"

Adam

"and how??"

Gawd

Prehaps religion was invented to shut up six year olds who ask strange questions.

Anyway he sounds lovely. The other way is to ask him what he thinks. It gets his though processes going and its interesting the answers that children sometimes have

Or if he is just trying to avoid going to bed, to tell him its bedtime.

Is the bee thing genetic, or is it some sort of hormonal or other chemical modification of female workers?

It depends on what they are fed while developing. Genetically they are considered female but are sterile because of their early diet (some specis workers can lay eggs which may be eaten)

Drones only contain half the number of chromosomes for the queen bee or the worker.

In biology the environment does have en effect of the physical outcome of the organism.

We all have a pre determined hight, but if we have poor nutrition, we may not meet this.

The genetic composition is the genotype. What the organism is physically like is called the phenotype.

So we say Phenotype = Genotype + environment

Another angle on the headlice thing - you know that humans evolved from other primates like chimpanzees? Well they had lice in their hair, and so when humans first evolved they already had lice on them.
Interestingly, clever people date the time that pre humans lost the hair on their bodies by dating when the general body lice found on primates evolved into separate species of human head lice and human pubic lice.

tell him we are animals too.

chin - so the tendons of the muscles that help the jaw move up and down so we can chew have something to attach to (i think)

Humans didn't evolve from chimps tho. We had a common ancestor that we both evolved from

Gently - your question never got answered, but I just checked your profile. Is your ds still only 2? In which case I would run for more toast and let him forget about it.

NQGU - DD was asking, not DS

wow, go to bed and LOTS of posts.

he has not remembered to ask as yet as we were woken up with flamechick and flameboy arriving ((loudly sobbing in the case of flameboy.....what does his mummy do to him???)).

I will save the answers for later as I KNOW he will start again later.....either that or MB will be rung and she can explain.

lol Gently

he has so far not asked any more questions.

he is in bed watching a transformers cartoon DVD, while us 'oldies' watch 'there is something about mary'.