I love inquisitive children. Well, I love them most of the time but not when they are less than a foot behind you all day like a second shadow. My cousin’s son shadowed me all day on their recent visit. Asking a barrage of questions. “What would you do if you won a million dollars? Why did you mix the milk and the flour in like that? Why do you like so many cups of tea? If you had to save one of your children, who would it be? What happens to your body in the grave when you are buried?” Man he asked difficult questions. My cousin said he’d been doing that at lot with her of late too. I think she was quite relieved he was throwing his questions at that day and not her. I felt for them both so endeavoured to answer the questions the best I could. It reminded me of a school camping trip where questions, answers and singing went on for hours around the bonfire.
Eventually I gave master six suitable jobs to occupy him so I wouldn’t keep tripping over him. Later on it made me reminisce when my kids all went through this constant question stage. I remember getting frustrated and tired. I have to say I DID make up a few answers. There I said it! How true was that Telstra Big Pond Great Wall of China keeping the rabbits out TV commercial.
Why do kids go though this constant questions phase? I think kids ask questions to gauge where you sit morally on an issue. Whilst they don’t know what ‘moral’ is at age six, they are working out what would be the best decision or answer to each of their questions. Helps them form their own opinion.
It is only later in life when they reach the teenager years they challenge everything. As a teenager they make every effort to disagree you. To provide you with reasons why you are wrong. Or simply to just give you grief.
A funny story about Jamie our son when he was about six when he was with his dad in the doctor’s waiting room and the doctor was running late again. They had read all the kids books, played with the Lego and run out of Eye Spy objects. So Jamie started asking Jason questions. When is the doctor going to be finished with the sick lady that went in there ages ago? Are we next Dad? Dad, that old man over there he looks very old, will he die soon? ‘Hush Jamie’, Jason urgently whispered. Luckily the old man was deaf.
Without taking a breath I am told Jamie went on, ‘When Mummy is finished with you, I will marry her’. Jason nearly fell off his chair but could see that his son was serious and tried hard to conceal the laugh. There were a couple of older women sitting next to them giggling and sighing in cute delight at this little boy declaring his love for his mother. It took some time for my husband to explain the laws & the facts about marrying family and the like.
It is cute when you son voices his love an affection but one day Jamie will probably start those days of argumentative disagreement for the sake of it. We have had one child already through that difficult time but there is light at the end of that tunnel. They become beautiful people in the end *I say crossing my fingers*.
Have your children gone through this constant questioning? What classic questions have your children asked you?
