The Science Behind Kids’ Endless Questions
You’ve probably been asked a lot of questions by a child, from the simple “but why?” to far more complex ones.
Curious Questions
It’s still unclear how many kids ask every day. One study claimed that children ask 73 questions per day. However, reported that it is they ask 76 questions every hour. Gasp.
Parents often tune out their children’s learning, but does this matter?
Experts say…YES! The experts say YES!
The most important thing is to know why something happens and/or what it’s for –. It turns out that they are pretty much programmed by to question everything.
Mini Mindset
Drake Baer, who wrote about curious children for the Cut explained that these curly Q’s were due to something called Teleological Thinking. He said: “guides a profoundly human desire to ask questions.”
Teleological Thinking assumes an object or behavior exists for a specific purpose. Anyone with a preschooler will have experienced this type of assumption.
This mindset is evident in young children.
It is For Those Who Think.
Children are often unable to distinguish between different objects or individuals. Their teleological tendencies are to thank for this.
In one study, kids assigned different functions to objects. For example, they decided that “tigers were for walking and going to the zoo”, or that “mountains with their peaks” are for climbing. A second showed that children are different from adults in that they believe that all objects have a purpose. For example, “tigers and their peaks can be used for climbing mountains or walking around the zoo”.
Children are primed to look for meaning in things, and will often try to fill in any gaps they find themselves. This can be done incorrectly. Dr Deborah Kelemen (a psychologist from Boston University who has done extensive research on the teleological thinking of children and adults), calls this promiscuous teleology.
Children of primary school age are prone to ‘promiscuous thinking’. “Birds are there because they make beautiful music”, “Rocks have jagged edges so animals can scratch their skin” and other such examples. Dr Kelemen states that finding answers to things, no matter how naive or incorrect, will continue until children have a better understanding of science.
What Kind of Questions Do Kids Ask?
A survey reported on by The Independent concluded that parents find many questions very difficult to answer. Some of the most difficult questions to answer were:
Why do people die? What is God? What is God? What is God? What does it mean to say “We cannot afford it”? Is Father Christmas a real person? Why am I required to attend school? Who will I live next to when you die? Why is the sky so blue? Why am I not as good as you at staying up late?
Kids are excited to learn about the things they don’t know as parents.
What Should Parents Do When They Are Stumped By the Question a Child Asks Them?
Children want answers to their curly Q’s. If you don’t have the answer to their question, tell your child.
Do some research to help them fill in the blanks. You can talk to them about the results of your online research. Write down the question if it is a sensitive or tricky one and you will need to take more time to answer it. Let your child know you will get back to him/her.
Also? Answers should be age-appropriate, short, and sweet. If your child needs to know more, they will tell you.
It is important to respect children’s quest for knowledge. Being clear that everyone, including you, is always learning helps boost their confidence and create an environment where curiosity can flourish.
How to Respond to Your Curious Child in a Practical Way
1. Answer Their Question
They want to know more and are asking you for more information.
When you have the opportunity, give them a response. When we hear “Why that, why this,” all the time, we can remember that their brains are developing if we translate “why” into “tell me more.” The child is just trying to understand the world.
They will continue to ask questions as we answer their questions.
Why are there green lights going in the other direction?
“Why do the lights come on when you move the switch?”
2. Set Boundaries When Needed
Setting a Boundary will help you to return to calmness and continue answering the child’s question. Boundaries can be helpful to our children when they are set from a place where there is unconditional love and care.
Your curious mind is a delight! You ask so many questions. You have so many questions.
3. Encourage When to Be More Curious
Asking our children a “why” question can be a great way to get them to think. By asking a follow-up question, you can teach them how to solve problems, develop their curiosity, and help them answer their questions.
Imagine that you’re at the beach together with your child. The child is watching a group of seagulls and asks you “Why do seagulls fly?” You can answer by saying that the seagulls use their wings for flight or with the question: “You are right, the seagulls have wings.” You can watch them to see how they use their wings ?”
Instead of answering the question which could lead to further questions, this example gives your child an opportunity to be curious. By giving your child some direction on how to find an answer to their question (by watching birds), you are allowing him to be curious.
This response may only be effective for certain questions, but keep this in mind as you answer your curious child.
4. Why is the Word “Why” so Important?
When kids are anxious or nervous, they find it soothing to get an answer to their questions. Investigating the fear that may be behind your child’s question can help you determine how to answer it.
Children may ask the same questions over and over again because they feel safe when they hear the same answers. They feel safe and know what to expect. Sometimes, it is just a way for them to get to know you and they will be satisfied if you discuss something else.
I hear you asking me about _____. I already know the answer. Why are you still curious ?”?
5. You Can Find Answers By Asking Them
When you don’t know the answer to a question, encourage your child by asking them.
Ask them how they can help themselves.
Recently, my daughter let go of a balloon and it floated up to the ceiling. She couldn’t reach it and asked if she could get it. (After asking us why some balloons float up to the ceiling, instead of falling to the ground.) My husband explained to her how some balloons can float. We then asked if she could do it herself. She spent five minutes looking for tools and objects that she could use to retrieve the balloon. Finally, she found tongs which she used to grasp the string attached to the balloon. We encouraged her to be curious and come up with her solution by allowing her to do this.
I love your curiosity. It’s a really good question! What answers can you come up with .”?
I love your curiosity! It’s great to see you learning about the world. I’m looking forward to hearing your answers.
Understanding Your Child in More Ways
Check out our Parenting Little Kids online course for more information on how to better understand your child and change unwanted behavior. You will also learn about ways to discipline that solve problems right away. This course will show you how to bring about real change at home by using practical strategies and tools for the most difficult parenting situations.
Why Do Kids Ask So Many Questions–And Why Do They Stop?
A while back I was discussing the subject of “questioning” with, the original creator of the TED Conference and a man who’s pretty much obsessed with questions. He immediately focused on the educational system. “In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question,” Wurman pointed out. This may explain why kids–who start off asking endless “why” and “what if” questions–gradually ask fewer and fewer of them as they progress through grade school.
This also came up in the Newsweek story “The Creativity Crisis” about signs of declining creativity among our school children. Interesting fact cited in the article: Preschool kids ask their parents an average of 100 questions a day. By middle school, they’ve stopped asking questions.
Around this time, the article points out, student motivation and engagement plummets. Which raises an interesting question: Have the kids stopped asking questions because they’ve lost interest? Or have they lost interest because the rote answers-driven school system doesn’t allow them to ask enough questions? (I touch on some of these questions in my video “What Kills Questioning?”)
There’s a lot to explore here. I know that there are many teachers, progressive schools, and programs within schools that are much more geared toward allowing kids to question and experiment. I take a closer look at some of those efforts in A More Beautiful Question and ask whether they should be embraced more widely.
Meanwhile, if you have thoughts, ideas, anecdotes (and of course, questions) about the role of questioning within our educational system, please share. Meantime, in the below short excerpt from AMBQ, I talk to leading child psychologists and neurologists about what’s going on in kids’ developing brains and why that leads them to ask hundreds of questions a day–up until about age five.
Curious Kids: Where Do All Their Questions Come From?
According to Paul Harris, a Harvard child psychologist and author, research shows that a child asks about 40,000 questions between the ages of two and five. During that span, a shift occurs in the kind of questions being asked: from simple factual ones (name of object) to the first requests for explanations by 30 months. By age 4, the lion’s share of the questions are seeking explanations, not just facts.
As this is happening, rapid brain growth is occurring. At the University of Washington, advanced brain-scan technology can show connections forming in young brains (some of the lab’s work is featured in Tiffany Shlain’s fascinating film Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks).
What the lab’s scans reveal is an explosion of connections (synapses) between neurons in young children’s brains–amounting to about a quadrillion connections, or more than three times the number found in an adult brain. Kids’ brains are constantly connecting stimuli or thoughts. And as they’re making these mental connections, they’re seeking more information and clarification by way of questioning.
Not that it’s easy for a child to ask a question. Harris has described it as “a series of complex mental maneuvers.” It starts with knowing that you don’t know. The asking of a question also indicates that the child understands there are various possible answers: “When they ask what’s for dinner, they can imagine that it might be soup or pasta,” Harris writes in his book, Testing What You’re Told.
