Would like your opinion on how to deal with a 7 year old boy with an excellent vocabulary who replies “Why?” to practically any statement or question…
No matter how one replies to his “Why”, he boun
ces right back with his series of Why?s
Delilah.
Tell him, up front, that you’ll only answer X number of why questions a day. Ten is a good number. And when he asks you WHY, as he inevitably will, you will say, that’s ONE. And I’m doing it to teach you to think for yourself before you ask a stupid question.
It’s either that or slap his butt with a wooden spoon every time he asks a stupid WHY question. My nephews went through this question stage and I didn’t think they’d live through it.
My 4 year old daughter is very bright by all accounts and I mentioned bacteria the other day when she got a cut. The “Why?'s” started until I set her down at my computer and we looked at microscope slide pictures of all types of bacteria on the Internet for about half an hour. The “Why’s” continued until I was giving her basically primers on infectious diseases and microbiology. I lasted as long as I could and just told her to get up because I said so.
The car ride tonight was even more relentless than usual and I eventually just told her to pay attention to a song and turned up the Led Zeppelin.
I don’t want to dissuade her natural inquisitiveness so I handle each situation as they come and often just tell her that we have to talk about other things and to save those questions for another time when I will be happy to answer them.
I sometimes get into this with my son (who is now 11 and still doing it!). It’s a game. He doesn’t want to know why. He wants to provoke! So I’ll go on with short answers until it becomes an obviously ridiculous game, not a search for information. If he persists beyond my patience, I’ll give him THE LOOK. You know that LOOK, the one your mom gave you. When I do that, he knows he’s gone beyond fun to annoying.
My daughter went through that phase for an extended period. What I did not know, I would Google. It led me to the Dope among other places. She was seven for the worst of it.
I thought it was fun to answer the questions and we would go surfing around different sites together learning a lot about animals in particular. We still do this sometimes, though not as much.
Jim
Turn it around and ask him for his opinion or explanation of the matter. “Why do you think…?”
7 years old? Just look at him and mock him saying “why why why why” while you get closer and break into a kissing, tickling, wrestle-mania.
My wife has already throughly warned me that “because you’re bad” will not be an acceptable answer once my daughter reaches the “why” stage.
My parents explained every why to me, in detail, so I’d never ask that question again. According to my dad, they got the idea from an Anne McCaffrey book. They also wouldn’t let me deviate - no whys in the middle of explaining a why. I stopped pretty quick, as I recall.
~Tasha
[Peter Griffen] Why did the dinosaurs die?[PG/]
Because you touch yourself at night.
My dad taught me how to look stuff up in encyclopedias then referred me back to them when I asked why on something and told me to give him an update when i found out. Not IF if bothered to find out, WHEN i HAD to find out.
The phase didn’t last long.
When they’re very small, asking ‘why?’ all the time is often a tactic to keep up a conversation; you can answer whatever you want and they won’t care, as long as you keep talking. At this age, it’s probably partly curiosity and partly to bug you.
My daughter is 6 and asks a lot of questions, but she’s not like that (yet!). I still have to get her to stop sometimes, so I will say that I need to concentrate on driving and can’t talk right now, or something. A lot of times I come back with “what do you think?” and get her to think about it first.
For your situation, I like the 10 questions a day rule. That ought to make him slow down and think about whether he really wants to know something. If that doesn’t do it and he’s really trying to push your buttons, start taking away 10 minutes of [TV/Playstation/whatever] per pointless why, or something.
And partly just to talk. I’ve read that younger children want to talk to you, they just lack any conversation skills which is why they run into the room to inform you “Umm… I have a red cup!”
Of course, at age 7, that’s not quite the case although it obviously does get them attention.
I think I recall that one. The girl’s parents were scientists, and when she asked why, they could and did give her very long, very detailed explations on why. One of the Brainship books I think. Amusing to find out it actually works.
If the kid is literate and actually wants to know, give him access to a set of encyclopedias, or these days the Internet. It worked for me; I spent hours absorbed in those books.
There used to be a marvelous series of books called “Tell Me Why”… just checked Amazon, they have this: Big Book Of Tell Me Why which looks like a compilation of those books.
My grandfather had them in his office and I LOVED them.
Yup. The Ship Who Searched. Hypatia Cade was the little girl’s name. I don’t know if it’d work on a normal kid, because I was anything but (my first three words were “Fuck,” “Daddy,” and “population,” in that order)
I have a photographic memory. Sometimes I really wish I had a recycle bin for my brain.
Anyway - that was how they did it. I went through my “Why?” phase between two and three years old - so they got an encyclopedia set. Every time I asked “Why?” They said “Well, let’s look it up! What does it start with?” That’s also how I learned to read at the age of 2.
~Tasha
Dunnow, I’m 38 and still haven’t gotten over the “why” stage. I’ve just learned to keep my mouth shut. But right now my job consists of asking a bunch of people “why” they do their job the way they do it and I’m loving it 
“Why?”…because it’s got the longest tail!
OK, I’m trying to make sense of this cryptic response but I fail. What do you mean?