Talking With Our Children

[Amer]

This evening my four year old asked me these succession of questions:

"Mammy when will all the water finish?" ( I was drying his hair after his bath )
"When will the days finish?"
"People are dying before us aren't they? If you and Daddy die before me who will come to this house to look after me?"

Just your regular Sunday evening chat.

Would love to hear what you all have to say on these and other deep questions that our children come up with.

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[Going by]

mine did ask me to live until she was 20 because, she said, she would have difficulties to manage by herself prior. I joked and said "ok, right after I can die - gosh, you give me little time (she was then 12).

[Anchor]

Its interesting.

I have no children.

I do however find that they ask the best questions.

Who here, is really being taught

If a child can ask such searching questions - how is it that we find it so hard to give the answers?

What "simple" process is it that is the source of these?

Certainly not the mind of a 4 yr old - surely not... except of course it is.

So where is the common ground that enables the answers to be given?

Maybe this is one time you can answer a question with a question so you can assess where this is coming from.

I've met one or two exceptional 4year olds that would be able to cope with that quiz. Mind you with kids, my patience is close to infinite - its a luxury one develops with being able to hand them back to their parents once you have finished with entertainment duty.

[Northern Boy]

I have taught mine right he has stood up for himself against some of his teachers and his principal even got dressed and left the school they went looking for him in a car pulled up beside him told him to get in and he said no he was going home. they pleaded with him and he still refused he came home and i asked what happened he was having trouble with a couple of boys and the teacher refused to deal with it so he got pissed off and came home.................His teachers hate me even my brothers wife is a teacher she told me the school hates parents like me I said she should hate me because i teacher my son to challenge them accept nothing as fact till they can prove it

[sjkted]

I would respond by saying, son if you ever find the answers to those questions, please let me know.

--sjkted

[Chicodoodoo]

"Mammy when will all the water finish?"

Great time to talk about the water cycle.

"When will the days finish?"

Great time to talk about the Earth's rotation and orbit.

"People are dying before us aren't they? If you and Daddy die before me who will come to this house to look after me?"

Great time to talk about average lifespans, relatives, and close family.

Personally, I love kids that ask questions like that. And usually the ones that do are great listeners and ask great follow-up questions. And I'm always looking for those opportunities to say, "I don't know. What do you think?" That way, I get to be a great listener, too.

[sjkted]

I wonder if the questions could be a bit deeper. I also wonder if those answers would be just as when we ask an authority figure an inconvenient question which is promptly followed by an appropriate answer to an unrelated question. I would definitely not have accepted these answers when I was four years old.

--sjkted

[Chicodoodoo]

I would definitely not have accepted these answers when I was four years old.

Good! I suspect we would have gotten along just fine! When you refuse the answers, that's when I would ask what you think and practice being a good listener.

Gosh, do I love the minds of 4-year olds!

[Jenci]

Hi Amer,

What do you think? is a question I may ask back to buy myself some time to think up an answer. But I have said that "I don't know" before and I think that is good to teach my son that I don't have all the answers.

My son went through a phase of asking about what would happen to him if I wasn't here. I reassured him that I would always be here for him. It felt the right thing to do at the time because he was so young.
Jeanette

[Northern Boy]

My son went through a phase of asking about what would happen to him if I wasn't here. I reassured him that I would always be here for him. It felt the right thing to do at the time because he was so young.
Jeanette

I told mine if something ever happens to me That No matter what I`ll always be with him and that in the end we will all be together and that everyone he ever knew would be there to greet him when his turn came . I said death is never the end its just a new start thru an old door and the beginning of life

[Limited Edition]

When my two boys were small they told me that they had always been together. They said that before they were born they were together in my stomach. Before that I was with them in my Mother's stomach and that is how it goes all the way back to the beginning.

Northern Boy, your son sounds like my youngest one. When mine was in sixth grade I got a message on my phone from the school. They were saying that my son had told them that today was his last day of school there. He was withdrawing. I rushed to the school and by the time I got there they had all the paper work done. He had turned in his books and his locker and he was ready to go. Because they had believed his story without consulting me I decided that maybe we should be going somewhere else, but I made him promise me that he wouldn't quit school again without asking me first! He has always been adept at handling his own affairs, but he rarely follows the status quo. I am sure I have learned much more from him than he has learned from me.

[Jenci]

I am sure I have learned much more from him than he has learned from me.

Me too, and still learning from him and he is only 9.
I've certainly learned some patience

Jeanette

[ZookieMonster]

Me too, and still learning from him and he is only 9.
I've certainly learned some patience

Jeanette

Tykes don't offer anything new ... but what they offer is what we had forgotten long ago ... and that is an innocent look at the world. In that, they give us back the various infinities we had unwittingly corralled. Confined infinities ... the lot of the imprisoned mind.

[flower]

My youngest.. Tasha... who is now almost 20...

When she was 2, would come up to you, put her hand on you and say "somehow some do"

My grandson... almost 4 now..said so much without words this weekend..

he reached over , in the van and touched my arm.. looked at me and smiled... then reached over to touch Richards arm and give him a smile as well...

Kids are the best communicators on the planet...we should listen more

[Amer]

If a child can ask such searching questions - how is it that we find it so hard to give the answers?

I imagine Anchor because we haven't got it quite figured out ourselves yet and we would dearly love to have those answers for ourselves. When a child asks you a searingly deep question it immediately pinpoints your position in the whole scheme of things. In this I mean you either brush off and try to ignore depth and so in essence you will probably be a person who will live pretty much on the surface of things, and that is fine and well, it's not a wholly bad thing. It will then impart a path to that child and so a cycle will begin, though hopefully where the child will still be free to explore the ideas for him/herself though albeit without parental help.

Or perhaps such questions unnerve you and you desire to steer your child away any thinking of the sort, and there another path is imparted, one that with a certain stiff imprint by the parent will probably be a little harder to get off.

Or these questions create challenge and awe and you undertake in some way to address them, to act in some way as an open and gentle guide for your child and promote a path that is in the first place a place free to travel and roam, where questions are welcomed and answers are sought.

Tykes don't offer anything new ... but what they offer is what we had forgotten long ago ... and that is an innocent look at the world. In that, they give us back the various infinities we had unwittingly corralled. Confined infinities ... the lot of the imprisoned mind.

What I have understood about children is that they are fresh from somewhere other than here, many carry the evidence of this in what they say, it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Great time to talk about the water cycle.

Great time to talk about the Earth's rotation and orbit.

Great time to talk about average lifespans, relatives, and close family

Thanks Chico they are great ideas, I now have to go off and educate myself first! You know it's funny I recently had to fill out the census form and for the calculation of how many years I had been in education I did the sum and it arrived at 19. I was aghast- half my life in education and I feel I know next to nothing about what really counts.

I told mine if something ever happens to me That No matter what I`ll always be with him and that in the end we will all be together and that everyone he ever knew would be there to greet him when his turn came . I said death is never the end its just a new start thru an old door and the beginning of life

Nice NB. When my son does his "but Mammy what is dying?" I follow that kind of line, I have started to talk to him about energy and how you can't kill energy, it just transforms itself and talked about the idea of when you burn something, it doesn't disappear it just changes form.

Kids are the best communicators on the planet...we should listen more

The long lost art of listening, that most beautiful of things.

[Dex]

I love this thread. Thank you Amer. I'm taking notes for future use

[reaver]

Curious, I don't remember that much from my childhood, don't even remember asking that kind of questions... Guess I got too lobotomized at some point, I've been trying to recover material from that phase for quite some time now, not much "luck" so far. But I do kinda remember thinking adults were mental, ironically I was following those crazy ideas because there was this idea burnt into my head: That adults were a kind of omniscient beings... that and following the rules because I was sh!t scared of punishement... I used to get extremely nervous when it was time for my mother to go pick up my grades, those times were I felt I just wasn't going to cut it... funny (not really) how a simple idea about stupid numbers can cripple you and follow into latter stages of life. I guess that if I never asked much about those questions was because I was too bored with the adult world to pay any mind and the school system was taking care of it anyways. Pure lies.

[Dex]

"Mammy when will all the water finish?" ( I was drying his hair after his bath )
"When will the days finish?"

These questions make me sad and wonder, at what point do we tell kids that we fu cked up the planet and may actually run out of clean water unless we change our bad habits?

[Amer]

This morning's question:

"Mammy who was born before everybody?"

Me: Wow really interesting question, mmm the world I think.

My son: But the world is not a baby.

Me: Well who do think was born before everyone?

Him: Monsters, dragons and dinosaurs .... (pause) or maybe angels..... Mammy do angels eat?

[Anchor]

Angels do eat, but its "special" food that they make up.

Hope that helps

[Amer]

A question for the guys out there- did you all go through a phase of guns and swords? ( not as adults guys, I mean when you were kids )

A question for the Moms - did you all buy the toy guns and swords and accept it as a natural phase in your son's play development or fight against it and feel that it was giving a wrong message?

My son is four, doesn't go to school yet or attend nursery school, doesn't watch violent cartoons - he's still at the "Bear in the Big Blue House" stage and when he plays with my friends' kids or plays with other kids at the playground I haven't seen them simulate any form of "violent" play.

But yet he has entered this gun/sword type of "fascination" and I don't know where it has come from really. If I'm honest it pains me ( god am I a real fud? Be brutally honest go on ) At the fairground he had the choice of choosing a prize and he spied the sword and it had to be that and nothing else!

Can I ask ye what are your experiences please?

And thanking you in advance

[Anchor]

A question for the guys out there- did you all go through a phase of guns and swords? ( not as adults guys, I mean when you were kids )

Oh yes, big time. Also we didnt have much money and my friends all had better ones than me. Until one day I got a revolver cap-gun I could only afford the caps for it once a month though. So it was a win-loose situation.

Looking back, it had to be TV and comics. I know I didn't get it from books.

It's all a materialized fantasy.

[Amer]

Oh yes, big time.

Well from your posts Anchor I can say it doesn't seem to have left any negative influences on you - you seem a most pacifistic guy

[VajraYaya]

Oh Yeah, Guns, swords, slingshots, the whole mythic good versus evil, saving the damsel, defending the fort, are all completely appropriate and normal developmental perspectives for the 4 to about 12 year old. The kinds of mythic ideas that are found in fairy tales and comic books [and cop shows] target and arise from that perspective. I was one of those kids with a cap gun or two and a BB gun. Would watch war movies, westerns and cop shows on TV. My brother, my friends and I spent many days doing these kinds of things.

Today I am not remotely a violent person. I really dislike violence. Can't watch violent movies. Even as a kid, i never liked to fight, have never been in a fight, but play fighting was just play, that was all. The idea of actually hurting people horrified me. Yet I know that I have in me the ability to use violence if it ever becomes necessary.

So, let them be kids. If they don't have toy guns, they will use their fingers or a stick of some kind. Don't try to resist who they want to be, but nurture the sensitive side of them that hates to hurt people.

[Amer]

You know you've hit a cord there Vaj, it's because I see my son as being such a sensitive child, never wanting to hurt a fly that it has been hard for me to see this new development of "pow pow gotcha !"

Don't try to resist who they want to be, but nurture the sensitive side of them that hates to hurt people.

Thanks for this- I need to give him room