Toddlers and preschoolers sometimes just keep asking you endless questions. All day long, they demand your attention with ‘Why…?’
‘Why is there so much noise?’
‘A big car is coming.’
‘Why is it big?’
‘It’s a garbage truck.’
‘Why is it called a garbage truck?’
‘Because it’s coming to pick up our garbage.’
’Why does it pick up our garbage?’
‘Because we can’t live surrounded by garbage.’
‘Why does he pick it up then?’
‘To take it away.’
‘Why take it away?’
‘To the landfill.’
‘Why to the landfill?’
‘Because that’s where they take our garbage.’
‘What is a landfill?’ (Smarter kid, with a variation on why!)
‘A large piece of land with large piles of stinking garbage on it.’
‘Why stinking?’
‘Because garbage just stinks.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s old junk that’s rotting.’
‘Why?’
‘For God’s sake, will you just stop with that endless why!’
‘Why?’
Anyway, you probably recognize it…
Now, if you find yourself getting immensely annoyed by it again, remember that what the child is doing is very useful for her future. After all, we adults are also constantly interested in the reasons why someone does what they do, and why we ourselves do what we do. In conversations, we often ask for reasons, and online we search for reasons. We want reasons, we want causes and connections, to create order in the chaos of life and to find stability in it.
And those little ones? They are already practicing that!