Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I've been thinking about children who are continually asking why? Why? Why? Why? And it seems it can get a little grating, it can be a little cute, it can be anything in between, but it particularly comes at certain ages. And those ages are the ages of changes, of thresholds.
When a child is standing kind of at a developmental doorway, and they're leaving one sort of life behind. And they're looking out at the horizon of a whole new landscape. And they've kind of got one little foot out and one foot back.
And the question of why, in one form or another, wanting to know how things work. Why is that? Why do you say that? Those questions are often like little advanced writers. They're advanced in the sense that they're going out, they're checking out the landscape.
And the why, even though it can get a bit insistent, or a lot insistent, is often about them probing. They're wanting to know, is the ground safe there? I need to explore this. The questions, you'll notice the questions are often about stuff that they don't quite get, they don't quite understand, they want to understand it.
And it's almost like a cognitive going into my thinking, I need to check this out, I need to think about this. And the beauty of this is that in the various stages when kids are doing this, they are to varying degrees as they get older, using that frontal lobe, using that, they want to get a little bit of a big picture of what the future holds. Only they can't really do it for themselves, because that frontal cortex, until well into the teen years, and beyond into the early 20s, is not fully formed.
And so they, kids do it by checking it out more subjectively, rather than objectively. Objectively would be, that's what we do as adults on a good day, where we can get a bit of an overview, we think about it, we think about, okay, if I do that, that would happen. All right, so we're going to make that change, we're going to big stuff, like look for a new house, and what neighborhood, what do we need? And we get this, everything from big stuff to little stuff, just planning the day.
All right, so I've got the backpacks packed, but I need to put an extra snack bar in because when I pick them up from school, we're not going to be coming home. And so whatever it is we're doing, we can do that. But for well, usually, but children, not so much.
And so they do it through probing us, they do it via us. And I don't know if you get this sometimes. But sometimes the why is almost unnecessary, or just is unnecessary.
It's more that they're wanting to check in with us. And the why is almost like, are you there? Are you there? Are you there? Because I'm about to move on, I'm about to take a big step forward. And I need to know you're there.
So the response to like, sort of six and a half to eight, eight years old is a really classic example of the why, why, why age. Other times kids go through it around three and four. And different children will go through different times.
Teenagers will do it, but they will, it's not so much why and how things work. It comes at us a little bit more personally, why do you say that? Why are you thinking that? Why should I? Why? Right? So the why changes as children grow up. But one of the things that they're really looking for, I think is confirmation that they're going to be okay, that we're going to be present, that we're accompanying them, that we're with them.
And so one of the responses to continual whys has, we can answer the question, okay, that's fine. But then we can answer it again, and then again, and again, because there's being asked over and over in one form or another. That's sort of okay-ish, but it wears a bit thin.
One response to it, and perhaps a more, a response that comes from a deeper developmental space, is just to reach out and just bring a child in metaphorically or physically, put your arm around their shoulder, bring them in, settle them on down, tell them a little story about when their grandpa was little, or when they were little babies, or just bring them into that story world, into that connected world. Into, bring them into baking some muffins, bring them into sitting down reading a book, having them sit at the counter and just chat with you as you're making supper. But bring them in, because that's really what they're asking.
Are you there? Rather than getting into a big, technical, abstract, intellectual conversation about why, you know, that why the the colour of the pond changes, and getting into a big conversation about why a certain colour is a certain colour, and, you know, colour theory, and physics, and you could go there a little bit, but that's kind of like, it's, it's, and it is answering part of the question, and I get it. But a bigger part of the question is, dad, mom, guardian, grandma, grandpa, are you there? And reaching out like that, and bringing a child closer when the why, why, why's come up, is actually answering what it is truly that they're, they're asking. Hmm.
Okay. Always, as always, hope that was helpful. Bye-bye for now.
