How to Respond When a Child Asks "Why?"
and why Aristotle is relevant to three-year-olds
(This post is longer than usual, which means that email might cut it off. If that happens, you can find the entire piece linked on the homepage.)
If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes with a child over the age of two, you’ve probably been asked the most existential question of all: “why?”
Why is that cat fluffy?
Why is your name Susie?
Why do I need to go to bed?
Children are wonderful natural philosophers. They crave knowledge, and they crave understanding, even if they can’t yet fully articulate that thirst. (They’re also wonderful little procrastinators when the need arises!)
Recently I told my friend about how our goddaughter couldn’t stop laughing at a video of some local sheep. It’s a dull video by almost any standard: the sheep merely look at the camera whilst munching grass, “but,” I said, “she laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen in her life!”
“Well,” replied my friend, “maybe it is the funniest thing she’s ever seen in her life.”
(Given that she’s only two and doesn’t watch television, this is probably pretty accurate.)
Children naturally find the world fascinating – entertaining, even. They want to soak up the joys of creation. With Mary Oliver, the small child can say, “my work is loving the world/…let me keep my mind on what matters,/ which is my work,/ which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”1
How can we help them, especially when we ourselves don’t know the answers to their questions?
The temptation in the “information age” is to simply google (or perhaps now, chatGBT) an answer to anything a child might ask. And certainly an older child who wants to understand aerospace engineering might benefit from an in-depth video on the topic; there’s nothing wrong with learning from experts who aren’t local! I’m not suggesting that we never turn to the internet as a means of finding helpful information. But maybe it shouldn’t be our first port of call, especially when spending time with the younger crowd.
Over the years, I’ve picked up some tips for interacting with younger children who are asking lots of questions, and I’d like to share them here.2
“Why?” = “Tell Me More”
Sometimes the child who asks “why?” is actually saying, “please tell me more.” The trouble is that she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, but she does have a sense that there’s more to be said. So when she has asked “why does that cat have a tail?” and you’ve said, “well, cat’s tails help them balance,” and she says “why?” again, and you’ve answered several more times, concluding with the ultimate conversation-ender, “because that’s how God designed them,” you might just have missed an opportunity to talk about cats in general.
If your first answer to “why?” is met with another “why?”, try launching into a wide-ranging conversation about the topic:
“I think cats are so interesting. They don’t just walk on two feet. How many feet do they walk on? Do you know what’s underneath their feet? And besides having four feet with paws, they have tails and whiskers. People don’t have tails, or long whiskers. Why do you think that is? What can cats do that people can’t do? Cats are very good at jumping up on very high things, and they can squeeze through very tiny spaces. Their tails help them jump safely, and their whiskers help them know just how small a space they can fit through….”
Depending on how much you know about the subject at hand, the conversation might be more or less wide-ranging, but don’t be afraid to share your personal experience. Remember, the small child is still learning that other people have different ways of moving through the world. Maybe you always wanted a cat as a child, or enjoyed a story about a particular fictional cat, or actually prefer dogs.
Young children who are asking “why?” often want to absorb everything there is to know about the world. You don’t need to give them all the “answers” immediately. Usually they’ll be delighted to learn something new, and they’ll circle back to the topic many times over the course of their lives. If we believe that education is life, and not just school, we can see ourselves as successful life-long learners, rather than failures for not knowing all the answers right away – and we can pass this on to children by setting the example.3
“Why?” = “I Want to Tell You What I Think”
Sometimes, a child might ask you “why?” because he wants to tell you what he thinks about something. In this case, “why?” acts as kind of an opening gambit for conversation, an excuse to tell you what he’s been thinking about the topic.
A small child who is a “thinker” will rarely just start telling you things without you asking. (Of course if he does, it’s inevitably when you find yourself juggling several tasks and probably a needy baby as well!) But most adults are not mind readers and do not know what to ask about, or when. To make up for this deficiency, a small child might ask you “why is that tree over there?” because he wants to tell you what he’s been thinking about the tree. He has learned that a question from an adult can be a reason to talk, and so he’s trying to imitate this in his own way.
This question doubles as a ‘bid’ for attention and relationship-building, so named by marriage expert John Gottman. In his research on relationship longevity, Gottman noticed that successful couples are constantly making requests to connect. These ‘bids’ for attention are often small: “oh, wow, look at that cardinal outside our window!” or, “did that colleague ever reply to your request for a meeting last week?” In a strong relationship, each party will respond to the bid of the other, rather than ignoring it or rejecting it.
Children are constantly making ‘bids’ for our attention – so many and so often that it can feel overwhelming to an adult! Sometimes the ‘why’ question from a child can be annoying, especially if he doesn’t actually seem to want the answer you give. But approaching a child’s genuine ‘why’ question as in invitation to get to know the child better – because he really wants to tell you what he thinks – can make it easier to sit through the sometimes long and seemingly random train of thought he wants to share.
A Repeated Question = “I’m Asking Something You’re Not Understanding”
Sometimes a child will ask what seems to be a straightforward question: “where are they from?” and you will answer it in a straightforward manner: “they’re from Italy,” – only to have the child say, “no! Where are they from?” as though you have entirely misunderstood the question. Because you have!
If a child asks you a question repeatedly, she isn’t satisfied with your answer because she’s actually asking you something else.
This happened to me recently when our friends were visiting. The four-year-old saw our remembrance cards: one for my grandmother, one for our daughter, and one for a friend’s wife who died on the same day as our daughter. “Who is that?” the four-year-old queried, pointing to the pictures. “That’s my grandma,” I said, “and our baby, and Rachel, who died on the same day.” She nodded. One minute later, she pointed to the cards and said, “who is that?” I repeated my answers, only for her to nod and ask a third time, “but who is that?”
At that point, I realized that my answers were unsatisfactory, and she wanted to know something else. I guessed that she might be wondering about the relationship between the people portrayed on the cards: because they were displayed together, did that mean they were all related? I started talking about each of them and the families they belonged to, and after that, she didn’t ask again.
If you aren’t sure what a child is really asking, you might try using the first strategy of just talking about the thing in general, in hopes that you will eventually land on the topic underlying the question.
In this case, turning to our old friend, the ancient philosopher Aristotle can help. In defining a thing, Aristotle offers four “causes” – what makes a thing what it is, rather than being something else. These elements of a definition are:
the material cause (What kind of ‘stuff’ is it made of?)
the formal cause (What ‘form’ does it take?);
the efficient cause (Who started it? Where did it originate?)
the final cause (What is the purpose / goal/ reason for existing?)
If a child were to ask a repeated question about a table, for example, you might explain that it is made of wood (which comes from trees), that it has four legs and a flat top (unlike a chair which also has four legs and a flat top, but additionally, a back to lean against); that a carpenter cut the pieces and put them together with nails and glue; and that having a table gives us a place to eat dinner together.
Usually, when you’ve explained that much, the child will either be satisfied, or will have enough new vocabulary to reformulate the question. Sometimes, they will repeat a certain part of what you’ve said (“this table came from a tree!”) either because it was the answer they wanted, or because it’s a new concept they want to talk more about. They might be picturing the table being pulled wholesale from the tree, for example, in which case you might get out some picture books to help explain the process.
Let Them Learn How to Learn (from Other People)
Sometimes, though, we really don’t have all the answers to any question, nor should we feel obliged to. Part of the delight in being a life-long learner is learning to love learning! As children grow, it’s important to introduce them to many sources of knowledge, whether that takes the shape of books at home, a trip to the library, or (eventually) careful and strategic use of the internet. But in the information age, we often lose sight of a historically important source of knowledge: other people. Before we could push a button for an answer, we relied on other people to help us learn. Introducing children to this concept from an early age is a gift to them, and to the community.
If your neighbour has a blooming flower garden and your child asks you a question about daffodils, you might suggest that you both approach your neighbour with the question. If your child wants to know about boats, and your uncle is a retired naval officer, you might suggest that you give him a call.
This works particularly well for children from the ages of 7+, but even small children can be introduced to this idea with a simple question: “I’m not sure about what you asked – who do you think might be able to help us?” This serves to aide a child in realizing that you are not omniscient, that it’s ok not to know things, and that it’s good to ask for help.
Wonder-Questions Invite Contemplation
Some questions, however, just don’t have easy answers, and it’s no use pretending that they do. As adults, we should feel free to wonder aloud about the things we do not know. We don’t have to pretend to have the answer to everything.
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-based way of introducing children to the mysteries of the faith and a deeper relationship with God, encourages its catechists to use ‘wonder-questions’ after reading a passage of scripture.
After the parable of the Good Shepherd, for example, a catechist might say, “I wonder who is happier? The sheep who is found, or the shepherd who has his sheep back, close to him again?” Wonder-questions invite the child into contemplation. He is encouraged to ponder, to sit with the mystery, rather than to memorize or learn ‘facts’ about it.
One of the core texts for catechists, The Good Shepherd and the Child: A Joyful Journey, notes, “…as we reflect on the text, our few essential, open-ended wonder-questions are simply to nudge their ongoing digging and searching for further meaning. Covering too many bases, trying to draw out from the children too many realizations about the text tends to close the door rather than invite them to the continued search.”4
Over time, through many opportunities of encounter, wonder, and silence, the child moves deeper into the mystery of God. This leads to a different, more interior sort of knowledge. “There are two ways of knowing things: we may know and remember many things because of the effort we made to learn them such as in passing examinations. There are other things we know, yet we may neither be aware of nor remember where they came from; they are in us, a part of us.”5
Contemplation and wonder come naturally to the small child who is delighted with the world around him and would naturally spend hours studying the ant colony, were it not for the distractions of technology or even just the hurried pace of life. We’ve all been on a walk with a toddler who will spend an excruciating amount of time investigating the glories of a stick. The challenge for us adults is really to make space for that kind of wonder in ourselves!
And while wonder-questions are particularly apt in questions of faith, they can also be used in our encounters with other people. “I wonder why that man was so grumpy?” invites a child into a posture of empathy and maybe even compassion. Perhaps we might recall a day when we were grumpy, and the circumstances that led to it – and we might invite the child to do the same. Over time, this encourages a child to foster a habitual disposition towards other people that begins from empathy rather than selfishness (a way of being that the world could certainly use a little more of.)
Children’s questions can range from delightful to maddening, but our responses can be equally delightful or maddening to them!
Do you have memories of adults who took your questions seriously in childhood? Or adults who were keen to learn alongside you? Did you have anyone who fostered a spirit of wonder in your young soul? How can we become these adults for the next generation of children?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences: please share them below!
If you like thinking about education and life, here are a few more posts you might enjoy:
Education is a Life: Or, Sneaky Ways to Get Your Kids Learning
Slow Stories & Navigating Life: Can watching the clouds actually help?
“Should We Homeschool?: Some Thoughts on Discerning Home Education
Continue Your Education in Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: Free Resources to Help
Messenger by Mary Oliver
Sadly I can’t cite my sources directly, as these have been gleaned over the years through reading and conversation, but most are not original thoughts. I’m grateful to friends and writers who have shared them over the years.
I myself only learned about the purpose of cats whiskers in recent years.
Cavaletti, Sofia, et al. The Good Shepherd and the Child: A Joyful Journey. 46.
Ibid., 47.
I like the idea of "wonder questions". It seems to me a gentle way to invite a child to share their thoughts. Lots of food for thought in this essay; I enjoyed reading it.