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Parenting 102: When Children Ask Why?
I have two kids aged 4 and 7, and my parenting journey has been fraught with as much successes as failures. Some of those failures have sedimented into layers of regrets over the years, but I continue to look on the bright side of my many successes as each day presents its challenges. One of those challenges is answering the question. Why?
For parents of toddlers reading this, you are familiar with this endless barrage of whys that seeks to satisfy the curiosity of a child learning to make sense of the world.
His response was, “why?” to which I replied, “How many kids do you see walking around with all that stuff hanging around them?” To which he answered, “But I am not other kids.”
My 7 year old is artistic. Every day he aspires to express himself in more novel and often bizzare ways. At some point he started speaking ‘dog’ — a grating mixture of barking and purring sounds that annoy my sensibilities and makes me shout STOP when his ‘dog’ language is almost doing my head in. My 4 year old likes to wear his clothes inside out on days he calls, inside out days and on some of those days, when we have to go to the mall or visit a family friend, we get into arguments on the appropriateness of wearing his clothes inside out, outside the home. Being a dad that encourages logical arguments and debates to the limit of what I consider…
