What you’ll discover is that there is often a very weird something behind the question. It is often as important to understand what that thing is as it is to answer the questions. The problem is that you can’t directly ask that lest they shut down.
The problem is that a question like, “how can the floor” might be related in the kiddos mind to something as seemingly unrelated as “why did we eat hamburgers last week?” and if you go down the wrong path, suddenly your kid has a link between hamburgers and orbital motion that doesn’t necessarily link up in any real logical way.
My approach is not to just answer questions, but to help them think through their questions and how they might answer them. No clue if that works.
What you’ll discover is that there is often a very weird something behind the question. It is often as important to understand what that thing is as it is to answer the questions. The problem is that you can’t directly ask that lest they shut down.
The problem is that a question like, “how can the floor” might be related in the kiddos mind to something as seemingly unrelated as “why did we eat hamburgers last week?” and if you go down the wrong path, suddenly your kid has a link between hamburgers and orbital motion that doesn’t necessarily link up in any real logical way.
My approach is not to just answer questions, but to help them think through their questions and how they might answer them. No clue if that works.