Why Your Child Asks Why

A child's never-ending ‘whys’ aren't meant to exasperate parents, scientists say.

A child's never-ending ‘whys’ aren't meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others, finds a two-part study of children aged two to five. It also suggests they are more active about their knowledge gathering than previously thought. When explanations came their way, the little ones probed further. Past research on child development had suggested that young children were only aware of temporal relationships between two events and couldn’t differentiate cause from effect until about seven or eight years of age. Recent work suggests that as early as age three, children get causality. To figure out kids’ responses to different questions, scientists examined transcripts from everyday conversations of six kids, aged two to four, who were speaking with parents, siblings and visitors at home. Overall, there were more than 3,100 causal ‘how and why questions’—such as, ‘Why is my tummy so big, mom?’, ‘Why not keep a light on?’ and ‘How can snakes hear if they don't have ears?’ Results also showed kids were more than twice as likely to re-ask their question after a non-explanation.