It is sometimes just too tiring and frustrating to continue answering the never-ending “why” questions. And sometimes, we just don’t know the answers to all those questions! Fortunately, parents can use certain strategies to have more effective dialogues with gifted children when the kids bombard them with questions.
Don’t Brush Aside Questions
Although it may be difficult to answer all the questions a gifted child might have, we really don’t want to stifle their curiosity by telling them to stop asking so many questions. We want to encourage our children’s curiosity, but how do we do that without having our brains turn into mental mush at the end of a long day? Unfortunately, a change in attitude won’t make the questions easier to answer or make parents less tired at the end of the day.
Strategies
Postpone answering a question until a more convenient time. Although children may want an immediate answer, you don’t always have to supply one. You can acknowledge the question and defer answering it until later. For example, when little Jenny asks why she had to eat her green beans, mom can say, “I understand that you don’t like green beans, but I don’t want to debate their value during dinner. We can talk about it later.” Of course, mom needs to follow through and discuss the virtues of green beans with Jenny later. Sometimes, parents get exhausted trying to come up with the answers to all the questions a child has, particularly when they aren’t experts in the area of questioning. For example, when little Jenny asks why vitamins are good for her, mom can answer, “That’s a great question. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe we can look up the answer together.” Of course, mom now has the responsibility of looking up the information with Jenny.
How to Follow Through
Gifted children have excellent memories, which means they are not likely to forget that mom or dad said they’d discuss a question later or look up an answer. If you use these strategies, be sure you are prepared to follow through. That means that if you have postponed answering, you are ready to have a discussion later. Or if you said you would look up information with your child, be ready to do that as well. However, it’s probably a good idea to have some general guidelines for how you will deal with the questions later. Otherwise, you could end up bombarded again with questions when you are too tired or busy to answer them. For example, you can set aside a certain time of the day for discussions. It could be after dinner. In fact, it could be when the dinner dishes are being washed and the kitchen is being cleaned up. If you have more than one child, the one with the unanswered question is the one who helps with the clean-up. An added advantage to this technique is that children may see clean-up time as a time to share with their parents rather than tedious chore time. Questions that you couldn’t answer because you didn’t know the answer need to be handled differently. After all, it wasn’t just time or fatigue that was a problem. It was a lack of knowledge. Having to look up information every day can easily add to the fatigue and will certainly take up time.
A Word From Verywell
It may seem as though these strategies will take a great deal of time. However, chances are good that you may not have to have all those discussions or find answers to all those questions. A child may not really be interested enough to pursue the information further, but by postponing rather than refusing to answer questions, you are encouraging rather than stifling your child’s curiosity. You also end up with a long list of potential subjects to explore with your child whenever time permits.
