I remember waiting excitedly for the day my son would talk. I hated not knowing what bothered him or why he was crying. However, now that he does talk, I have my times where I wish he was the quiet little boy who couldn’t speak. He started talking and hasn’t stopped since.
If you’re like me and you’re a parent to an inquisitive toddler you can probably relate to how tiring it is listing to endless questions.
- “Why do you have hair in your nose?”
- “Do they have macaroni and cheese in Heaven?”
- “Why is our car red?”
- “Why do we walk?”
- “Mom, Why are skunks stinky?”
- “Why do we need to brush our teeth?”
- “What do pigs drink?”
On and on the questions go. One after another until your head hurts and you want to scream, “be quiet, give me a break! Who cares, go figure it out yourself.” Many times the questions my toddlers ask are really good, and I don’t want to ignore them, but how do you give your kids the right answer? Because honestly, a lot of the time I have no clue why something works the way it does.
How Do We Deal With The Endless Questions?
I started implementing a simple phrase in these situations where I have no idea what to say back. I simply say, “let’s learn together”. Our learning together could be getting online and googling it together. A few times its been simply asking a friend who drives a semi about the truck my son is interested in.
Read: 3 Proven Phrases to Prevent Mealtime Battles
The phrase, let’s learn together” gets my toddler giddy with excitement.
Instead of shrugging it off and saying, I don’t know. I use this phrase. My toddler loves it. He’s usually almost shaking with excitement as we run to the computer to google his questions. I think he likes being heard and knows that he’ll get an answer. This works because it takes the pressure off of me to know all the answers.
An added bonus to this phrase is that it also lets us focus on finding the answer to one question for a while. This gives me a break from listening to the endless questions that he’s normally asking. I’ve found it really helpful.
Practice Patience
Finally, one of the best things you can do as a parent is to learn to practice patience. Your child might be railing you with questions or doing a behavior that you find particularly annoying. In moments like these, one of the hardest things to do is to be patient with your child.
Today I told my daughter very unkindly to keep her hands off the pile of laundry. She was about ready to knock it over a mountain of clothes that I had just folded and I didn’t want to have to refold and sort them. I told her to stop, but I was really loud and mean when I did it. Then I glanced up, saw her face fall and she looked like she was about to cry. I immediately apologized to her and told her that I was sorry I hadn’t been nicer to her.
I often get sucked into the trap of not being patient with my kids. Whether it’s a toddler asking endless questions, potty training your toddler or a one-year-old’s curiosity about folding laundry, as a mom, it’s sometimes hard to be patient.
In those moments where patience is hard, I keep daily reminding myself how precious my children are. I daily remind myself that my kids are a reward from God, even when I’m tired of their messes or endless questions.
Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. – Psalm 127:3 (NLT)
This game has been awesome for us. It’s not only good for learning, but it gets some of that pent up energy out! When the weather is nice, I take my kids outside and I draw a road of a bunch of “N”‘s or whatever letter I want my preschooler to practice. I call the line of letters a road. Then I get crazy with the letter road.
My preschooler loves playing with tractors, so this game is perfect for him. I found a deck of flash cards at the dollar store that we use with this. I place a flash card out on the table and ask him what number is on the card. He will tell me and then I have him get that many pieces of corn and put it into his tractor’s wagon.