Much-needed laugh
Aug. 6th, 2008 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miekecI love reading Dooce. She is an awesome (and shockingly direct) writer. If you haven't read or heard of her before, she is an ex-mormon, living in Utah (after being fired from her job because she was blogging about her job) and being her own non-mormon self, to the appalled-ment[?] of her parents.
Anyway, for anybody who ever had to endure or had to deal with a 4-5 yr old asking "why":
Dear Leta,
A couple of days ago you turned fifty-four months old. I'm sure that if you were sitting here right now and I told you this you'd ask me why. And I'd say because when you add up all the months you've been alive it totals fifty-four. And then you'd go, why? And I'd say, because that's how math works. And you'd go, but why? And then I'd walk over to the silverware drawer, grab a kebab skewer and shove it through my frontal lobe. Some days there aren't enough sharp objects in the house to help me cope with the multitude of your whys, maybe because there is no answer that will satisfy you, even when that answer is read to you directly from a science textbook. I'm beginning to feel like you're not asking because you genuinely care about the answer but because you're secretly hoping that if you ask it enough times the answer to why? will be "you can have this candy if you will just shut up."
Quoted from here
Note: Surprisingly enough, Karin has not (yet?) gone through this stage. Alex, however, did. I remember a drive from Boston to NJ (6+ hrs) where we literally had to tell him that there was a limit of one (1!) question per minute.
Anyway, for anybody who ever had to endure or had to deal with a 4-5 yr old asking "why":
Dear Leta,
A couple of days ago you turned fifty-four months old. I'm sure that if you were sitting here right now and I told you this you'd ask me why. And I'd say because when you add up all the months you've been alive it totals fifty-four. And then you'd go, why? And I'd say, because that's how math works. And you'd go, but why? And then I'd walk over to the silverware drawer, grab a kebab skewer and shove it through my frontal lobe. Some days there aren't enough sharp objects in the house to help me cope with the multitude of your whys, maybe because there is no answer that will satisfy you, even when that answer is read to you directly from a science textbook. I'm beginning to feel like you're not asking because you genuinely care about the answer but because you're secretly hoping that if you ask it enough times the answer to why? will be "you can have this candy if you will just shut up."
Quoted from here
Note: Surprisingly enough, Karin has not (yet?) gone through this stage. Alex, however, did. I remember a drive from Boston to NJ (6+ hrs) where we literally had to tell him that there was a limit of one (1!) question per minute.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-06 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-07 11:58 pm (UTC)I resolved the issue by turning it around to, "Well, why do you think?" This engaged *her* in the conversation, made her think, and come up with a creative answer. We would discuss it on an intellectual level (well, intellectual for a 4 year old) and there would be no further questions. If she didn't actually care, she wouldn't answer and the string of questions would end there.
There are so many other things that make me want to conduct a self-lobotomy, but not my Luba. Not today, anyways...