Just Curious If Other Kids Ask These Questions?

My 3 year old daughter is actually the same way! She is always asking questions about something about everything. I try to be honest with her answers, in a way she can understand. I think it is just her way of discovering the world around her.

It's the age for it. I just answer and keep talking until my son gets bored with the topic. He is 5 and knows all kinds of random things so I guess he was paying attention some of the time. Asking "What do you think?" is good in some situations too.

You answered your own question by providing your little girl's age! LOL!

Four is the age where EVERYTHING is questioned. It's when you hear a child endlessly asking "why?" after every answer you give until you feel like you might just go insane!
It's also what I call "the adolescence of childhood", as a child is leaving babyhood behind forever and moving into a more capable older child--and that can lead to a lot of issues for the child going through all these changes. Each one of my daughters exhibited behaviors that were absolutely maddening at this age--emotional outbursts, getting angry at the drop of a hat, sassing, etc--that turned out to be EXACTLY how they handled difficulties once they reached their early teens. So it's a good time to notice your little one's personality---and figure out what tends to work in tense situations to de-escalate and make things ok again--as preparation for when she's 14 instead (I know that's hard to visualize now, but it WILL happen!) and she's too big to just put on time out or carry to the car with you, etc.

For now, though, just know that incessant curiousity is EXACTLY right for a 4 year old, and means her brain is developing normally.
Congratulations, mom!

My daughter is 3.5 and asks questions non-stop. Most of the time it's a good thing but sometimes, especially when it's the same stuff over and over, it drives me nuts. Her big things right now are:

"What time is it?" Granted, she cannot tell time yet, or grasp the concept, but she still has to ask. She knows the numbers on the clock mean something and I think she's trying to understand it as best she can. I've been answering with, "Well, what does the clock say?" So she has to go over and see what numbers are on the clock now. But she will still ask me "What time is it?" 100 times a day, rather than just deciding to look at the clock right off the bat.

"What does [this color] and [this color] make?" This is also 100 times a day. Because she has learned in preschool that some colors can be combined to make other colors, but not that EVERY color can be combined to make ALL NEW COLORS. So I have to listen to her ask, "What does blue and brown make?" "What does green and red make?" "What does purple and orange and yellow and black and white make?" If she happens to ask, for example, what blue and yellow make, I will ask her back, "Can you remember? You tell me." because I know that SHE knows. And everything else, "If you mix them up, you will just get brown/black." Sometimes she will ask me, "What makes yellow?" And I have to tell her that yellow is just yellow. It might seem cute, but it's the often the exact same questions constantly, every day. Sometimes I just have to cut her off: "Mommy's done answering those questions for now. That's enough."

And sometimes it's "Why..." about every little thing too. "Why are you going out that door?" "Why are you taking the dogs outside?" "Why are you going upstairs?"

She wants to know "what comes next"..."What comes after breakfast?" You have gym class later. "What comes after gym class?" We'll get McDonald's for lunch. "What comes after lunch?" Nap time. "What comes after my nap?" Play time. "What comes after play time?" Dinner. "What comes after dinner?" You get a bath. "What comes after my bath?" Bed time! "What comes after bed time?" AARRGGHHH! Mommy has a gin and tonic, how about that?

Oh, almost forgot..."Are we going to a fun place today?" Every day she wants to know about going to a "fun place". We don't go anywhere special THAT much but she always wants to, every day, all the time. She does have preschool 2 days a week, and gym class once a week, and we try to get together for a play date once a week if we can but not always.

I almost start feeling like I can't wait for her to start school full-time - not just to have a bit more of a break, but also it seems like she's only happy when she's going full-tilt and has something to keep her occupied every moment.
I love that she is so curious about everything and I know it will serve her well, but boy it's draining too! She's wearing me out!

Kids will always ask questions about the world around them. Just today I was cleaning out the aquarium and I gave my daughter the job of holding the end of the siphon tube in the bucket so the water didn't splash all over. As she watched the water swirling around she asked, oh... a million questions.

1. Why is the water brown?
2. Why does it come down the tube?
3. Why is the color changing?
4. What is that sound?
5. Why do we have to take the water out?
6. Why is your butt in my way?
7. Why did we put the towel down first?
8. What is that stuff you're squirting in?
9. WHERE ARE THE FISH!?!
10. Why are you moving the plants?
11. Why did the water stop coming out of the tube?
12. Why did the rock get stuck in the tube?

...

After about twenty minutes I was ready to fire her and take over the job of holding the tube myself, but I figure as long as she doesn't repeat the same question twice I'd keep on answering them.

I have a 4 year old and I never know when the great interrogation will begin. I swear, he should become an attorney one day!

His big thing lately? Cemetaries. What's that? Who is in there? What's under the ground? What are headstones? Do people go there for their final resting place? Is your mom in there? (No, she's in Ohio) Why is your mom in a cemetary in Ohio? (Because she got really, really sick a while ago and the doctors couldn't make her better) And on and on and on...

His other biggie right now is asking about the car. What's that round thing? (Uh, which one?) The one with the numbers? And then he'll go on to point out every button or feature and want to know about it.

And finally, he gets on kicks where he will see something outside and want me to spell it. Mommy, spell tree. Spell stoplight. Spell pharmacy. Spell grocery store. Spell Lady Gaga. Spell Boers and Burnstine. Spell Eric and Kathy.

I love him to death but he needs a mute button some time!

It's normal here. I used to long for a kid who would push a truck along and say "vroom-vroom"! But I love his curiosity.
I've had:
1. Does God forgive Hitler?
2. What's the level after Heaven?
3. If I ever see Hitler, can I flip him the finger?
4. Why is there war? Why can't everyone be NICE and just get along?
....and So many more!

yup, sounds like normal healthy curiosity to me. One of my two 9YO daughters is especially chatty and curious and early on I learned a sanity-saving response was "What do *you* think?" (often times I think she just wanted to talk, so putting the question back to her gave her something to talk about and gave me a chance to give my brain a rest from her questions ;-)).

Another useful phrase is "let's look it up next time we're at the library" (yes, I know you can get instant answers off the internet, but I'm still sorta old school in believing that looking stuff up in regular books is a useful skill and something to encourage in children - also it means that I have deferred answering the question until our next trip to the library!)

And hang in there - pretty soon your daughter will be able to pepper those questions to her teachers at school so you won't have to deal with them all yourself (my perpetual-question machine doesn't exhaust me quite so much now that she's absorbing so much more info at school)

Be forewarned, though, that once your daughter starts looking up answers on her own, if she's anything like my factoid-junkie 9YO, you'll soon be hearing a lot of "Mom, did you know that......." ;-) (BTW my stock answer for *that* situation is usually "No, not until you just told me!")

I think it's normal. It is normal for us anyways...

I have VERY inquisitive kids...they ask about EVERYTHING!

Most recently, my 5 yr old was having a very in-depth conversation with his Daddy about 'string theory'...

My husband's side of the family are very much 'intellectuals' and our dinner time conversations are WAY over the heads of, what I would think is, 'normal' kid conversation but it is our 'normal'.

~I think it is healthy and good...answer her as honestly as you can and if need be, don't be afraid to do what I do when I do not have the answer...I say lets 'look it up' or 'let's go ask daddy' :)

My daughter, who is now 20 years old, asked me to explain refraction to her when she was that age. That was a WAY intelligent question for a child so young. I knew she was going to excel at something in that field. She is a botany major right now. My boys never asked anything like that. It was always, "When do we eat?" LMAO.... Just get her books to feed her curiosity.

My daughter is very music oriented. We've been to many concerts and I listen to many stations on the radio. She asks what every song it, who sings it, what the band's name is and what is the song about.

As tedious as it can be - just remember curiosity is a great trait and should be encouraged.

When my son was 3 and 4, he was totally infatuated with fire trucks and dinosaurs. He could tell a pumper truck from a ladder truck and was happy to explain to everyone what out riggers were and what they are used for.
We had a very good fire fighting DVD he'd love to watch and they covered fire trucks, fire boats, helicopters dumping water on fires and a real cool super scooper plane they use for remote forest fires in Canada.
We also read all the "How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon, Say Goodnight", etc and I had to read all the dinosaur names over and over till he could read them too.
If he has an interest to learn about something, we go out of our way so he can learn all about it. It's working well right up through middle school.

My 4 year old daughter hasn't asked those same exact questions, but she has asked some pretty insightful questions. Sometimes I think....what the heck made her think of that? It's so fascinating when they come up with these questions. I would share some of her questions if I could remember them, but it's been one of those days today :-)

My daughter, 5, asks all the time what songs are about or why they would say something in a song. It makes me really watch what songs I listen to. Even country songs are not always family friendly. :)

Oh my...we have constant questions here with our almost 4 year old daughter. This evening she wanted to know about internal combustion engines.

Curiosity is good and shows intelligence! She is thinking! They do focus on some odd things that we might not, but their minds work differently and they have the time that we don't to notice a lot of things that we wouldn't. That said, we got to a point with one of my kids where I gave him five question cards for an hour, and once he used them up, that was it.

My daughter asks lots of questions, but no one beats my son. He has gotten better as he's gotten older (he is six, and the questions aren't quite so constant), but sometimes he gets on a roll and he doesn't stop. I love it when my kids ask questions about the world...it's just that sometimes it isn't timed very well. The other day we were watching a movie at home, and he kept asking me questions like "Why did he say that? Why did she make that face?" Why is she mad? Why did he do that?" on and on and on. Normally I love answering their questions, but not when I'm trying to watch a movie! If only there was a mute button for the kids.... :-)

Keep feeding the curiosity. Answer questions as truthfully as you can. Help her find info in books at the Library, on the computer. Keep reading to her. My daughter was reading simple books in kindergarten. Now 8yrs old in second grade, she is reading 3rd to 5th grade level books, looks up words in the dictionary just for fun, & still asking questions about everything she sees & hears. Also memorizes songs & dialog from movies & TV shows she see.
Keep her excited about learning. She (or children like our daughters) could be the next president. LOL.