I answer about 1500 of them a day.  Out of those, around 1000 require me to make a decision of some mundane type–”Mom, can I have a popsicle? Mom, can I, can I, can I”.  It can be really exhausting.  However, the other questions–the ones that don’t require a decision but instead an explination–are one of my favorite parts of parenting because when your kid asks you about something in the world, you can answer however you want! Or as Homer says “Kids are great, you can teach them to hate the things you hate”. My answers are always based in science, always. I think about everything in a critical, scientific way–there are no exceptions, no subject exempt from this. 

My daughter’s questions range from the amusing:

-Do spiders have families?

-Can frogs drive?

-Why are trees green? (Never ask someone trained in biogeochemistry this question, the answer is 10 minutes long)

-Why is a there a pyramid on the one dollar bill?

To the heavily extistential, theological or epistemological :

-Is there a hell? (she saw it on the Simpsons episode where Homer steals cable)

-What does our cat think about?

-What happens after you die?

-When will I die?

-Where did we come from? (this required a clarification I wasn’t sure if she was asking where babies came from or people in general–it was the latter.  Another 10 minute explination).

When you take nothing for granted in the world, you come up with some really interesting questions.  What freaks me out sometimes however, is thinking about how other people might answer their kid’s questions–if they say “don’t ask”, “who cares”, or worse “that’s a stupid question”.  There is no such thing if you are forming your framework about reality.

Many of the questions my daughter asks are at heart, questions about science, most of which I can answer or explain correctly, but a few (like, why don’t we name black holes?) I have to look up.   You don’t need graduate training in science to raise a toddler but considering the questions she asks, it sure helps.