At almost four, he still doesn't understand the question 'why'. He now has an answer for when I ask him what he's thinking about, but since it's usually 'planets', which he's fixated on, I'm not sure he understands the question.
The "Why" question would send my son into a meltdown for years. It had a 50/50 chance of sending him into a meltdown when he was eight. It was, of all the questions we could ask, the one he loathed the most.
In retrospect, this makes sense. Why implies an understanding of internal causality, an ability to both follow the steps from the beginning to the end (action, reaction) and to explain them to someone who isn't living on the inside of his head. The need to explain to someone is something that doesn't even make sense until you've developed theory of mind.
The good news is, theory of mind does come, and my almost-eighteen year old is actually pretty damn good at answering the Why question, now. But, well. 18 seemed like an incredibly long way away when he was four.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-05-28 07:48 pm (UTC)The "Why" question would send my son into a meltdown for years. It had a 50/50 chance of sending him into a meltdown when he was eight. It was, of all the questions we could ask, the one he loathed the most.
In retrospect, this makes sense. Why implies an understanding of internal causality, an ability to both follow the steps from the beginning to the end (action, reaction) and to explain them to someone who isn't living on the inside of his head. The need to explain to someone is something that doesn't even make sense until you've developed theory of mind.
The good news is, theory of mind does come, and my almost-eighteen year old is actually pretty damn good at answering the Why question, now. But, well. 18 seemed like an incredibly long way away when he was four.