3-Year Old FAQs

My 3-year old has started asking questions that are not always easy to answer. Seeing as how some of these have left me scrambling for answers that satisfy her and are yet age appropriate, I have decided to come up with this FAQ, which I will add to as her questions accumulate. Thanks for tips on how to answer such questions from helpful moms on my regular bulletin board too.

Top tip: before you attempt to answer one of the tough questions, ask the child what they think first.

QUESTIONS TO DO WITH ….

BABIES

1. Where was I when you got married?
   • Waiting with God before you were born
   • Part of you was a cell in mommy and part of you was a cell in daddy
2. Where was I before I was in your tummy?
   • Waiting with God before you were born
   • Part of you was a cell in mommy and part of you was a cell in daddy
3. Where was I before you were born?
   • Waiting with God
   • Simple discussion of genetics
4. How did I get in your tummy?
   • So far I’ve evaded this question by focusing on the cell stuff… she’s only 3!
5. How did I get out of your tummy?
   • The last was the easiest to answer, because I had a c-sec, so I just explained that the doctor cut her out. Her follow up question was about the pain, but I told her they gave me some medicine so it wasn’t, and she was ok with that

BLINDNESS

I have a friend who is blind, due to incompetent medical personnel when he was born (very long and complicated story). He comes over for dinner once in a while, and recently B’s been asking me some very difficult questions about him..

1. Jesus can make blind people see, why doesn’t he just ask him to let him see?
   • I answered something like he doesn’t mind being blind (which he doesn’t) and that his hearing is so much better than other people (which it is) because he can focus on using only his ears.
2. Why is he blind? (as in was he born that way?)
   • I had to explain a bit about the medical blunder, in the simplest terms I could manage. She was distressed by the idea that doctors can make mistakes… Advice I got in response to this was:
     • Concentrate on the positive side of doctors and how important it is when we are sick that we have them - you could even find
     • some instances of doctors saving people.
     • Point out that everyone makes mistakes (point out some of yours and even hers), but that mommy and daddy are always with
     • her to make sure she is safe.
     • Go the way of truth, but avoid nitty gritty details.

MATTERS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEFS

Top tip: Go straight to the Bible and just flat out trust Isaiah 55:10-11

1. In relation to the Creation, she wants to know where was Jesus and what was He doing when God was making everything.
   • In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1. Jesus is the Word. In the beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God.
2. What would happen if people didn’t have any spirit?
3. Why is God invisible?
4. Why can’t I see God now?
5. When is Jesus coming again?
6. Why can’t He come right now?
7. Does God know when everyone is going to die? Why can’t we know? I WANT TO KNOW WHEN I AM GOING TO DIE!!!
8. Why did God let the dinosaurs die out?
9. Why did God make some dinosaurs like Corythosaurus with nothing to fight enemies with?

WAR

Top tip: Try to answer the questions as close to her frame of reference as possible.

1. Why do countries need to go to war? Why couldn’t they just talk about it and solve their problems?
   • Remember the last time she had a fight with a friend, how angry they felt and how easily they lost control, and then tell her that war is what happens when two countries get angry with one another and lose control.
   • If she asks what makes them angry, I would say, sometimes a country gets angry because another one tries to take something that belongs to it, (like someone snatching a toy off her would make her angry), or sometimes because another country is making it look bad to other countries, or because people or things that the country loves are hurt by another one.
   • I’d tell her that countries are made up of people, and that people all make mistakes sometimes.
2. Why do people need to kill people?
   • People do terrible things when they get angry and lose control.
   • If one country can get rid of enough of another country’s people and property, it will stop fighting and let the other country do what it wants.

POLITICS

1. Who are all the real princesses in the world today? Where do they live?
   • We looked up this webpage
2. Why are there kings and queens and princesses? How do you become a king/queen/princess?
   • Long, long ago the strongest/smartest/bravest/etc leaders were chosen as kings by the people they were with. Later when they grew very old and died, one of their children usually took over the role, and this continued with their children’s children until the title/role was kept within the family only, and that’s how royal families came about.
   • (Naturally this led to: Today some countries still have royal families, but most countries are ruled by prime ministers or presidents who are chosen by the people for a few years, not for life, which led to the questions below)
3. Why do people need rulers?
   • Because most people need someone to decide for them about how everyone should live together in the same country and what rules to follow
4. But why?
   • Because everyone has their own idea how they want to live, and some people aren’t good and will just want to take other people’s things from them and to rob and steal or things like that, so somebody has to be in charge
5. How do people choose presidents/prime ministers?
   • Usually they choose maybe leaders for their town near where they live, then all the town leaders will choose a leader among themselves to lead the state, then state leaders may choose the country’s leader, but every country could have a different system

DEATH

She has been asking these questions in a direct way just after her 3rd birthday (been exploring the theme in her stories for a few months more than this), but so far none have left me scrambling for answers. Thought I should list the questions here just for the record.

1. “Why do people have to die?” After exhausting this line of questioning (I had loads of great answers!) she moved onto “Why do zebras/giraffes/etc have to die?” After that, the funny stuff began: “Does that curtain need to die?” / “Does that book need to die?” / etc… obviously she was trying make sense of the difference between living and nonliving things are their relationship to death…
2. Exactly a month after this there was a funeral going on in the church basement and of course she saw all the people, etc on the way out after the rehearsal I was attending (held upstairs away from the service) and had a lot of questions. I decided to tell her the truth, that it was a funeral, and this of course led to many follow up questions from her. She was particularly interested in knowing where the old lady (whose funeral it was) went and what exactly happens when someone dies. I gave her a two-part brief explanation, involving both body processes (how they wind down and stop when someone is very very old) as well as God (how the spirit goes to be with Him while the body is placed in a coffin and buried…). She was genuinely interested, so I thought it reasonable to answer her questions like that, esp. since there wasn’t any emotional involvement in that particular funeral.
3. Ok, this next one was a stumper for me. “If dinosaurs all died out after millions of years and then humans came, does that mean humans will all die out after millions of years more? And what will come next?”
4. Why do people die? When do people die?
   We talked about natural versus unnatural death. Death by old age and illness versus death by killing and accident.

MOVIE/STORY RELATED QUESTIONS

Her current intense obsession is everything to do with the Lord of the Rings. Here are some questions she’s asked in specific relation to the movies and book.

1. Why don’t Legolas’ arrows ever finish?
2. Why don’t any of them ever need to pee or poop?
3. Why didn’t Gollum scream when he fell into the lava? (end of ROTK scene)
4. Why didn’t Gollum even blink when he fell into the lava at Mt Doom?
5. Why in all of Middle Earth does only Gollum wear only underwear?
6. Why does Sauron want to control everybody?
7. Why is Gimli so different from Thorin and the other dwarves in The Hobbit? (referring to his lack of interest in material reward when offered a parting gift by Galadriel in Lothlorien)
8. How exactly were orcs created by Sauron?
9. How is it like to be like an elf that can live forever? The humans and the dwarves and the hobbits can’t, but the elves can.
10. Where did the dwarves come from? How were they made?
11. Why Sauron didn’t become invisible when he wore the One Ring?
12. Who made the Palantir? Who actually owned the Palantir? (I found this great answer site!)
13. Why did Morgoth want to be like God?
14. Was Gollum a hobbit at first?
15. After the Ring was destroyed and Sauron was defeated what happened to the orcs? Did they become good?
16. Could Sauron control his wickedness?
17. We were reading the section in Lord of the Rings tonight where Aragorn fulfils this poem (Return of the King Book 1),
    When the black breath blows
    and death’s shadow grows
    and all lights pass,
    come athelas! come athelas!
    Life to the dying
    In the king’s hand lying!
    and the people of Gondor recognize him as king because he is able to heal using this herb, athelas. So, Bethany’s question was, “If Eomer did the same would he have been able to heal them also?” (since Eomer was also a king). (I found an answer to this here)
18. Another weird question only a 3-year old would think of - do elf and dwarf and hobbit children’s teeth fall out like human children before growing new adult teeth? How do their children grow? How long are they children for?
    - so far I’ve found no answer to the teeth question, but this answer on elvish children

Other movies/stories

1. Why doesn’t Dopey have a beard when he’s a dwarf? (c.f. Snow White)
2. How can people survive when they are supposed to die? How did Voldemort survive? How did Sauron survive?
3. Why is Ariel’s hair all dry as soon as she comes out of the water? (c.f. Little Mermaid)
4. Why is Snow White so neat and clean even though she’d just been through a raging storm? (after the huntsman let her go)
5. In the scene during the song “Whistle While You Work” where Snow White hangs out the washing to dry, why are there shirts there that are too big to fit any dwarf? Whose shirts are they?
6. Why is Aladdin still dressed in rags? (At the start of Return of Jafar). Isn’t he supposed to be a prince now?
7. Why does Genie still have handcuffs on? (At the start of Return of Jafar). He’s supposed to be free!
8. After Jafar’s magic lamp was destroyed and he and all his evil magic deeds vanished and everything returned to normal, why was Iago alone still covered in muck and apparently dying? (Return of Jafar)

SCIENCE

1. What will happen to everyone if the sun runs out like a battery that runs out?
   I was really surprised at this and asked her if she thought the sun would run out one day and she said yes. I asked her what she thought would happen and she said everything would be dark and everyone would die, would they? I said yes and asked her how come she’d been thinking of such a thing. She said she was just thinking of it, that’s all.
2. Why are some foods we eat not digested?
3. What will happen if the earth was empty? If there was nobody or NOTHING on it at all?
4. Is Mars completely empty? Is the moon completely empty? Are there aliens living there?
5. While looking at an illustration of the cross section of an ant colony,
   “But they’re ants! They don’t have any hands! HOW can they build those rooms? How can they carry the soil away?” (with an incredulous look).
6. How did dinosaurs come on earth?
7. Why do all insects have 6 legs? Why not 5? Why not 7?
   • I answered that one saying it was due to balance. 5 or 7 would mean they won’t be balanced.
   • Lovely extended answer from a friend: Animals always have legs that come in 2’s - 2,4,6 etc. because an odd number isn’t as efficient - it leaves the animal off-balance and more likely to fall over if it is missing a leg. Insects have 6 because although they are small, they need a lot of grip to do things like hang from leaves or take off and land safely after flying. Their legs are also thin, and would have trouble bearing their wieght if their were less than 6 and would collapse. The number of legs is decided in the egg - their bodies are divided into segments and each segment develops in a different way, so that the insect ends up with only one head etc while the three segments in the middle become ‘leg’ segments.
8. Why do they have 2 antenna? They only need one.
   • Dh answered that one, saying it was in case they lost one they would still have one. She knows they use antenna for smelling and feeling (read it in her book).
   • Then why not 3 antenna?
     • We didn’t have a good answer for this.
     • More thanks to the same friend: They have two antenna partly because the antenna are developed from legs - ancient ancestors of the insects turned a 4th pair of legs into useful feelers on top of their heads, so come in pairs because the legs did, which is why they don’t have 3. But having two, one on the left and one on the right, gives the insect better coverage - it can sense things the same amount in all directions over a bigger distance than if they just had one in the middle and it also means they can feel in two directions at once (like you can with two hands - imagine what it would be like with only one hand to touch with) so they aren’t taken by surprise from one side while they are sensing something on the other so two is a real advantage over 1. More than 2 would get complicated though - there isn’t much room on the insects head for more than 2 without them getting tangled!
   • What will happen if they lose both their antenna? Does it mean they won’t be able to smell or feel anything?
     • Again we weren’t sure, but I said I guess so.
     • More thanks Yes, without antenna, they would lose all function they provide. The insect would not be completely blind as it has eyes and sensors in other places too, but it would be like you losing your hands - you can still feel things through your skin but it is not as easy or as sensitive. It would put the insect at a big disadvantage, esp. when it came to avoiding being eaten.
9. Why aren’t there any square plants or animals? Why is everything sort of round?
   • And even more from the same friend Rounded edges are stronger than flat surfaces and pointy corners. Corners are easily damaged if they are knocked because they stick out, but a round surface lets things slide off. If you put pressure on a rounded surface, it spreads out around the curve, but if you do the same with a flat surface, it is all concentrated on the point you are pushing on, meaning the flat surface is more likely to break than the rounded one. Living things are rounded because it makes survival better - they can take more knocks and falls without permanent damage than a square could. People have used the strength of roundedness in buildings too - castle turrets are usually round so cannon balls have a harder time breaking trough - they present a smaller target surface and the ball is more likely to glance off than penetrate. Bridges are often arched so that the wieght of traffic in the middle is spread out to the ends allowing them to take more weight than a flat bridge without dropping you into the water (and even bridges that seem flat usually have arches somewhere, often on the supporting frames).
10. The earth is round, but are there other earths somewhere that are square? Where people can go to the edge and fall right off?
11. Why are all the planets round? (looking at her book on space).
12. Why are there rings around Saturn?
13. What will happen if our heart stops beating?
14. Why do we need to breathe? Why do we need oxygen?
15. Why do we need plasters?
16. Why is our skin brown?
17. What is sunburn? Why do some people burn and some people don’t?
18. Why is it no matter what drinks we drink, no matter what colour the drink is, our pee is always yellow?

PHILOSOPHY(?)

1. B’s recently been asking a lot about bad guys too, but more along the lines of
   • “Was he always bad?”
   • “Was he good before and then only became bad?”
   • “Why did he become bad?”
   • “Why did he want to have power over everyone else?”
2. Where do all the people in the earth come from? Why are there people?

MISCELLANEOUS

1. Why do boys wear swimming trunks but girls wear swimming suits? B gets that mommies need to cover up their chest while daddies don’t, but argues that girls and boys don’t look any different, so why do girls not just wear the same swim wear as boys? She keeps asking me this question because one of her books has some drawings of children playing on the beach.
   • To be able to tell them apart (i.e. who is a girl and who is a boy)
   • To practice for when they are grown up, to get used to it
2. Why do only girls wear pink and boys wear blue?
   • So grownups, who sometimes get confused esp. with babies, can tell who is a girl and who is a boy
3. So only girls can wear pink right?
   • No, there’s no such rule that only girls can wear pink and only boys can wear blue. You wear blue sometimes. Grownups just use pink and blue for babies and small kids sometimes because they don’t want other grownups to be confused if their child is a girl or a boy. But anyone can wear any colour they like really.
4. What meat is in this sausage? How exactly are sausages made?
5. How are M&Ms made? How is chocolate made?

(to be appended to…)

One outstanding question from the age of 2 1/2.
Why don’t dinosaurs have patellas? - after noticing this all on her own in her books with dinosaur skeleton pictures. Had us scrambling to search for an answer, since she wouldn’t sleep till we found it… (bedtime question!)