 At the bottom of every Quirkee.com page there is a tidbit of trivia or knowledge that refreshes with every page view. Most all of it is funny, useless information (unless part of a drinking game), but some of it is suitable for me to write an entire article from! Take for example, this piece of interesting trivia...
In an average day, a four-year old child will ask 437 questions.
Before I get too far into some of the questions my almost four-year old child asks every day, let’s break down that number.
24 hours in a day: Let’s say my child goes to bed at 8:00 PM and sleeps until 7:00 AM on a normal day. I use the word “normal” lightly. That eliminates 11 hours of “Quiz Daddy” time right off the bat and leaves us with...
13 waking hours to ask questions. For this extremely non-scientific breakdown we will assume it is a Saturday when he is not in school for 4 of those 13 hours and can pepper me with questions all day. Of these 13 hours on a Saturday, maybe an hour of it will be spent on an afternoon nap – so now we are down to...
12 waking hours to be inquisitive. During these 12 hours, about 30 minutes is spent with his mouth full of peanut butter and unable to speak. Peanut butter is about all my child will eat so this part of the equation is fairly accurate. Also during these 12 hours, about 90 minutes of it is spent watching PBS or Animal Planet. That brings us down to...
10 waking hours of mind scrambling never-ending when, where, why, what, who, and how sentences out of his mouth. That is 600 minutes to ask 437 questions, which is approximately 1.37 questions every minute that he is awake. According to the trivia, this equation should work for most four-year olds. This extremely non-scientific breakdown does not include those children who talk in their sleep.
1.37 questions every 60 seconds! That’s an amazing number once you start to think about it (don’t think too hard. You need to save your brainpower to answer your child’s next question right about... now). It is less of an amazing number if you have, or have had, a toddler in your presence for a day. Have you ever answered a question wrong on purpose just to see if they really know the answer? I’m sure you have if there is any kind of jocular bone in your body. We always get to the correct answer so I don’t end up filling his head with information that will make him flunk kindergarten. Here is one of my favorite inquisitive conversations with my almost four-year old boy...
“Daddy, why do we have trees?”
“Well, trees grow on Earth and provide oxygen to our atmosphere for us to breath,” I said.
“But why do we need oxygen, Daddy?”
“So we can breath,” I said again.
“Oh. But how do we breath?” he asked.
“Through our mouths and noses,” I replied.
“Oh. Daddy, why do we have noses?”
“For smelling things. The hairs in our noses also filter out unwanted particles and pollutants in the air we breath so it is cleaner when it enters the lungs and our bloodstream,” I said.
“Huh? But Daddy, what are polly tents?”
“Pollutants?” I asked.
“Yeah, those. What are po-looo-tents?”
“Things floating in the air that we don’t want to breath if we can help it,” I said.
“Can I see those po-looo-tents, Daddy?”
“Sure, son. Just look out the window at the tailpipe of that car right there.”
“That’s stinky! Is that the same stuff I smell coming from our truck when you turn it on?”
“Umm, yes. It’s time for a tune-up,” I replied.
“Daddy, what’s a tune-up?”
That part of the conversation lasted about a minute while we were driving to the store one day. He asked 10 questions in 60 seconds. At that continual rate – which on some days I swear it is continual – he would ask an average of 6,000 questions in a 10-hour period. Even if he were completely quiet for 5 of those 10 hours he would still ask an average of 3,000 questions in a day. I don’t know who provided that figure of 437 questions, but they are either childless or use superglue on their kid’s lips.
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Quirkee Voices 
