The Psychology of "WHY"-Day 116

Happy Monday.

May your day be a blessing waiting to happen. May you have a productive work week.''

This past weekend was challenging and alot of fun for my daughter and me. First, my daughter was invited to a big "star-studded" event to interview attorney Willie Gary, a prominent attorney here in Florida. Mr. Gary is a multimillionaire, that has won some major landmark cases in Florida. He has over 200 people working in his firm.

My daughter has interviewed radio personality, Tom Joyner. He has the radio program with about 10 million listeners per day. My daughter is working on taking the recordings and transferring them to her blog, that she is writing. She took many pictures throughout the event that I have posted some of the pictures above.

This was the most exciting time my daughter had in a while. She wants to expose these professionals to other children to encourage children to study so they too can enjoy the fruits of their labor. My daughter has decided to speak to professionals and translate these interviews so that young people can understand what it will take for them to become successful.

Why? Because young people need to be encouraged.

My daughter constantly ask me these questions. Why mommy? Why not? Why do they? Why do they not?

Why do children ask so many questions? Have you ever thought about this?

Remember the program that Bill Cosby hosted years ago...."Children ask the darnest questions?

According to new research by Maggie Severns, Why as Why? "At some point, most people who spend time around young children encounter a youngster who likes to play the “Why?” game. For those who are not familiar with the “Why?” game, a child asks a question and an adult answers, to which the child asks a second question: Why?

The adult explains the answer and gets the question again: Why?

For a long time, researchers believed that most questions young children ask were being asked in order to prolong a conversation, and not because the child wanted an actual explanation about something. Why? The belief was that children don’t have an understanding of causality until they are between 5 and 8 years old; meaning that they don’t see how one thing can happen or exist because of something else. However, as research continues to dig deeper into the minds of young children, many researchers are starting to believe that very young children—possibly infants—can make causal inferences about the relationship between objects in their environment.

Psychologists writing in this month’s issue of Child Development probe the relationship between young children and their surroundings by taking a look at what questions they ask and how they react when someone responds in order to explain why. Their findings provide new evidence of the power of language interactions between adults and children – driving home the point that the strongest learning environments are those in which adults engage in rich conversations with children, even those as young as 2.
The studies were conducted by Brandy Frazier, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and Susan A. Gelman, and Henry M. Wellman, both professors in psychology at the University of Michigan.
Frazier and her colleagues hypothesized that if children actively seek explanatory knowledge by asking questions, then they will react differently depending on the answer that they receive from an adult. They set out to examine not only the questions kids initially asked, but also their responses to the answers adults gave them. They figured that if children ask questions strictly to spark or extend a conversation, then any answer they receive will be satisfying. But if they are asking questions because they want to know an answer, then the nature and length of that answer will effect how the child reacts.
“I was interested in the active role that kids play in finding out about the world,” Frazier explained in a conversation last week."

So it clearly proven that the most productive enviroments for children are the ones in which they can ask questions, and get explanatory responses. Do not try and prevent children from asking questions, you may stunt their learning. Instead, encourage children to ask questions.

I know first hand that it can be challenging answering the questions. My daughter goes on and on with questions. She is a talker, and a thinker. She wants to know. Sometimes, I may get weiry of answering her questions, or sometimes, I do not have answers that she seeks. But I always encourage her to ask me anything she wants, and I promised her that I will do my very best to answer, and if I do not have the answer, we can research it. I explain to my daughter, like my daddy explained to me, if you have a question you need to ask someone for the answer or now I tell my daughter, research it. With information abound, answers are at your finger tips. Moreover, I carefully explain to her that it is important that she ask all of her questions while she has a teacher in front of her, and for further understanding research and study.

The "Psychology of why" is astounding. This is the way we learn. It is only as young adults and beyond that we began to shy away from asking questions. People try to conveince us that if you ask the wrong question, you will be frowned upon. But I say WRONG! Ask whatever you want to know. Don't worry about asking a "stupid question". Why? Because there is no such thing as a stupid question. The onlt stupid question is the one that is NOT asked.

Knowing this, I encourage to ask your children....what is on YOUR mind today?

Have a wonderful day.

L. for Love