The evolution of question…

As Jackson increases his mastery of the English language and develops higher cognitive abilities, it poses more and more difficult situations for us. A good example of this is the insight of his questions.

Jackson’s questions started out with trying to understand what actions people or things were taking. These questions typically took the form of, “What dat?” These questions were easy to answer because typically, whatever it was resided in our house or was rather pedestrian. As time went on, simply describing what things were grew boring. Now, it was time for action! “What dat lady/man/thing doing?” Once again, typically we knew what he was point at was so we could easily describe what it did. These questions did not really stretch the minds of his parents, making life easy.

This all came to an abrupt end recently. No longer satisfied with basic definitions of objects and actions, Jackson now needs to understand the essence of his world. As he moves beyond the elementary physical being of objects, his curiosity deepens to what these objects mean. “What dat mean?”

These questions, if you’re lucky, can be explanatory in nature.

“Me want my window down.”
“No, you will get awfully cold with the window down.”
“What ‘awfelwee’ mean?”
“Uh, it’s a modifier…it means ‘very’ or ‘a lot’ (with required swirling hand motion)”
“What ‘very’ mean?”
Etc….

But, there are those times when one is not so fortunate.

“Let’s wash our hands.”
“Too hot?”
“No, the water is fine.”
“What water mean?”

How do you explain what water is to a two year old? You and I know it’s a “binary compound of one oxygen and two hydrogen molecules that occurs at room temperature as a clear colorless odorless tasteless liquid; freezes into ice below 0 degrees centigrade and boils above 100 degrees centigrade; widely used as a solvent.” But explaining that to Jackson would open a can of worms that would never be sorted out.

So, what does water mean?

“Well, water does not mean anything, but it’s something we use everyday. We clean with it, we drink it and we…..wash our hands with it.”

Apparently that was an expectable answer because we commenced the hand washing.

I know that as Jackson grows, his ability to comprehend and process information will grow with him, but I am hoping that his existential question growth ends here.