Why Do the Why’s Start and Why Do They Stop?

“In terms of development, very young children are right-hemisphere dominant, especially during their first three years. They haven’t mastered the ability to use logic and words to express their feelings, and they live their lives completely in the moment—which is why they will drop everything to squat down and fully absorb themselves in watching a ladybug crawl along the sidewalk, not caring one bit that they are late for their toddler music class. Logic, responsibilities, and time don’t exist for them yet,” write Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson in The Whole-Brain Child. “But when a toddler begins asking ‘Why?’ all the time, you know that the left brain is beginning to really kick in. Why? Because our left brain likes to know the linear cause-effect relationships in the world—and to express that logic with language.”

In the Exchange Reflections “Neuroscience of Curiosity,” Wendy Ostroff shares the results of a study on prechoolers' questioning, “Children asked an average of 76 information-seeking questions per hour, both in search of facts and in search of explanations (with one child asking her poor mother 145 questions in a single hour!) (Chouinard, Harris & Maratsos, 2007)”

Ostroff continues, “However, subsequent research revealed that children’s expressions of wonder, in particular their questions, declined dramatically once they entered formal schooling…By kindergarten, curiosity episodes—including children’s own questions—averaged only about two to five times during any two-hour stretch. By the fifth grade, …most children were spending seven or more hours of their day in school without asking even one question, and without taking part in even one behavior aimed at finding out something new (Engel, 2011)”

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