The juvenile inquisition

Dear Dr. Ray,
My son (age four) is very inquisitive. He's constantly asking me questions, and no matter how hard I try, I eventually get tired of answering and lose patience. It makes me feel guilty.
Asked Out

My son is just over five years old. From the day he could string together a noun and verb to form a semi-coherent sentence, I would guess he’s asked me about five million questions, from the mundane (Dad, how did you know that driver’s name was Idiot? Is he your friend?) to the physical (Why don’t stars fall down?) to the metaphysical (Which is better, love or the angels?).
About a third of these I attempt to answer, generally the straightforward ones like how I knew Mr. Idiot. About a third I fudge — the sky is blue because it reflects the ocean — though it’s usually only a matter of months before he challenges me on these. And to about a third I say, “Go ask your mother. She knows everything.”
During a recent one hour car trip with just my son — his two sisters were at home tag-team interrogating their mother — I decided to count how many questions he would ask if I responded to the best of my knowledge. Having just watched six weeks of Teen Jeopardy, I was feeling pretty cocky. His total: 137. And this was interrupted halfway through the trip by a 28-verse stint of “This Old Man.” Honest. I counted again. It’s my shrink nature. Now that I think back, the chorus started shortly after Andrew asked me if I ever saw a live dinosaur.
Relentless questions are a child’s early grappling with who he is, what the world is, how it works, and why it all is. By nature, some kids give voice to their wonder more than others, but almost all do for years, until childlike curiosity fades, the television envelopes them, or they become adolescents — who don't ask us anything because we have long ceased to know anything.
Through the wonderment years, we strive to stimulate, to answer all we can, so as not to snuff out a molecule (Dad, what’s a molecule?) of their God-given voraciousness for life. As happens so often in parenthood, conflict inevitably arises when our spirit meets our flesh. (What do you mean, Dad? Is that a ghost with skin?) We want to feed them, but we exhaust far sooner than they do. Their energy — physical, emotional, intellectual — dwarfs ours. So try as we might to fudge, finagle or find out the real answer to, “Where do all the worms come from when it rains?” we can’t keep up the pace, and sometimes we crack, exploding with some version of, “Who are you, Einstein? Two years ago, you couldn’t even use a toilet.”
To quench your son’s intellectual thirst, while not going dry yourself, here are a few ideas, most of which I’ve been forced to find through hard experience. (Dad, is experience harder than diamonds?)

1. You are not an inadequate, psychologically stunting parent if you don’t answer everything, or if you don’t want to answer everything. Like most childhood qualities, inquisitiveness, however awesome in the raw, needs to be moderated some, or else it evolves into obnoxiousness. (Dad, why did you ask Mom for a muzzle?)
Every parent varies in tolerance, depending upon personality, fatigue, the needs of other children and the pressures of life. Don’t feel guilty because you need to take breaks. A wise parent calls time out before he or she gets mad, mean, or acts like an idiot. (Dad, can people who don't drive cars be idiots?)

2. Don’t answer everything yourself. Use your young assistant: “What do you think, Tommy? Can you answer that question?” At the least, you’ll buy extra time before the next question. If any siblings are listening in, ask for their input, projecting confidence they’ll think up a good answer. (Dad, why do you always want me to answer my own questions? How can I do that if I don’t know?)

3. Suggest alternatives to questions. I’ve dubbed this my “This Old Man" tactic. “Constance, I’m only going to answer two more questions. Then you can sing (or count clouds, or talk to Echo, or see how long you can be quiet).” (Dad, how come you always ask me to see how long I can be quiet?)
Again, you will not stifle your child's inquisitiveness. It’s far too durable to be squelched by an occasional stop signal from you. Answer most of the questions some of the time or some of the questions most of the time. You’ll not only reinforce your child’s curiosity, you’ll have more energy to give decent answers, or more believable fakes. (Dad, how come last time you said that the moon is the brightest thing at night, and this time you said it doesn’t have its own light?)
There’s a bright side to questions without end. For the moment, no matter how many or fast they come, they’re usually benign. Twelve years from now, though far less in number, they’ll hit harder. “Dad, what would you say if I told you the principal is going to call you tonight?” I personally would rather field a thousand “Can a gorilla beat up a tiger?” than one of those adolescent gems.
Just one more thing: Is a preschooler harder than an adolescent? No? Then how come they call that age between one and three the “Terrible Twos?” (Does that mean there’s twins? Do they need two mommies?)

Dr. Ray Guarendi is a clinical psychologist, speaker, and author of “You're A Better Parent Than You Think!” and “Back To The Family.”