Levi and Naomi will be 3 in a couple months and they are both entering into the Why phase, where almost everything out of their mouths is a question, and almost every question is a variation of “why“. Inverted statements of observation become interrogatives like “Daddy, you’re making oatmeal, Daddy?” and “Why are you making oatmeal?”
Over the past few years, I’ve likened many of the other more bothersome noises of parenting–crying, whining, banging incessantly on things with no rhythm–to the din of AM radio static, where there’s a constant competition of signal to noise… and signal is always losing.
The level of noise in a communications circuit is measured by the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), the ratio of the average amplitude of the signal voltage to the average amplitude of the noise voltage. When this ratio is below one (0 dB) the noise is greater than the signal, requiring special processing to recover the information.
The persistence of monotonic questions can seem like just another form of noise, especially when a task at hand requires concentration and the answers to questions, simple as they are, require “special processing to recover the information”. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that every single seemingly mindless question muttered comes from a nerve center that is processing the kid’s ever-expanding world. It’s a world that will be only as beautiful as I (and mom and Daniel Tiger) try to make it for them. In this way, I am grateful and privileged to own the responsibility of being their special processor and am committed to not losing my shit with all these damn questions.