"What if..." questions

Post Reply New Topic

I have a 7 year old son who is incessantly asking "What if..." questions:

"What if an evil mermaid came and took away my voice?"
"What if a policeman came and shut down the playground?"
"What if I had to stay at school until night time?"
"What if my teacher made me have a time out that lasted forever?"

etc.

No matter what we say, it is either countered with, "What if it really did happen?" or a series of other slippery slope type questions.

Sometimes it is something from a story, or something that happened. Sometimes it looks like it might be the product of some real anxiety. Sometimes it just looks like he is playing with his imagination, and having fun with it. Is this a typical stage of development? Is this instead of NT "Why?" questions?

We purchased the "What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming OCD," which we have to adapt because it mentions OCD, by name, alot, and he doesn't have OCD per se, although he does have intrusive thoughts. I am not sure if this is a manifestation of that, or something else.

Any insight would be appreciated.

I did those sort of things all the time as a kid. I hear the rules and then come up with all the what if stuff so I think I was finding the gray. I just wanted things to be fair.

Plus I was also curious and wanted to see what would happen if I did this or that or if someone else did it.

I asked things like that a lot when I was a kid. Sometimes the adults would go along with it, other times they wouldn't. Truthful answers usually put a stop to that. There are the kind of answers' that I would get, using the questions you posted.

Q What if an evil mermaid came and took away my voice?
A I imagine we could get some serious media coverage about that and you'd end up pretty rich. Rich enough to pay people to talk for you.

Q What if a policeman came and shut down the playground?
A Then I guess you couldn't play there.

Q What if I had to stay at school until night time?
A We would have one heck of a lawsuit against the school board.

Q What if my teacher made me have a time out that lasted forever?
A Probably won't happen because she doesn't care about her job enough to stay there forever and keep an eye on you, and also you will probably out live her so the time out would be over when she died.


Those sound like it's a cold thing to do, but when my kids asked those kinds of questions, I'd answer them truthfully. I don't consider it mean or cold at all to be honest with a kid. It doesn't stunt their imagination at all, it just helps them see how things really work.

As for the other slippery slope questions, if they just kept on then say something like "Well, I guess you'd be up the creek without a paddle, wouldn't you?" and leave it at that. The what if game takes two people to play. If you aren't playing, then there's no game. It's a fun game if it's kept fun.

I agre with OliveOilMom on the one hand that you could try to have fun with your kid's endless questions and make him feel better.

However, I think the best approach is to just ignore it. From what I can make out, it's probably attention seeking behaviour. The more you ignore it, the less your kid will ask those type of questions.

On the other hand, it's a phase which he will grow out of.

Alternatively, if you feel that many of the questions are provoked by anxiety, best maybe to go for the reassure approach.

Just humble suggestions, hope you can work something out/the situation works itself out.

It is pretty typical for kids around that age to do that. Being on the spectrum can put a special little twist on things, but I wouldn't worry too much unless fear/anxiety seem to be affecting him a lot.

While ignoring it after a few attmepts to answer honestly might be a good strategy, I would caution against assuming it is attention seeking behavior. Be careful what intentions you ascribe to ASD kids. Anxiety is a likely culprit. At that age he probably is still sorting out fact from fiction and some of those implausible What If's might really be worrisome for him

This is what I would do. I would ask him questions back.

Why do you believe that a mermaid actually exists? Do you have evidence or proof that they exist?



Why would a policeman even want to shut down the playground? Doesn't the policeman have better things to do?



Why would you think you had to stay at school until night time?




Why would your teacher make you stay in a time out that lasted forever? How would this be even remotely possible in objective reality?

etc.



Ask your child why he or she would believe it would happen?

My son doesnt do WHAT IF, but he does WHY and How Come, and no answer will satisfy him, he just adds WHY and HOW COME to my answers...this can go on endlessly and it can be maddening. Sometimes I have to just cut him off, indulge a few "Why" questions and tell him I will answer more later. I always felt it was anxiety based or OCD based, as it feels like he has little control over his questioning and he can get increasingly upset over needing to know why about evertying and even the answers to why!

good luck

Sometimes kids ask random questions like this just to see what you'll say.

I admit that I myself still do this sometimes.

What would you do if you were walking down the street and you saw a dog exploding?

the "what if" started in my house with my DS about age 5 and at age 11, he hasn't outgrown it. I believe it is a manifestation of his anxiety. Around age 9 or 10 the what ifs began revolving around very plausible if unlikely situations. At six flags, he what if'd all the possible ways the rides could go wrong, driving down the road, he what if'd the things that could go wrong on the local construction site, at school he what if's his way from a broken pencil lead down a path to never graduating high school. After the Tsunami hit Japan, he what if'd a Tsunami hitting Texas. I told him that he would make an awesome safety inspector one day. At our house, we address the what if and include the likelihood as he is getting old enough to understand that. We have also used a program called Turnaround anxiety to learn what happens when we let our mind get out of control with negative thoughts. We also limit the what if discussions. Finally, we had to begin using medication because he was struggling so hard to get out of the worry loop that he spent the majority of his day crying.

www.myanxiouschild.com

Turnaround Anxiety

I wanted to add that the "what if" game can be fun sometimes... what if mermaids were in our lake and swam up to our boat. What if can lead to great inventions and awesome movies.

One more thing... we also talk about what if's being like the popups on your computer, most of the time they are not worth your time to worry about them and you should just reach up and click the 'x' button in your brain.

We had the same thing at that age, and found the book to be very helpful, in that short-circuiting the questioning with "I think that's a "garbage thought" don't you? was a helpful way to respond. I agree, I wish the book didn't mention OCD so much, but it does give you some very helpful language and imagery to use. (we had to say "you don't have OCD, but sometimes the way you think is very similar," fortunately DS has a friend with OCD, so he understood the similarities/differences.)

We would also back up to the big picture to reassure him, so instead of responding to the specific question, which fed the spiral of more and more questions, we'd say "You are safe, in a safe house with people who love you, in a room that loves you, you have a dog that loves you. We make sure every day that you're safe and bad things won't happen to you."

I also have found this Sesame Street video (I'm on quite an SS kick, right?") was helpful; I like the language of "letting your imagination run away with you" It works even if your kid is "too old" for SS: Grover in the Dark

The take-away from that video is to ask him a question back, re-imagining the scary thing into a friendly thing: "What if you were the police chief and could tell the police officer that shutting down the playground was unfair to all the kids and had to go back to the police academy to learn to be nicer?" We've had some success with that technique; it both reiterates that the problem is imaginary and empowers them to use their imagination in not-scary ways.

Thank you for all your responses.

I waited to post because I wanted to wait a few days to see if my initial observations persisted. It is still early to tell, but school just ended here and the ratio of negative/possibly worrying "What ifs" to fun "What ifs" just decreased dramatically. That tells me that indeed some of it is due to stress and anxiety and some of it is not.

Clearly, I have to deal with both types differently. The fun ones don't bother me so much, although he does still have to learn conversational turn taking etc. The other ones have to be nipped in the bud to avoid spiraling into endless ruminating, negative questions.

I have tried answering honestly to the questions, which still spiral because even when he knows (which he appears to) what he is saying is implausible, he has to add "But what if it did?" because something in his brain wants him to. The rumination I suppose could be called a compulsion, too, but it does not take the form of rituals or anything more typically described as OCD. I am afraid when he is older it will result in depression, so I have to get him out of the habit of ruminating, now.

The suggestion about pop up windows is excellent because my son loves computers. I may have to disable my AdBlock for a bit, so I can show him how annoying pop ups are.

Thank you for all the advice.

Wow a kid asking questions is negative attention seeking behavior? I don't know sometimes it can be very hurtful to a child if they are either expressing real worries or just ideas and the response is just nothing. I mean when I was a child that would probably cause me to actually indulge in attention seeking behavior out of feeling ignored and totally dis-validated. So unfortunately I am going to be disagreeable and disagree.

At least you acknowledge if its real anxiety reassuring things should be said...but I think ignoring questions like its bad/annoying to be curious would be a terrible thing to do to a child.