non stop questioning

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My son has a habit to rapid fire non stop question, and when he does that he gets increasingly upset at the answers. I dont understand why he is asking questions that no answer satisfies him. It can be vary tiring all day answering him.

I am wondering what is behind the almost obsessive questioning.

An example would be:
My son: What time is it?
Me: Its 11:30 am.

My son: Why is it 11:30 am?
Me: Because that is what the clock says.

My son: Why does the clock say that?
Me: Becasue that is the time honey, it is before noon, we have been up for a few hours, etc...

My son: Why have we been up for a few hours?
Me: Because we got up around 8am, and from 8 to 11:30 is a few hours.

My son: WHy were we up at 8am?

This can go on and on and on. OR he can get very angry at the answers. One day he was very mad becasue the restaurant door was on the side of the building, and DEMANDED I tell him why it was there. And me, trying to be logical, said "maybe becasue most of the cars park on this side of the building? He just yelled back to me WHY WHY do they park here????? no matter waht I said he just yelled back WHY WHY WHY???

Sometimes I dont know why, and I will tell him, "Mommy isnt sure, but that is a great question. How about when we go to the library we look for some books to explain it to us?"

I have resorted lately of limiting his questions to maybe 4 per car ride, or I will say, "You just asked me 2 questions in a row and I need time to think about it, please give me a few minutes before you ask any more".

Any input on the rapid questioning, and the never ending questioning? SHould I be doing something different? He doesnt ever seem satisfied with my answers, and I am not sure what else to do? I am not even sure if he knows what answer will satisfy him.

Anyone deal with this before?

Philosophy: one question leading to another.
Spirituality: one question can lead to an experience that does not answer the question, but dissolves the question.

I know this well because I was like that once.

A physical hobby, esp martial arts, like Aikido, would help.

I don't know if this is the exact thing my son did, but it is ver much the same. First off, he grew out of it about age 7 or so. O.k., so here is what I used to do, because at first I would go to the encyclopedia and literally answer his line of questions. This began to take up quite a bit of time, as you can imagine. Actually, you know. Anyway, in the vehicle I have a rule of no questions due to safety concerns. (i have to focus very carefully to drive) He accepted this, and saved the questions for later.
At the dinner table he could ask, but, I'd tell him I'd research an answer after mealtime. My daughter would write his questions down so that he felt assured they would be answered. I ended up saving some of those lists, because they're kind of cool, now.
Something that worked for us was that say he asked a question, I would answer, he would ask deeper question about my answer. Then I would turn the question towards him, and say, "what do you think about (whatever it was), and make sure it is a yes or no type of question, so that it leads toward an ending of sorts. The questions continued, but he seemed to calm down and accept an ending in a shorter time span. Does that make sense?
I became very tired out when my son was in that phase, and yet I felt I had to help him understand that the world was "answersble", in that I was paying attention, and things in general were "figure-out-able. I really feel he would have withdrawn into himself if I hadn't stuck with him through this. IMHO, that is.

hahah, well at least i know my problem now.

My daughter did this a lot in her early 6's (she's almost 7 now and it has gotten better). My son also questions a lot. They seem to do it for 2 different reasons: Daughter does it because she is trying to have reciprocal conversation, but doesn't know how. Son did it (not as bad anymore) because he is very rule bound and gets anxious if he doesn't understand something and it often lead to really long strings of questions.

Time helped both of my kids, but I have no way of knowing if it will help your son. One thing that did help with both of mine was when they asked a question they knew the answer to, I'd say "do you know the answer to that?" "Yes." "Then choose something else to say."

We are going through this as well. With us it is a bunch of "What ifs..." Some of them are silly and some of them seem to stem from worries or things he takes issue with.

The ones that are silly, I treat as such and have fun with it. The others I either call a "garbage thought," (From the My Brain is Stuck book) if he is fixating, or try to reassure him, when appropriate.

I also think it is him trying to make sense of things.

Have you tried just saying "Ask ya Dad!" lol this also works for Grandads

I have similar problems with my daughter, on the one hand its great because shes keen to learn and is interested in the world around her. But it is exhausting. Also I feel like if I say I dont know too often she gets the impression I dont know much at all, despite accurately answering questions on subjects I do know about. This has lead to a touch of arrogance on her part as she seems to think Im stupid!

I thinks all kids go through the why stage but as with many typical stages autistic kids do it to the extreme! I get a huge string of questions in the car especially, as she is forced to sit still so her minds going crazy with thoughts. This is very distracting when trying to drive. She watches films on her portable dvd player for long journeys as it gets too much, the gruffalo or mr men for shorter journeys works well. You can pick up a basic dvd player from Argos for £30. We get questions about cars and how to drive them, how they work etc but all questions eventually lead on to police, jail and death for some reason. We get the same questions regularly and no answer seems to be enough.

Is he old enough to google stuff? Even if he cant read/write yet you could sit for half an hour a day and google all the things hes asked about and read it to him. I show my daughter youtube videos of things shes asked about. We can spend hours doing it! She likes clips of decomposition, time lapse vids of flowers growing, crash test dummy clips etc. When she starts asking for clips with singing cats I know we are coming to the end of it and we can stop.

My daughter (5) does something similar, but different. I think it is related to perseveration? She asks the same question over and over and over. Two nights ago she did it for over an hour.

"Mommy, can I color?"
"No you are going to bed in 15 minutes, it's time to brush your teeth."
"Ok, but can I color?"
"No, it's time to put on your nightgown."
"Mommy can I color?"
"No. Pick out a book."
"Mommy can I color?"

All through the books she asks if she can color. Then after I left the room for the night I could hear her in there still asking, I had to ask her several times to stop. I'd say all told she did nothing but ask to color for over an hour. She did get frustrated (she asked why once or twice) but thankfully, no meltdown. She slept on her coloring book all night got up early the next morning and colored.

How do I get out of this with both limiting the questions AND avoiding a meltdown? If I had shut her down at any point completely, she would have melted down. A time out certainly would have resulted in a meltdown as she doesn't understand time outs. She would have perceived the time out to be the result of asking a question and having nothing to do with the number of times the question was asked. She repeats herself a LOT and it's super frustrating.

She does do the bizarre line of questioning too, but she does not seem to get frustrated at the answers. So far she seems genuinely curious and satisfied so long as she gets an answer even if she doesn't get it... like one time she asked why the sky was blue and I told her exactly why! But then she went into a strange line of questions after that....

Unfortunately for us, the why's turned into what if's and the what if's turned into arguing, and until I learned about AS/PDD-NOS/autism in the last year and a half, it was driving me mad, because I tried to make sense of it. My DS11 almost 12 is now finally able to help me understand sometimes. He says things like, "I know the answer, but I can't make the question leave my head." or "I try to stop, but my mind keeps going and going and going." A lot of his is anxiety, not always, but usually. So far we have figured out the anxiety stems from either a negative thought loop, or something in the environment that is overly stimulating or bothering him. His dad is much better than I am about breaking the negative thought loop, while I am much better about recognizing things in the environment that might be contributing to the anxiety. My son is way to logical and a great arguer that I get caught up in the argument and sucked into the loop.

I answer, "what do you think" or a variation thereof. "I don't know, what do you think", "what are your thoughts", "how do you think we can figure that out?" basically, turning it around with another question.

If it is the same question over and over.... mommy, can I color", I answer with - "what did I say last time you asked? What different information do you have for me, that I might change my mind" or "why do you think I would change my mind?"