Conversations With a Four Year Old

I don’t quite know how to talk to my daughter.  I don’t mean that in an emotionally stunted way, or a disconnected way.  I just mean that I am not adept at maneuvering the twists and turns of the four year old mind.  Take, for example, this recent conversation that Ruby and I had recently.

Ruby: What day is the last day of spring?
Me: Oh, June 20th, or something.
Ruby: And then it will be summer?
Me: Yes, it feels pretty hot today, but summer officially starts in June.
Ruby: And then the days will be really long?
Me: Yes, the days will get longer until summer starts, and then they will start to get shorter again.
Ruby: My knee looks like a rectangle.

Now, I just don’t know how to respond to that.  Aside from the non-sequiturs that frequent our conversations, I also never know how much to explain to her when she asks me something.  At this point, most of our conversations revolve around me trying to answer deep and/or scientific questions that she is asking.  Or annoying questions that she repeats until my head explodes.  For example:

Ruby: Dad, can I have a cookie.
Me: Yes.
Ruby: DAD!  Can I have a COOKIE?
Me: YES!
Ruby: DAD!  WHEN CAN I HAVE A COOKIE!?
ME: NEVER!  YOU’RE GROUNDED!

But more often she asks questions like “what does blood do?” or “how does my voice make me talk?”  Then I try and explain as simply and as truthfully as I can, without confusing her.  I never know if she really gets it or not.

Ruby: Why do I have to breathe?
Me: Well, we need air to live.
Ruby: Why?
Me: Because air has oxygen in it, and we use the oxygen in our bodies.
Ruby: How do we use oxergin?
Me: Well, we breath in through our lungs, and the lungs give the oxygen to our blood.  Our blood is pumped into our heart, and our heart pumps the blood all over our body, really fast, and gives out the oxygen, and then goes back to get more oxygen when it runs out, and that’s why we have to keep breathing.
Ruby: How fast does blood go?
Me: Oh, really fast.  We have miles and miles of veins in our body and our heart pumps the blood through every part of us.
Ruby: I have an itch.

So maybe she is taking some of it in, and maybe it goes over her head.  I know that some of it sinks in, because she will often pull some random fact out of thin air months later.  We will be at a dinner party and someone will say “Traffic was backed up for miles on the way over here,” and Ruby will say “Yeah, we have miles of veins in our bodies, so we have to breathe air into them really fast!”  And then I will wish that I had explained it better, and generally that I knew what I was talking about more often.  It’s tough talking to a four year old.  Thank goodness for wikipedia.