The ‘WHY’ question.
Tickle is very definitely at the ‘why’ stage. It’s not uncommon for children to go through this, although normally they get it out of the way a bit earlier. In Tickle’s case, sometimes the “Why?” is a genuine ‘why are you saying that / I don’t know what you mean’ - and sometimes it’s an angry “WHY?!!” (are you still going on at me?!) We’ve had a new ‘why’ question this week: why did Birth Dad hurt me? That’s a trickier one to deal with. It started off in the car, just the two of us, on the way back from the dentist. Tickle asked for a ‘chat’, which is his code for ‘there’s something on my mind that I need to talk about’. We had a chat. It lasted all the way home, all the way through dinner, and all the way in to bed. I didn’t really know what to say, so mostly I was honest: “I don’t know why he hurt you Tickle, but he shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t your fault, and it was wrong. Grown ups are not allowed to hurt children. I don’t know why he hurt you.” Eventually he said “I don’t