"26 questions I have for my my pre-school daughter."

You know how pre-schoolers seem to start every sentence with why? Well it is time we fired a few back at them.

Is there a creature as mystical and confusing as a three or four-year old girl? Not-quite-a-big-kid and not still a toddler.

A delightful, frustrating minx that dominates your world. The conversation of a pre-schooler seems to literally be why? Why? WHY???? ( With a heft mix of I’m hungry/tired/need-to-do-a-wee.)

But I am turning the tables on my daughter.

Here are my questions for her.

(Now if only she would stop asking me WHY so much I could get a word in edgewise and actually ask her a few of them.)

1. Why do you want to look like Elsa when Anna is clearly the coolest of the two sisters?

2. Why are you obsessed with shoes yet take them off in the most inappropriate of places?

3. Why do you prefer to use sanitary pads as nappies for your teddies than the sweet little pack of doll nappies I bought you?

4. Why will you eat sultanas and cheese sandwiches at someone else’s house and make weird vomity noises when I try and give them to you at home?

5. Why are you so tired you can’t walk up the hill after pre-school and yet are still asking me for one more story at 8pm every, single night?

6. Why do you think sparkly pink Disney Princess shoes are appropriate wet weather gear?

7. Why each and every single time we leave the house and I ask you if you need to do a pee you say no and yet each and every single time we get to the end of the road you do?

8. Why won’t you go to the toilet before you put your ballet leotard on and then the minute it is on, and that complicated jackety thing is tied up you are BUSTING?

9. Why do you think it is so funny in the middle of a crowded beach to pee standing up like a boy loudly exclaiming I’ve got a pee-pee Mama?

10. Why do you watch the same episode of Dora the Explorer over and over and over again and still act surprised when she gets the lost babies home to their marmies?

11. Why do you scream like a banchee when I put sunscreen on your face but come home from each trip to Bunnings made-up in rainbows and sparkles all over your cheeks as though you are headed off to a 90’s rave?

12.Why do you spend half an hour picking out what shoes to wear then take them off the minute you leave the house?

13. Why won’t you pick up your toys but the second I bring out the vacuum cleaner you want to push it around?

14. Why do you play in the one and only clean room in the house straight after I tidy it up… leaving it just as untidy as the rest of the place?

15. Why does your hearing not switch on at the simple words “we are leaving now, get your shoes on” and only seem to activate when I invoke the threat if-you-don’t-get-your-shoes-on-there-will-be-no-treat-later?

16. Why will you happily wear the bright pink tulle scratchy as all hell fairy dress-up day in and day out and yet scream blue murder when there is a label on your t-shirt?

17. Minnie Mouse?  Why I ask. Just why?  (And how on earth can you think Goofy is scary?)

18. Why do you run across the house faster than Usain Bolt at the sign of a hairbrush and yet beg me for more “sparkly clips” every time we go to the supermarket?

19. And why when we are IN said supermarket do you decide you NEED-TO-DO-A-POO-NOW when the trolley is just about three-quarters full and the nearest toilet is out the door seven minutes walk on the other side of the centre?

20. Can you really see the beach and the fairies and the dancing dolphins in the smudged Pro Hart-style masterpieces you regularly presents to me? And why do you insist on seeing those masterpieces the day after I put the re-cycling out?

21. Why do you insist on seeing every single photo of you I take on my phone straight away no matter how banal they are?

22. Why do you cry when I tell you its pre-school day and then refuse to leave when I arrive to pick you up?

23. Why do the black bits on the bananas make you break down as though your dog just died?

24. Why do you wake from an afternoon nap crankier than Naomi Campbell after the paparazzi snap a pic of her without makeup?

25. Why are you too big for the pram and yet not to be big to be carried?

26.  Why do you drive me so completely up the wall with your independent, contradictory ways and then melt my heart every day with how wonderous you are?

What questions would you add to the list?

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