I don’t know! - Yes you do!
When my 5 year old son comes to me with a question, I usually give him one of three answers: “NO!”, “Go ask your father” or “I don’t know”.
He’ll usually accept either of the first two answers well enough, but the third is an answer he doesn’t like at all. It does not satisfy his plea. It says to him, you’ll have to wait a little longer to find out. And the boy does not do well with waiting, for anything. Especially when he knows I must already know what decisive answer I am going to give him. He thinks I’m just withholding it for my own tormentive pleasure.
These conversations usually end like so:
“I don’t know” I say for the fourth time, exasperated
“Yes you do,” Count Dooku insists, then pausing”You know everything!” he finishes with a wink and a grin.
I can’t tell you how many times he’s used that last line and I’ve thought to myself, “If the kid really sees me as being so omniscient, why in the heck doesn’t he obey me more than 10% of the time? Or accept all of the decisive answers I give him?”
Like the time I didn’t know my own friends name.
Me: “Sweetheart, her name is just Melanie.”
Count Dooku: No mom, it’s Watermelanie
Seriously folks. He insisted her name was Watermelanie. He loved watermelon. A lot. Anything with the sound “melon” in it had to be prefaced by “water”, so great was his love for the fruit.
And then of course he won’t watch football with his daddy but he will watch flootball. And don’t try to tell him there is no L in there. You’re wrong. Dead wrong, okay?
Oh, and piggie back rides? There’s no such thing. They’re Monkey rides and they always have been. How that got started I really don’t know (though the term monkey ride is far more accurate), but we think it’s funny.
So, though I don’t know everything, I do know this. My little boy is one smart cookie.
If he realizes that maybe I really don’t know the answer to his question yet, a little flattery (you know everything) might be effective in helping me decide. Too bad for him it only works on his little brother.
:heart: 
I love when the “go ask daddy” tactic works (and it does quite often). I get tired of all of the questions - but I do love to hear them sometimes (Why is bird poop white?).
Oh I love this post! My girls do accept the ‘I don’t know’ answer and I’m thankful they do because they know just the exact worst times to corner me with questions, it seems.
Oh and they’re ‘monkey-back’ rides in our house too - Ron started that one, but I can’t remember why… :)
He sounds absolutely adorable. If I don’t know the answer to something, often I’ll turn it back on them, “What do you think?” You get some insightful and some funny responses that way.
Yeah, the “what do you think” thing works well. When my kids were small and always asking for stuff when we were out shopping, I’d say, “Maybe next time,” and somehow that always worked!
Your son sounds a lot like my youngest. You know the whole “last one there’s a rotten egg” thing? When my kids were small, and they’d race from the car to the front door, the youngest always lost, because he was so much smaller. But he *hates* to lose at anything. So we ended up making it a good thing to be the rotten egg. Except he insisted it wasn’t “rotten egg”—it was “rotten pig.” So you’d hear us cheering, “Yay! You’re the rotten pig!” We still laugh about that.
Watermelanie - I love it! He sounds just adorable : )