Why Kids Say Yes To Questions They Don't Fully Understand
We have a loop in our house. My son messes with his sister, not out of malice, out of the dopamine hit he gets from her reaction. She tells him to stop. He doesn't. She can't get through to him with words, so eventually she bites, kicks, hits, or scratches, because that's the one response she's learned actually works. It's predictable enough that I could set a clock to it. He ends up in front of me crying because he got hurt. She ends up in front of me crying because he wouldn't leave her alone.
I have two separate conversations every time this happens. With her, it's about using her words instead of her hands, and about coming to us the moment he won't stop instead of handling it herself. And of course the other question is one I've asked probably two hundred times: "do you understand why we don't hit, bite, scratch, or kick?"
She says yes. Every time. Fast, certain, no hesitation.
And every time, we're back here again within the week.
For a long time I read that as defiance, or as the lesson just not sticking yet. It isn't either one.
Why the yes doesn't mean what it sounds like
Young children have a well documented tendency to answer difficult yes or no questions affirmatively, even when they know the correct answer is no (Fritzley & Lee, 2003). It isn't dishonesty. It's the path of least resistance when a question is harder to process than it looks. "Do you understand why we don't hit" is exactly that kind of question, abstract, hard to disconfirm in the moment, and in the calm few minutes after a meltdown, agreeing is simply the fastest way out of the conversation.
This connects to a broader gap in how young kids handle language like "can," "maybe," and "understand." A 2026 study in Child Development found the same pattern in how preschoolers process possibility and certainty: at 3, most kids couldn't reliably tell the difference between something possible and something certain, and by 4, most could, though not all (Leahy, 2026). Children often give the answer that sounds correct well before they actually hold the concept behind it (Cournane et al., 2025).
Put those two things together, and a confident yes stops looking like proof of anything. It's not evidence a child understands why hitting is off the table. It's evidence they've learned that yes is the answer that ends this particular conversation the fastest.
What actually tells us what a kid understands
Researchers found something practically useful buried in their own study method. They asked the same comprehension question twice, worded differently each time. A lot of kids who got it wrong on the first round got it right on the second, once the question stopped sounding like a test they'd already decided to pass with a yes.
That's the real fix. Not "do you understand," which can be answered on autopilot with zero information exchanged, but a question that requires a child to generate an answer instead of confirm one. Instead of "do you understand why we don't hit," try "if your brother won't stop, what can you do instead of hitting him?" Instead of "do you understand why that hurts him," try "what happens to him when you hit him?" If a child genuinely knows, they'll tell you, and now you actually know they know. If they don't, you find that out immediately, in the conversation, instead of the next time it happens. Open ended questions help us understand what they comprehend better than a yes or no question… go figure.
One boundary worth naming
This only works for questions that are actually checking understanding. "Did you brush your teeth" isn't a knowledge gap, it's a yes or no report of an observable fact, and rewording that kind of question after a shaky answer teaches something different, that the first answer doesn't count.
Bottom line
A comprehension question done right doesn't just check understanding, it locates it. It tells you what a child has, what they don't have yet, and exactly where you need to keep teaching, before the next incident instead of after it.
If you’re stuck in a loop like this one, and you’re not sure whether your kid’s yes means what you think it means, and how to help with comprehension, impulse control, how to handle the aftermath of hitting, biting, scratching, sibling fighting — all of it, that’s exactly the kind of pattern we untangle on a discovery call. Book one here:
By Lauren Greeno
Child & Adolescent Development Specialist & Parenting Coach | Founder, The Parenting Collaborative
Lauren specializes in helping parents understand invisible dynamics shaping their children’s development and redesigning family systems before patterns calcify into adult identity. With expertise in child development, family systems theory, and trauma-informed parenting, she works with families navigating sibling dynamics, only child considerations, neurodivergence, emotional regulation, and breaking generational patterns.
Work with Lauren: Book a discovery call | Learn more| Instagram | TikTok
References:
Cournane, A., Dieuleveut, A., Repetti-Ludlow, C., & Hacquard, V. (2025). Word learning challenges explain nonadult possibility language comprehension in preschoolers. Developmental Psychology, 62, 1048–1066. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0002061
Fritzley, V., & Lee, K. (2003). Do young children always say yes to yes-no questions? A metadevelopmental study of the affirmation bias. Child Development, 74, 1297–1313. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00608
Leahy, B. (2026). Comprehension of "can" predicts performance on a nonverbal measure of modal concepts at 48 but not 36 months. Child Development. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/chidev/aacag108
