Who Questions
Teaching children to answer "who" builds social awareness, understanding of roles, and recognition of relationships.
What Are Who Questions?
Who questions ask children to identify people — by name, role, relationship, or characteristics. They develop social cognition and awareness of others.
- "Who is that?"
- "Who is cooking dinner?"
- "Who helps sick people?"
Answering who questions requires recognizing people, understanding roles and jobs, and sometimes inferring who did something based on context.
When Do Children Learn Who Questions?
Who questions develop alongside social awareness, typically emerging around age 2-3:
Ages 2-2.5
Children can answer "Who is this?" for familiar family members and respond by pointing or naming.
Ages 2.5-3
Children identify people by roles they can see ("Who is driving the bus?" → "The driver").
Ages 3-4
Children answer questions about community helpers and understand that people have jobs and roles.
Ages 4-5
Children can infer who did something in a story and answer questions about character relationships.
Who questions build social cognition — the ability to think about other people's actions, roles, and perspectives.
Teaching Who Questions
Start with family
"Who is this?" with photos of family members. Children know these people and can name them easily.
Teach community helpers
Doctor, firefighter, teacher, police officer — learning roles helps answer "Who helps us when...?"
Use action context
"Who is running?" in a picture. Children learn to identify people by what they're doing.
Read character stories
Books with clear characters provide natural practice: "Who found the treasure?" "Who was kind?"
Play "who did it?"
Simple detective games where children figure out who performed an action based on clues.
Examples by Difficulty
Easier (visible/familiar)
- Who is this? (photo of mom)
- Who is eating the apple? (boy in picture)
- Who is your teacher?
Medium (roles)
- Who flies airplanes?
- Who takes care of animals at the zoo?
- Who brings letters to our house?
Harder (inference)
- Who do you think broke the vase?
- Who would you call if there was a fire?
- Who is the main character in the story?
Coming to Our App
Who questions will join our WH Questions app in a future update, featuring illustrated scenarios to practice identifying people and roles.
Learn more about our Why app→