IF you feel like you're near the major prize in the Hot Seat chair on Channel 9 after a day with your young child, there's good reason.

Mothers get asked an astonishing 288 questions every day by their little ones, a study by online retailer Littlewoods reveals.

Mother's life going to waste

Girls aged four are the most curious, asking 390 questions per day - averaging a question every one minute 56 seconds of their waking day, Daily Mail reported.

The report, which surveyed 1,000 mothers with children aged between two and ten, looked at a typical day at home with the children for a mother and when they have to field the most queries.

From breakfast at 7.19am to tea time at 7.59pm, the average mother faces a testing 12.5 hour day of questioning - working out at one question every two minutes 36 seconds.

It is during meal times when most questions are asked, with young children rattling off 11. This is closely followed by a routine trip to the shops, prompting 10.

Some 82 per cent of infants apparently go to their mother first rather than their father if they have a query. A quarter of children, 24 per cent, said they do this because their father will just say ‘ask your mum’.

In all, a mother’s knowledge is in such demand the study found they are asked around 105,120 questions a year by their children.

The research found the number of questions asked by children differs with age and gender, with four-year-old girls being the most inquisitive. At the other end of the spectrum, nine-year-old boys are more content with their knowledge, asking a mere 144 questions per day.

Although the number of questions children ask falls with age, they increase in difficulty -so much so that 82 per cent of mothers admit they can’t answer them.