Children hate to answer strings of questions. More than one, or at most two, questions, and they become upset and resentful.
The reason is that children need predictable, well-defined roles. A child wants everybody to play their expected role to reduce the anxiety children feel when coming into contact with a complicated, confusing world.
In the adult-child interaction, the role of the adult is to answer questions and explain how everything works. Once an adult reverts the positions and starts firing off questions, the child perceives this as a betrayal. All of a sudden, you have flipped the roles and turned yourself into a questioning kid, pushing the child into the role of an adult. And the child doesn’t want that role.
As a child grows up, he will start trying out the role of “the person who has the answers”. This experimentation will probably be limited to a single sphere (a favorite activity or sport) and has to be initiated by the child.
Short version: they aren’t trying to be annoying when they go mute and resentful in response to your questions. They are trying to help you go back to being an adult.
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