Who is generally closer to the kids, mom or dad?

(it's a funny riddle)

My thunder comes before the lightning; my lightning comes before clouds; my rain dries all the land it touches. What am I?

A rubber ball keeps on bouncing back to 2/3 of the height from which it is dropped. Can you calculate the fraction of its original height that the ball will bounce after it is dropped and it has bounced four times without any hindrance ?

Andrew’s doctor gives him three pills and tells him to take one every half hour. How much time will have passed by the time Andrew’s taken all three pills?

A swan sits at the center of a perfectly circular lake. At an edge of the lake stands a ravenous monster waiting to devour the swan. The monster can not enter the water, but it will run around the circumference of the lake to try to catch the swan as soon as it reaches the shore. The monster moves at 4 times the speed of the swan, and it will always move in the direction along the shore that brings it closer to the swan the quickest. Both the swan and the the monster can change directions in an instant.
The swan knows that if it can reach the lake's shore without the monster right on top of it, it can instantly escape into the surrounding forest.

How can the swan successfully escape?

What is in seasons, seconds, centuries and minutes but not in decades, years or days?

I have nine bottles of wine and one of the nine bottles is poisoned.
I need to find the poisoned bottle with two facts
(1) Poison is deadly, only a sip will cost death
(2) I have two mice to do so.

How should I do it?

Name one eight-letter word with 'kst' in the middle, 'in' the beginning, 'and' at the end.?

Two batsman each on 94 runs. Seven runs needed to win in last 3 balls. Both make 100*. How?

Can you find the next number in the below sequence
3 , 7 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 17 ?