HOW DO WE ASK OUR CHILDREN QUESTIONS? Practical tips to relate to them better.

Do you also happen to ask your children every day: “so, how was school today?”, and systematically receive as an answer a simple “fine”, not very gratifying?

Or to ask: “what did you do today?” and to hear as an answer “nothing”, decidedly disarming?

I think this is a common experience for many of us.

How can we improve our communication skills with our children?

What are the most effective questions to ask?

And what can be a different way to communicate with them?

Here is an interesting list of alternative and fun questions to propose, useful to break the ice and deepen the conversation with our children:

1) What was the best thing that happened to you at school today? Or: What was the happiest moment today?

These questions are my favourite because they get the child talking about positive aspects of the day. In some cases, however, it can be just as effective to ask the same question in a negative way:

What was the worst thing that happened at school today?

2) What made you laugh the most today?

3) Where is the nicest place in school?

4) Who would you like to sit next to in class?

5) What did you learn today?

6) Who did you help today? Or: Who helped you today?

7) What is the strangest word you heard today?

8) If your teacher called me tonight, what would she tell me about you?

9) When were you bored today?

10) If an alien spacecraft landed in your classroom and abducted someone, who would you want it to be?

11) Who would you have wanted to play with today that you didn’t play with?

12) Which word did your teacher say most often today?

13) What do you think should be taught or learned more at school?

14) What do you think should be taught or learned less at school?

15) Who could you be nicer to in class?

16) Who is the funniest person in your class?

17) Why is he or she so funny?

18) What did you like that you ate today?

19) If you grew up to be a teacher or master, what would you teach your pupils?

20) Which of your classmates was the happiest today? And why?

21) Which of your classmates was the most tired today? And why?

22) If you could change something in the class, what would you change?

23) If you could swap your classmates’ seats, how would you swap them?

24) How did you use your pencil today in school?

25) Which book did you use the most today?

The particularity of these questions allows us to introduce new follow-up questions. They help to surprise children with new content, which they have to pay attention to in order to answer.

This new mode fosters the relationship and allows the parent to receive information that was previously inaccessible, useful for understanding important affective dynamics of the child: they can find out who they get along with in class, who they get along with less, what emotions they feel, what feelings they have at school. And the answers we get are sometimes very surprising.

It is important to invest time conversing with your children, only then can we build a relationship based on dialogue and trust. Let us at least put aside our mobile phones and tablets when we are at home and devote ourselves to the most important thing in our lives: our family!