One Foolproof Way to Get Your Kids Talking

Top Ten lists are quite popular. I thought about holding on to the idea for this article until I had nine more to go with it, but I'll throw caution to the wind and shrink that top ten list down to a "Top One." With kids all over the country starting back to school and dinner tables needing conversation starters, here is the number one way my wife and I get our kids to talk about their day...

... Insert drum roll... (I'm a band director. I can't help it.) ...

We Ask Questions.

What? That's it? Yep.

You see, what I realized at dinner sometime last year was that the asking part of "asking questions" is simple. "How was your day?" or "What did you do today?" are the perennial, no-thought-to-them greatest hits of question-asking. Unfortunately, those kinds of general questions usually get one kind of general response:

 "How was your day?" "Fine."
"What did you do today?" "We did some math, we had recess, we ate lunch..."

However, it is the "what" that we ask that can drastically improve the answers we receive. In my case, when I started asking questions that focused on one specific adjective, my children told my wife and I a whole bunch more than they would have otherwise volunteered. These adjectives don't need to have anything to do with school. As a matter of fact, it is probably better that they don't:

What did you do today that was fast?
What did you do today that was dark?
What did you do today that was rough?
What did you do that made you think?
What was sweet today?
What did you do today that was loud?
What did you do today that was tiny?
Etc. Etc. Etc.

Open ended questions like these are fun for kids to answer because they can be creative with their answers. My wife and I never know how they will reply. Not only that, but many times asking one of these questions is the beginning of a mini conversation that continues for quite a long time.

For example, when we recently asked my 6th grader "What did you do today that was dark?" she answered that the lights were turned off in her health classroom for a video. From there, she told us what the video was about, and that a boy clear across the room that had passed-gas rather loudly. From there the tangents flew from all five of us nearly as fast as that 6th grade boy's flatulence, and we had a great time as a family.

There is one caveat in asking these types of questions, though. By their nature, adjectives can describe more than one thing or event. Avoid boxing in your child's response when they ask questions like "What do you mean by 'shiny?'" Encourage them to answer however they want to. Asking "What was shiny today" could result in answers ranging from an art project to a teacher's bald head. It's all good. Ask your questions without preconceived notions.

I encourage you to give these kinds of questions a try. Ask as many as you can each night. You will be surprised at what you find out!

How do you get your kids talking about their day? Please leave your ideas below in the comments section!