How was school today? Fine, Good or Boring. These single word answers are common from children, when parents ask them about their school day. These natural questions will reflect with one word answers and make the children get habituated with this kind of response.

Replacing the regular questions will get the right and expected answers from children. “Who played with you today?” and the odd “What are you learning in math this week?” or “Which period did you enjoy most today?” These questions are different from the regular ones and make them to tell about their daily routine.

Sometimes parents have no time for a real conversation and in other cases, they just can’t think of what to ask. Parents have to look for their children that they would share their stories that contains awesome things that they have done, but parents don’t know how to make it happen. Open-ended and specific questions makes children to give more clear answers. So parents can have idea about their children daily life after them leaving the house.

Questions like “Tell me something that made you laugh today” looks fun. But few are better for getting children to talk about things that frustrate them, like “ is there anyone in your class who need a time out?”. Talking about the bad is just as important as the good. They’ll give you a chance to show your children the best ways to deal with life’s challenges. Be sure to try out these next time when your family sits down for dinner, you might get some surprising answers!

With few modifications these questions will work for all age groups of children:

1. What was the best/worst thing happened at school today?

2. If I called your teacher, What would she tell me about you?

3. How did you help somebody today?

4. Tell me one thing that you learned today.

5. When were you the happiest/bored today?

6. What word did your teacher say most today?

7. Where do you play the most at leisure time?

8. If you could choose who would you like to sit by in class?

9. Who is the funniest person in your class?

10. Think about what you learned and did in school today.

11. What’s something you’d like to know more about?

12. Tell me about those moments when you felt disrespected by anyone?

13. Tell me about a conversation you had with a classmate ?

14. What do you appreciate about your day?

Tips for How to Ask Questions

How and when parents ask these questions will make a huge difference in children’s responses. Parents can ask one or two questions in a day so they can easily sort out which question gives the best responses. While these questions being asked by the parents they need to be focused that it will make children feels parents have their full attention.

Make these conversations habituated with children and ensure them to share their achievements and worries happened in their daily routine. This will make children to share their feelings with their parents.

Suggestions to follow in conversations:

Below given suggestions can help to build a positive and powerful conversations with children:

• When children explaining their experience do not interrupt them. This is an effective rule for any conversation, to get much possible information out of them.
• Asking more to extend the conversation with children and complement them with their work.
• After children’s explanation of their particular experience to the parent, ask them “what was their feel at that moment”and parents should notice their feelings.
• If children felt okay then encourage them to saying they are okay.
• Tell them it’s not okay for teachers or kids to be unkind or mean. If children tell a story about their teacher yelled at them. Encourage them to treat the adults in a same way.
• Always complement their honesty and willingness to share their daily routine. This will improve their confidence in telling you more.

Try to interact with the children in the odd ways to extract the uncovered issues that wouldn’t be exposed by the children. As they become elder stay engaged with the children to understand them better and make them comfortable with all requirements.