{"id":106744,"date":"2019-10-10T12:47:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T17:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=106744"},"modified":"2021-05-29T15:14:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T20:14:06","slug":"24-better-questions-to-ask-kids-about-how-their-day-went","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/relationships\/fatherhood\/24-better-questions-to-ask-kids-about-how-their-day-went\/","title":{"rendered":"24 Better Questions to Ask Kids About How Their Day Went"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Father<\/a><\/p>\n

It used to be that when my kids would come home from school, I\u2019d ask them the two questions parents have been asking their children since the dawn of mandatory education: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you do in school today?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow was your day today?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Their answers to these queries were as invariable as the rising and setting of the sun: \u201cNothing\u201d and \u201cGood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was bugged by those content-less replies, but I don\u2019t know why I expected anything different. After all, that\u2019s what I told my mom when I was a lad and she asked me what I\u2019d been up to. <\/span><\/p>\n

I really do want to know what\u2019s going on in my kids\u2019 lives and what they\u2019re learning at school; I\u2019d like to have slightly more expansive conversations with them. So I figured there had to be a better way to get them to open up when we\u2019re hanging out at the end of the day. And indeed, there is.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Few Ground Rules<\/h3>\n

Don\u2019t barrage them with questions right away. <\/b>Think back to when you were a kid and your parents hit you with a ton of questions about school as soon as you walked through the door. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was annoying. <\/span><\/p>\n

You just wanted to decompress and play some SNES while eating a Dunkaroo rather than getting the third degree about your day. <\/span><\/p>\n

Well, your kid probably feels the same way. So give her some time to relax a little instead of going into \u201cHow was your day?\u201d questions as soon as she gets home from school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, if you don\u2019t work from home like me, you probably won\u2019t see your kids until you\u2019re done with your day at the office. In that case, dinnertime will be a good chance to catch up on how your children\u2019s day went. (<\/span>Here are some more tips for getting the most out of family meals<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep it open ended. <\/b>Don\u2019t only ask \u201cclosed\u201d yes or no questions, which have a tendency to shut down the conversation. Instead, ask more open-ended questions that elicit more expansive answers; these usually begin with What, How, and Why.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t ask for a blow-by-blow account of their day. <\/b>Imagine if someone asked you \u201cSo what was the first thing you did at work? And then what did you do? And then what did you do after that? And after that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019d want to karate chop them in the throat. Most of what you do at work is boring and repetitive, and not something you want to recount to someone else. <\/span><\/p>\n

Well, your kid feels the same way about school. So don\u2019t ask for a blow-by-blow rundown of his day because it usually doesn\u2019t change all that much. Instead, focus your questions on anomalies he experienced that day (suggestions on that below).<\/span><\/p>\n

Try again later if they\u2019re not engaging. <\/b>If, despite your best efforts, your kids aren\u2019t engaging in conversation, abort mission and try again later. They probably don\u2019t want to talk right then, but maybe they\u2019ll want to later. <\/span><\/p>\n

Better Questions to Ask Your Kids About How Their Day Went<\/h3>\n

Below is a list of questions that I\u2019ve experimented with and gotten good mileage from when asking my kids about their school day. I\u2019ve found that focusing questions on anomalies elicits the most response; it\u2019s that kind of stuff that sticks out in their memory and that they enjoy recounting. So ask your kids questions about weird, funny, awkward, or unique moments that happened during their day.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What was for lunch? (People like to talk about food and kids are people. This single question rarely fails to elicit five minutes of chatter from my kids about how gross or good the school lunch was that day.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. What was the funniest thing that happened today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Did someone get in big trouble at school today? What did they do?<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Did you make a new friend today? What do you like about them? (This question is probably best suited for younger kids. If you\u2019re asking a 13-year-old if they made new friends that day, you\u2019re probably going to get eyerolls.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. What did you do at recess today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Who did you play with at recess? <\/span><\/li>\n
  7. What special classes (i.e., art, music, PE) did you do today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. What did you notice today at school that other people probably didn\u2019t notice?<\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Was anyone kind to you today? How were you kind to others?<\/span><\/li>\n
  10. Were you able to help someone today with a problem?<\/span><\/li>\n
  11. Were any of your buddies not at school today? Do you know why they were gone?<\/span><\/li>\n
  12. Did anything weird or embarrassing happen today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  13. What would you change about school? <\/span><\/li>\n
  14. What did you like best about today? <\/span><\/li>\n
  15. What was the easiest thing you did today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  16. What was the hardest thing you did today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  17. Who do you sit next to in class? Tell me about them.<\/span><\/li>\n
  18. What\u2019s something new that you learned today? What\u2019s something new you <\/span>did<\/span><\/i> today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  19. Did your teacher or classmate give you any compliments?<\/span><\/li>\n
  20. Got any big field trips coming up?<\/span><\/li>\n
  21. Who is your favorite teacher this year? (Good for older kids who have multiple teachers.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  22. Who is your least favorite teacher this year?<\/span><\/li>\n
  23. What\u2019s one thing you\u2019re grateful for today?<\/span><\/li>\n
  24. Were you brave today? How?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It used to be that when my kids would come home from school, I\u2019d ask them the two questions parents have been asking their children since the dawn of mandatory education:  \u201cWhat did you do in school today?\u201d And: \u201cHow was your day today?\u201d Their answers to these queries were as invariable as the rising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[253,6,42285],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-106744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fatherhood","category-featured","category-relationships"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/10\/questionskids-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/10\/questionskids-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/10\/questionskids-320x197.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/10\/questionskids-640x394.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106744"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123440,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106744\/revisions\/123440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106744"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=106744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}