Questions to Ask a Parent About Their Child
Intake questions for teachers, childminders, nannies, coaches, and anyone taking a child into their care: routines, medical needs, comfort strategies, transitions, and family practice. Ordered so the easy questions come first and the sensitive ones later.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is your child into right now?
Why ask it
An easy opener that gives you something to use on day one. Current obsessions date fast, so ask again in a month rather than treating the answer as fixed.
What are they good at, and what do they know they are good at?
Why ask it
The two are often different. A child who is competent at something but does not believe it needs different handling from one who is confident and still learning.
Where do they need more help than other children their age?
Why ask it
Parents often soften this, so listen for hesitation and follow it gently. What they name here should shape your first week rather than waiting for you to discover it.
What does a normal day at home look like, including meals and sleep?
Why ask it
Concrete times matter more than routines in the abstract. A child who eats at five and sleeps at seven will fall apart in a program that runs late, and that is predictable in advance.
Are there medical conditions, allergies, or medications I need to know about?
Why ask it
Ask for it in writing as well as out loud, including what an early reaction looks like and where the medication is kept. Verbal handovers of medical information are where mistakes happen.
Are there foods they will not eat, or that you would rather they did not have?
Why ask it
Distinguishes safety from preference and family rule, which parents often blur into one request. Knowing which is which stops you from either taking a risk or picking a needless fight at the table.
How do they let you know when they are tired, hungry, or overwhelmed?
Why ask it
The early signals are often small and specific: going quiet, getting silly, one particular complaint. Knowing them lets you intervene twenty minutes before the difficult part.
What actually helps when they are upset?
Why ask it
Ask for what works, not what should work. Some children need physical closeness and some need to be left alone in a corner for four minutes, and guessing wrong makes it worse.
How do they handle arriving somewhere new?
Why ask it
Slow to warm, straight in, or clingy then fine: each needs a different first morning. Ask what worked at the last handover they managed well.
How do they do with stopping one thing and starting another?
Why ask it
Transitions cause more incidents in group settings than any other single moment. If warnings help, ask how much notice and in what form, since a countdown helps some children and panics others.
How do they get on with other children? Any patterns you have noticed?
Why ask it
Parents see the version they get told about at pickup, which is still useful. Ask specifically about conflict, because a child who withdraws needs watching as much as one who hits.
What do you do at home when they are not listening or things have escalated?
Why ask it
You are checking what the child will expect from you, not judging how the parents do it. Where your setting cannot match their home practice, say so plainly at this point rather than later.
Are there words, phrases, or nicknames you use that I should use too?
Why ask it
Names for the toilet, for a comfort object, for feelings. Using the family's words removes a small friction from every hard moment in your day.
Is there anything about your family or your beliefs I should build into their day?
Why ask it
Prayer, dietary practice, holidays, languages spoken at home, who counts as family. Ask openly rather than assuming from a name or an address.
Who else is in their life that I might hear about?
Why ask it
Siblings, grandparents, a pet, a parent who works away. When a child mentions someone at a difficult moment, knowing who that is makes the difference between comforting them and getting it wrong.
Is there anything going on at home that might show up in their behavior?
Why ask it
Placed late on purpose, once trust has been established. A new baby, an illness, a separation, a house move: any of these explains two weeks of behavior you would otherwise misread.
How much do they do for themselves, and where do you still step in?
Why ask it
Ask about shoes, toilet, eating, tidying up. Both over helping and under helping cause trouble, and parents can usually give you the line precisely.
Do they have a comfort object, and does it come with them?
Why ask it
Also ask what happens if it is lost or forgotten, because at some point it will be. A plan agreed now is far better than one improvised at four in the afternoon.
What do you want them to get out of their time with me this year?
Why ask it
Parents' priorities vary more than you expect: friendships, school readiness, confidence, being somewhere safe while they work. Aligning to theirs prevents most later disagreements.
What else should I know that I have not thought to ask?
Why ask it
Always last. The most useful information in these conversations, an old fear, a past incident, something a previous setting handled badly, usually arrives through this door.
Running the intake conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting it up
- Book twenty to thirty minutes without the child present, or with something for them to do. Parents answer differently when their child is listening.
- Send the medical, allergy and emergency contact questions in writing beforehand and use the conversation for everything else. Written answers are the ones you need to be able to check later.
- Say at the start how the information will be used and who else will see it. Parents disclose more when they know the boundaries.
- Take notes visibly and read the important ones back. Being seen to write down an allergy is reassuring in a way that remembering it is not.
Getting past the polished answer
- Ask about the last specific instance rather than the general pattern: the last hard drop off, the last meltdown, the last good week. Detail is where the useful information is.
- When a parent softens something, repeat it back without softening and let them correct you. Many will then add the part they were hesitant to lead with.
- Do not ask questions that carry a right answer inside them. If your question tells the parent what a good parent would say, you have lost that answer.
- Expect a mismatch between what parents report and what you see. Both accounts are real; the child behaves differently in a group than at home.
What to do with what you hear
- Pick two or three things to act on in the first week rather than every suggestion at once. Tell the parent which two you picked.
- Where your setting cannot match home practice, say so in the conversation rather than letting the parent discover it. Bedtime, screens, and discipline are the usual places this bites.
- Report back within the first two weeks with one specific observation, good and unremarkable rather than a problem. It establishes that your updates are not only bad news.
- Revisit the list after a term. Interests, fears and routines shift, and an intake form from September is out of date by February.
When something serious comes up
- If a parent discloses a family illness, separation, or bereavement, ask only what you need in order to support the child and what the child has been told.
- Agree who else needs to know. Passing something sensitive to the whole staff room when one person needed it damages trust permanently.
- If anything raises a safeguarding concern, follow your setting's procedure rather than asking the parent more questions. That is not a conversation for an intake meeting.
- Keep sensitive notes where the policy says to keep them, and out of shared documents and group messages.