Questions to Ask a Teenager About Life
Questions for parents, relatives and mentors who want a real conversation with a teenager about how things are going, the pressure about the future, friendships, and what they need from you.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How has this year gone compared with what you expected?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than asking how they are, because it gives them a comparison to work from rather than a mood to summarise. It also gets past the automatic "fine" that any direct question about wellbeing produces.
What is taking up most of your head at the moment?
Why ask it
Deliberately neutral, so it does not assume the answer is school. Teenagers often name something adults consider small, a group chat, a fallout, a deadline, and treating that as trivial is the fastest way to end the conversation.
What is the hardest part of a normal week for you?
Why ask it
Asking about the routine rather than about crises gets a more honest answer. Look for whether it is a specific lesson, a journey, a time of day or a person, because those are things you can sometimes actually change.
What are you good at that school does not measure?
Why ask it
Many teenagers are being graded constantly on a narrow set of skills and hear little about anything else. Their answer often surprises the adult asking, and it is worth remembering later, particularly during exam season.
What do adults get wrong about your life?
Why ask it
Invites criticism without making it personal, which is why it works better than asking what you get wrong. Expect to hear that adults underestimate how tiring the day is or how public everything feels. Listen without correcting the record.
What do you wish I would stop asking you about?
Why ask it
A risky question that usually improves things. You will hear about a specific repeated question, homework, university, a friend you keep mentioning, and dropping it for a month buys more goodwill than a dozen better conversations.
Who do you go to when something goes wrong?
Why ask it
The important part is whether they can name anyone at all. A friend, a cousin, a coach or an older sibling is a good answer even if it is not you. "Nobody, I just deal with it" is the answer to follow up on gently and not let pass.
What is your friendship group actually like at the moment?
Why ask it
The word actually is doing the work, because the default answer is that it is fine. Groups shift constantly at this age, and hearing that they are on the edge of one, or holding one together, explains a great deal of behaviour at home.
Has anyone drifted away this year?
Why ask it
Losing a friendship without a falling-out is common and rarely mentioned, because it does not feel like an event worth reporting. Naming it out loud tends to matter more than adults expect, and it often explains a change in mood nobody could account for.
How much pressure do you feel about what happens after school?
Why ask it
Ask before you ask about their plans. If the pressure is high, questions about the plan itself will read as more of it, and you will get a defensive answer to a question you thought was supportive.
Do you feel like you are supposed to have it figured out by now?
Why ask it
Most will say yes, and saying so is a relief. It also gives you an opening to be specific about how long it took you, or people you know, to arrive anywhere, which is more useful than general reassurance.
What would you do with a free year and enough money to live on?
Why ask it
Removes the two constraints that dominate their thinking and shows you what is underneath. Take the answer as information about their interests rather than as a plan to be assessed, and resist the urge to point out the practical problems.
What does a good life look like to you at thirty?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be about circumstances rather than careers: where they live, who is around, whether they are stressed. That is more revealing than any question about jobs, and it often shows you which of your own assumptions they have absorbed.
When do you feel most like yourself?
Why ask it
Usually produces a place or an activity rather than a company of people. Whatever it is, it deserves protecting, and knowing it makes it obvious which commitments in an overloaded week should be the first to go.
What does your phone give you, and what does it cost you?
Why ask it
Asking both halves is what stops this being a lecture in disguise. Teenagers are often more critical of their own use than adults expect, but only when the question does not arrive with a conclusion already attached.
What do you do when you feel bad, and does it help?
Why ask it
The second half is the real question, and it lets them evaluate their own coping without being told. If what you hear worries you, do not react in the moment. Keep listening, then follow it up privately and calmly afterwards.
What have you changed your mind about recently?
Why ask it
Shows you take their thinking seriously as thinking. It also tends to surface an opinion they hold strongly and have not aired at home, which is often the most interesting conversation available to you.
What is something you did this year that you are quietly proud of?
Why ask it
The word quietly gives permission to name something small that nobody noticed. Answers frequently involve helping someone or getting through something rather than achievements, and those are the ones worth remembering back to them later.
What do you want more of from me?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and then be quiet. The answers are usually concrete and manageable, more lifts, fewer questions in front of other people, being trusted about one specific thing. Asking and then not acting is worse than not asking.
Is there anything you have wanted to talk about but not known how to bring up?
Why ask it
Leave this until the end, and accept a no without pushing. Having been asked once tends to matter later, and a teenager who says not right now has been told the door is open, which is most of what this question is for.
How to have this conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting it up
Sit side by side rather than face to face
Car journeys, washing up, walking the dog and late evenings all work better than a conversation announced in advance. Removing eye contact lowers the stakes, and a teenager who can end the conversation by getting out of the car is more likely to start one.
Ask one question, not the list
Two or three questions in a conversation is plenty. Working through a set of twenty turns into an interview, and the later questions here need a level of trust that is destroyed by the sense of being processed.
Do not open with the thing you are worried about
If you are anxious about grades, the phone, or a particular friend, start somewhere else. Leading with your concern tells them the conversation has a purpose, and everything after that will be answered defensively.
While they are talking
- Let the silences run. Teenagers often answer properly on the second attempt, after the short version.
- Ask what happened next rather than offering a solution. Most of these questions need a listener, not a plan.
- Do not correct the facts. Being told they are wrong about their own experience ends the conversation reliably.
- Keep your face steady if you hear something alarming. Reaction in the moment is what stops the next disclosure.
- Take a no. Refusing to answer is a legitimate response, and respecting it is why they will answer something else later.
Things that shut it down
Turning the answer into a lesson
Following an honest answer with what you learned at their age converts a conversation into a lecture. Save the parallel for a different day, or let them ask for it.
Repeating it to other people
Anything said in one of these conversations that reappears at dinner, or in front of a sibling, will be the last thing you hear. Confidentiality matters more at this age than at any other.
Acting on it visibly and immediately
Telling you about a friendship problem and then finding you have contacted the school teaches them the cost of talking. Unless there is a safety issue, agree what happens next with them first.
If you hear something serious
If a teenager tells you something that suggests they are being harmed, or thinking about harming themselves, stay calm and stay with the conversation rather than moving straight to solutions. Thank them for telling you, ask how long it has been going on, and say plainly that you want to get some help alongside them. Then contact your doctor, the school, or a local crisis line the same day. Handling it quietly and promptly is more useful to them than either panic or delay.