Questions to Ask My Kids
Twenty questions to ask your own children, starting with the easy daily ones and moving toward friendships, worries, and what they wish you understood. Includes notes on when children answer best, how to adjust for age, and what to do with an answer you did not want to hear.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was the best part of your day?
Why ask it
'Fine' is the standard answer to anything broader, so this narrows the day to one moment, which is far easier to retrieve. If you get 'nothing' several days running, the problem is usually timing rather than the child: try it while you are both doing something else.
Who did you sit with at lunch today?
Why ask it
Lunch and recess are the unsupervised parts of the day, and who they sat with is the quickest read on where they stand socially. A different name every week, or a long pause before answering, tells you more than any general question about friends.
What made you laugh today?
Why ask it
Children will describe something funny in detail when they will not describe anything else, so this is often the way into a longer conversation. It also tracks what they find funny, which changes faster than parents expect.
What was the hardest part of your day?
Why ask it
Naming a low point in a house where that is ordinary is what makes a child willing to name a serious one later. Keep your reaction small. Solving it immediately teaches them that reporting a problem starts a process they cannot stop.
What is something you are looking forward to?
Why ask it
Anticipation is easy to talk about, and the answer shows what they are counting on, which is worth knowing before you reschedule it by accident. Having nothing ahead for weeks is itself worth noticing.
If you could plan one whole day for our family, what would we do?
Why ask it
This puts them in charge and shows what they think family time is for. Expect requests cheaper and duller than what you have been planning: very often it is a day at home with you not looking at your phone.
If you had a superpower for one day, what would you use it for?
Why ask it
The power matters less than the use. Some children fix things for other people, some escape, some want to be unseen. Invisibility is a common answer and usually about not being watched or judged rather than anything worrying.
What are you good at that nobody ever notices?
Why ask it
Children have real skills no adult grades: settling arguments, noticing when someone is upset, holding everything about one narrow subject in their head. Naming one they never get credit for lands harder than praise for schoolwork.
What did you do this week that you are proud of, even if nobody saw it?
Why ask it
Pride that does not need an audience is the kind that lasts, and the answer shows what standards they hold when nobody is checking. If every answer involves a grade, a score or a win, the standards are all borrowed from adults.
Which grown-up outside our family do you like being around?
Why ask it
Every child needs at least one adult besides you they would actually talk to, and it is better to know who that is. The reason they give, a coach who stays calm or an aunt who does not interrupt, also tells you what feels missing at home.
Is there anyone in your class having a hard time right now?
Why ask it
Asking about someone else lets a child raise something painful without owning it, and sometimes the classmate having a hard time is them. It also shows how they treat a person who is struggling, which beats asking whether they are kind.
Have you felt left out this year? What happened?
Why ask it
Exclusion is specific and memorable, and children rarely volunteer it because they assume it reflects badly on them. Ask about one occasion rather than in general. If the answer comes instantly and in detail, it is still live.
Is there a rule in this house you think is unfair?
Why ask it
Inviting the complaint gets you the real objection instead of nightly resistance at the point of enforcement. You do not have to change the rule. Explaining the reason once, calmly, does more than repeating it ten times.
What do you wish I would stop doing?
Why ask it
This is harder to hear than to ask, and the answer is usually about manner rather than substance: the reminders, the comparisons, the questions asked in front of other people. Whatever they name, do not defend it in the same conversation.
What is something you wish I understood about you?
Why ask it
Children carry a private sense of being misread, often about school, a sibling, or being treated as younger than they feel. Hearing it out loud can dissolve a resentment you did not know was accumulating.
When you are upset, do you want me to help fix it or just sit with you?
Why ask it
Most children know which one they want, and most adults guess wrong under pressure. Getting an explicit answer now saves the argument during the next upset, when neither of you is thinking clearly.
What are you worried about right now?
Why ask it
A worry named at bedtime is usually the real one, and it is often smaller and stranger than a parent would guess. Resist reassurance as your first move: 'that sounds scary' keeps them talking, 'you will be fine' ends it.
What is the hardest thing about being your age?
Why ask it
This treats their age as a real situation rather than a stage to get through, which is why it tends to draw an unusually honest answer. Listen for the things they have no control over yet, because those are what they feel most.
What would you try if you knew you could not be bad at it?
Why ask it
Fear of being bad at something quietly narrows a childhood, and taking it out of the question lets you hear an interest they have already dropped. What they name is often cheap to arrange and better done privately.
When you are grown up, what do you hope you remember about being a kid in this house?
Why ask it
This asks a child to look at their own life from outside, which older children can do and usually enjoy. The answers point at what is genuinely working at home, and they are almost never the expensive things.
How to actually get answers from your own children
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
When to ask
Children answer better without eye contact and without an audience. The car, a walk, washing up together and the ten minutes after lights out are all better than sitting them down opposite you. Avoid the first half hour after school, when most kids are hungry and out of words. One question per session is plenty, and a question asked and dropped is more likely to be answered a day later than one pressed on the spot.
Adjusting for age
Under six
Concrete and single-clause. 'Who did you play with?' works, 'what made you proud?' rarely does. Expect answers about the last twenty minutes rather than the day, and expect the same answer repeated for a week.
Six to nine
Fairness is the live subject at this age, so questions about rules and about who is being left out get long answers. This is the easiest window for the harder questions on this list, and worth using before it closes.
Ten to twelve
Social standing starts to outrank everything, and direct questions about friends get shut down. Ask about someone else in the class, or about a group, and you will hear where they sit in it.
Teenagers
Assume a short window and no follow-up. Ask one thing, accept whatever you get without cross-examination, and do not repeat it back to them later as evidence. Teenagers talk to adults who have proved they can be told something and not act on it.
What to do with the answer
- Say less than you want to. A pause is usually what produces the second, more honest sentence.
- Do not fix the first problem you hear unless they ask. Most complaints are being told to you, not handed over.
- Ask 'what happened next?' rather than 'why?'. Why makes a child feel accused and produces a defense.
- Never quote an answer back in front of a sibling or a guest. One breach of that ends the whole practice.
- If the answer is about you, thank them, change nothing that day, and change something within the week.
Where parents go wrong
Interrogating after a bad day
A run of questions when you already suspect something is wrong reads as an investigation. If you have a specific worry, name it yourself instead of hunting: 'you have seemed flat this week' gets further than four questions in a row.
Only asking the deep ones
The easy daily questions are what make the serious ones possible. A parent who only appears with a big question has taught the child that big questions mean trouble.
Reacting to the answer you feared
Visible alarm is filed as 'do not tell her that again'. Whatever you hear, keep your face and your voice ordinary, and do the worrying afterwards.
Treating a non-answer as refusal
Shrugs are often about not having the words yet rather than not wanting to talk. Offering two options, or answering the question yourself first, usually unlocks it.