I don’t know about you, but getting my kids to open up can sometimes be difficult. Simple prompts like, “Tell me about your day” or “What did you do at school today?” are often met with one-word responses. “Nothing,” “It was boring,” and “I don’t remember” are all frequent replies.
Then one day I was finishing up a Simple Show podcast just as Wild Man got in the car after school. At the end of each podcast, Tsh asks her guest a series of 10 short questions. Wild Man LOVED this idea and asked if we could “do questions” too.
So we each answered the questions Tsh asked her guest and all of a sudden I was getting all sorts of interesting information from my child. Wild Man even asked, “Can we continue on with our questions?” once we got home. Never one to skip an opportunity to connect, I said “Of course!” and quickly searched the internet for more questions. We happily spent the rest of the evening asking each other questions.
Since then, at least once a week Wild Man or Bunny will ask if we can “continue on with our questions”. They especially like to do this over dinner or in the car.
This simple game has changed the way I connect with my kids and allows me to peek into their hearts. It teaches our kids that we are interested in them, that we want to know what makes them tick and we want them to know what makes us tick.
To say that I love playing the question game would be an enormous understatement. It has become my favorite part of each week.
That being said, Bunny is two, so sometimes her answer to every question is the same. But sometimes she shares real stuff, like who her best friend is and what her favorite way to get messy is. Those moments are precious.
This has also turned out to be a great way to practice reading with Wild Man. He loves to search for questions and read them to us. He can’t always read or understand every word, but that gives us a great opportunity as parents to help him sound out the word and explain concepts like admiration.
Wild Man and I sat down and intended to pick 10 of our favorite questions to share with you. We ended up picking 40.
I know, 40 seems like a lot, but even when you are saying, “Tell me more about that” and “Why do you feel that way?” the questions move pretty quickly. And trust me on this one, you want this game to end.
I’ve made a free 40 Questions list for you to download for free.
So how about you? How do you connect with your kids? What tips and tricks do you use to get them to open up?
May 31, 2016 at 3:58 pm
I love this idea!
May 31, 2016 at 10:12 pm
Thank you! We love it too!