Wondering what to ask children after school? Wondering if there’s anything you shouldn’t ask? Sick of having monosyllabic answers to your questions? We can help! We got some terrific advice from a Life Education Trust Educator on the topic!
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You pick your kid up from school or after-school care and as they hurl their school bag in the car you ask, “How was your day?”
The response?
“Great!” or “Good!” or “fine!” or another monosyllabic answer, which they don’t seem too keen on elaborating on.
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re certainly not alone – it’s the way that after school or after work conversation often goes. So, how do we change things?
Ingrid Kemp is a Nelson-based Life Education Trust Educator and has plenty of tips for starting meaningful conversations with your kids – and how to help them foster great friendships and really find their rhythm at school this year.
So, what does she suggest doing during that first interaction after school?
“Rather than asking, ‘how was your day?’ and getting a very general ‘great’, followed by you asking, ‘what did you do?’ – to which the reply is likely, ‘I can’t remember,’ we can try asking more enriching questions,” she says.
She suggests asking a couple of these questions instead:
- What made you laugh today?
- Did you make anything today?
- What was the best part of school today?
- Was there a new word you learnt today?
- Who would you like to play with tomorrow that you haven’t played with before?
- Who’s the funniest person in your class? Why?
- Did you get to answer a question in class today?
- Was there a story after lunch today?
- Did you help anyone today?
- Did anyone help you today?
These are especially important conversations to have during these first few months of the school year, when many kids are still finding their feet.
Although, if you’ve been worrying about your child settling into school again, she says there’s good news. “Our kids tend to be way more resilient than we give them credit for,” she says.
“it can be so easy as a parent to over worry. But most teachers will have started the year with lots of social activities to build strong classroom connections and expectations of how we treat one another.”
However, she says, if you notice your child appearing different in some way like withdrawing, being overly frustrated or even more tearful than normal, then acknowledging this for the child and allowing them the time and space to express these feelings safely is an important first step.
“Saying something like, ‘I can see your really upset today, do you need a hug? Is there anything that is making you feel this way?’ Often the people they feel most secure with they will open up to. This is when we can talk to them about ways to calm down from some of those big feelings. Slow deep breaths is a great example as they can do this at school anytime.”
Ingrid says we can help our children develop and foster meaningful friendships at school by ensuring we’re having good conversations with our children ourselves, and modelling what friendship and acceptance looks like.
“One of the analogies we use at Life Education is to discuss all the things we would possibly need to grow something,” she says. “After they list the literal list like soil, a seed etc. we talk about what a seed needs to grow and be nurtured. They need water and sunshine. So, we then think what do we need to do to establish and nurture a good friendship. It’s things like being encouraging, sharing, being kind, being patient etc. When we first plant a seed, we don’t instantly get a flower the next day, it takes time. So do good strong friendships.”
