9 Creative Questions To Ask Your Teen After School Today
I have a wonderfully practical tip for you that you can use today.
School is now officially in full swing. Your teenager may be loving life or just barely surviving. Either way, this may be a daily challenge for you. Yes, I am talking about the after school conversation. You haven't seen each other all day and you may be the first one to make contact.
You know how the script usually goes. How was school today? Fine. Do you have any homework tonight? Yup/Nope. Silence.
You are probably both tired of this daily, joyless routine.
You want to connect with your son, but you may not know how to do something different. It can be disheartening to try so hard to relate to your son in a positive way and get little to no response.
It is possible that you just need a new script.
Here are 9 creative questions to ask your teenager after school today.
What was the best/worst part of your day?
When were you bored today?
Tell me something that made you laugh today.
When were you the happiest today?
If you had to do today over again, what would you do differently?
What surprised you about today?
Tell me two things you learned today that could save the world.
How did you help somebody today? or How did somebody help you today?
Tell me about something weird that happened today.
You can probably pick out the theme here. Curiosity plus open-ended questions. None of these questions can be answered with a yes, no or a grunt. They all require a more complete response and encourage your teen to engage in conversation with you.
Something to remember
Just because your son doesn't talk to you very much doesn't mean that he doesn't love you or need you.
In his book Real Boys, William Pollack, Ph.D, says . . .
Boys are immensely loving and they yearn for relationships far more than we have ever recognized. Some boys show their love and caring in traditional ways and many have their own “boy-like” ways of doing so. Rather than showing love through words, many boys do so through action.
