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ADVICE RATING

4.68 (Highly recommend) from 24 votes (2993 Visits)

Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

by jenlemen

(October 2006) (rank 17th)

One of the challenges for parents of is to find a way to stay connected once your children spend the majority of their time at school.
Here are some questions you can ask over an afterschool snack to keep the conversation flowing:

What's the best thing that
happened today?
What's the worst thing that happened today?
How was your teacher today? Was s/he having a good day?
How was recess? What games did you play?
Who did you sit with at lunch?
What made you mad today?
What made you smile?
How was your schoolwork today? Was anything challenging (or interesting or hard)?
If you could change one thing about school, what would it be?
If you could be principal for one day, what would you do?
What's your favorite thing about your school?
What's your easiest subject these days?
Who's your best friend?

If you're having trouble connecting with your kids afterschool, try initiating conversation anytime you have to be in the car together. There
is something very comfortable and safe about sharing when you aren't having a face-to-face conversation. What are your favorite ways
to get the conversation flowing with your school-aged children?

Any contributed content above is the subjective opinion of that member or external author, and not of Minti.com Pty Ltd. If you are searching for health related advice we strongly suggest you seek professional medical support. View our Terms of Service for more details.

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ADVICE RATING

4.68 (Highly recommend) from 24 votes

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	March 2008 \| Rose24

Re: Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

Good advice. Some days it is a struggle to find out what my daughter has done all day at school, but then other days she talks non-stop! Thanks for sharing, I'll definately be giving it a try.

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	5.00 (Excellent) \| August 2007 \| merlin0903

Re: Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

great advice well done and some wonderful ideas too, thanks for sharing them with us all and i'm sure they will help too,

hugs and kisses

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	5.00 (Excellent) \| August 2007 \| Mother3

Re: Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

I now this thread is pretty old but I really wanted to share our system of after school chat.

My children and I have what we call "2 diamonds and a raspberry" where we share 2 good points and 1 bad one for the day. On the way home in the car we all share our diamonds and raspberries. Diamonds and raspberries can go to other kids, teachers, work, projects, events but must be awarded with an explanation and justification for the decision and while others can ask questions no-one is allowed to judge the decision. We have carefully weeded out raspberries just going to someone that we don't like! Over the years these conversations have proven very insightful into what they think is important and even what friendships were developing/ending. It did take some time to get to where we are today but it really has been worth it. By modelling my own diamonds and raspberries the kids soon picked up on what I find an excellent and fun way to communicate with my kids about their days at school.

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	August 2007 \| jenaya04

Re: Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

this idea is brilliant...I rekon I could get Jordy talking more with this idea...thanx for that!

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	August 2007 \| matthew

Re: Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

What a great idea - why not put thins into an article of yoru own - perhaps with any other tips you have for other parents

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	November 2006 \| Frontier

Good Idea

These methods have been successful for me but my boys want to wait until dinner time when we have show and tell so they just give me some highlights after school.

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	November 2006 \| tunky

Ask open ended questions

I do much the same. As long as it's an open ended question, it's sure to get conversations flowing. An open ended question is any question that requires more than a yes or no answer

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	5.00 (Excellent) \| October 2006 \| Kristen

Highs/lows

I love the "what was the high point of your day?" and "Low point of your day" variation as well. Right now we are relegated to any question that can be answered with "yes." Did you have a good day at school? Did you paint this picture?

I think it will be very fascinating when he can finally tell me what happened. I'm always wondering what exactly is going down over there at the preschool.

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	October 2006 \| elizabeth

Conversation

I was told when my daughter started preschool that we shouldn't ask too many questions about school and to just let them tell you in their own time. I tried to follow their recommendations, but it just didn't sit right with me. my new query is How many times did you get told off?

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	October 2006 \| jenlemen

Conversation

i agree it's better not to press little children who are just starting school. the experience is so new, they need time to get used to the experience and the routines before they can take on the added pressure of talking about it. i think this advice is much better suited to kids who are settled in first grade or older! thanks for this feedback.

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	October 2006 \| LaRenae

This will help so much

These ideas will help me so much in the future ! Thanks !

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	October 2006 \| Jessgore

Conversation starters...

My step daughter : you used to ask her what she did at school, and she would always say she did not remember.... Which used to frustrate us to no end because that is where we pick her up from so it is not as if she had time to forget... (another long story, you know little side issues) anyway off topic sorry.. If we were not getting the conversation we wanted we'd ask her about boys.. If there was anyone she liked... And face would go read and she'd remember every thing that happened at school. I don't know why but she was great at changing the subject when it came to boys.. Now though she avoids us asking that question by just telling us what happened.. And I have told the hubby to stop teasing her about boys because we need her to know that she can come to us and not get teased if she really does need to talk about boys... Did I make any sense????

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	October 2006 \| jenlemen

Conversation starters...

one sure-fire way to get my daughter talking is to ask who got in trouble today. not the nicest question ever, but it releases the inner tattle-tale and we can segway from there. i agree, the older the kid, the harder it is!

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Any contributed content above is the subjective opinion of that member or external author, and not of Minti.com Pty Ltd. If you are searching for health related advice we strongly suggest you seek professional medical support. View our Terms of Service for more details.

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Conversation Starters for Parents of School-aged Kids

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