Conversation starters with your kids / Finurliga frågor att ställa ditt barn

Here I was, thinking about Mother’s Day and about what I think is most important with my kids –  conversation – and then I stumbled upon this link in my facebookfeed: The Key to Unlocking Your Child’s Heart. What a great resource, and what a great gift to get on Mother’s Day, at least if you like to talk to your kids and sometimes need a little help with that. The only thing you need is a (working) printer (mine is not at the moment!), some paper and a pair of scissors. Then you can fill a whole jar with great conversation starters that help you get to know your kid better.

Conversation is one of the most important things to have in a family. It is so important that you can talk to your spouse, but equally important that you talk to your children. If you don’t talk to them you don’t know  what’s going on inside their minds, and then you can’t help them get a perspective on things when they feel like they’re the only one in the world who feels a thing, or correct wrong assumptions.

It is essential to start those conversations long before the kids turn teenagers. Otherwise you will suddenly find yourself with a house with almost adults that don’t talk to you. I myself do that classic ”How was your day?” but I follow it up with questions like ”Did you learn something today?” or ”Was it fun doing this or that?”, and we try to think of things that we learn that are not always schoolbook things, like learning how a certain teacher or a friend ”works”.

We also talk about almost anything: racism, sex (it is really not that difficult to talk about! If you are apprehensive, write down a manual for yourself to tell your kids when they are really small. It only gets easier after that), bullying, and one of my favorite topics: statistics. Yeah, statistics! Every kid needs to know critical thinking and a part of that is learning a bit of statistics, like what does statistically significant mean, and how can you use statistics to tell the story that you want to hear. I always ask the kids ”Why do you think the newspaper has written that specific headline?” or ”What do you think might be wrong with that part of the schoolbook” or ”Why do you think they came to that conclusion?” or ”Is it right to draw  that conclusion?”.

If you are two partners in your household it is also important that you both talk to the kids, so a conversation jar like this one is really useful if only one of you is a creative conversationalist and the other one might need some help in that regard. Which is definitely the case here at Casa Bahne!  By the way, some of the questions in the question jar are questions I already ask the kids about once a year, and then save on the computer. ”What is your favorite word” is a favorite of mine, especially when the kids were little and said Mom!

Thank you Glennon & and Erin for those excellent conversation starters! I will print them out as soon as I get the printer working, and perhaps even make some Swedish once so that our younger kids also can read the questions (the eldest already knows too much English – we can’t have any ”secret” conversations with him in the room now!). They will certainly be a big help for my husband who sometimes have difficulties finding that little conversation spark that sets off a whole discussion that both tell you things about your kid, but also about yourself and help you build your relationship.

Idag blev det en text på engelska – hittade en suverän länk med frågor att ställa sina barn. Verkligen jättebra frågor, och ett perfekt tips inför morsdag som bara kräver en printer, några papper och en sax! Skall se om jag får skrivet om frågorna till svenska och lägga ut här, men för tillfället – håll till godo med den engelska versionen hos Glennon: The Key To Unlocking Your Child’s Heart.

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