I always miss our son when we’ve been away from each other. I know he’s happily focused on whatever is going on in front of him and doesn’t think twice about being away from me these days. However, I’ve always felt like I’m missing out on important parts of his life while we’re apart. When he was younger we’d find little ways to reconnect after work and preschool and it was always a sweet time for us.
Fast forward a few years when my husband and I sent our little guy off to his first day of kindergarten. This is it, I thought, he’s old enough to talk about feelings and retell stories, and young enough to like talking to his parents. This is going to be great! Eager to hear how his day went, I began asking him right away how it was when I picked him up.
It didn’t take long to feel less than satisfied with how our talks went.
And it didn’t feel like such a sweet time anymore.
I knew I was missing the mark in some way on these conversations and was eager to make it better, but not before going through quite a few months of frustration on my part. Being away from him each day created enough distance, I felt that we’d grow apart even more if we couldn’t communicate about our days. I was worried that this would become our new normal and would have a negative effect on our relationship. The worrier in me assumed this would impact his ability to communicate as a teen one day and maybe I was right.
While it may not hit me right away, it’s in moments like these I have to take a few steps back and be less of me as a parent and more of me as an educator. Or, perhaps, more of a combination of the two. I have frustrated parents come to me all the time with this same concern.
“Why won’t my child talk to me about their day?”
I give “advice” on this all of the time. (Side note: my advice is always really, really good until I’m in a position where I should be following it myself. Of course.)
In a desperate, yet slow crawl towards something better, I began to look closer at all those conversations I’ve had with parents of my students and my own friends and family, I realized that it wasn’t that our son didn’t want to talk about his day, it was just that I was approaching it in all the wrong ways.
It all came down to the timing and the types of questions I asked.
It was during our son’s first year of grade school that we really started to see that he’s an introvert. This influenced our conversations at the end of the day. After school, he’d hop in the car with me and I had imagined our drive home would be filled with sweet conversations about our days, problem solving, laughing and dreaming together. But, it didn’t take long for my son to grumpily scowl at me and say, “I don’t want to talk right now!” I felt that I needed to respect that, so I let him quietly listen to music on the ride home from that point on, usually doing a quick little check in to let him know I’m there to talk- on the off chance that he wants to.
Then I waited.
I didn’t ask about his day anymore in the car and I didn’t push the topic when we were at home right away.
I waited until at least an hour had passed between all the busyness of his people crowded day and he had a chance to unwind with his little introverted self before asking really anything of him.
I get this completely. I’m also an introvert and the timing of questions and conversations is everything. I hate talking about work right away. I hate talking about a movie I’ve seen right away. Or an event that happened. I need time to process and separate myself from what happened before I have the words, or even want to have the words to talk about it.
So I began to wait until dinner and bedtime. And you know what? He talked.
Of course, it didn’t take long to realize that if he was going to talk, I also needed to make the questions count. I’ve never liked the question, “How was your day?” because my day is always a million different things at any given moment. Always changing, always evolving, but essentially “good” despite all the ups and downs. I’m also not one for small talk in any sort of way. For our son, his go-to response was, “fine!” but that’s because that was the easy answer, not because it told us anything.
So I started asking him specific questions like:
- Did anything funny happen today?
- Did anything weird happen today?
- Did anything feel embarrassing to you today?
- Did anything make you or someone else feel sad today?
- What specialist did you have?
- What book did your teacher read to the class?
- Who did you eat lunch with?
- Who did you play with at recess?
- Did anything happen to make your teacher upset today?
- How do you feel when you’re doing _____ in school?
Obviously, I didn’t ask them all at once. These specific questions moved us away from the, “How as your day?” question and on to something more meaningful. Specifically, I wanted him to feel comfortable talking about how school felt to him. And not only to him but to his classmates, as well.
From there, he’d not only answer questions, but he’d carry on the conversation on his own with me following his lead. He’d take it away and tell me about the funny thing that happened on the way to recess or a gross thing that happened at lunch or the new “naughty” word he learned from a classmate. We do our best to make sure that anything he says is validated and appreciated, not corrected or pushed. We can now talk about feelings and stories so we can help support our child, even when we’re not with him.
While I’m more comfortable figuring these things out with little ones, I’m sure the questions will change and grow with our son and one day we’ll need to take a different approach to all of this. As for now, we’ll do all we can to make sure he knows that we love every bit of what he has to share with us about his day.
