Questions to ask your grandchild that get a real answer

“How was school?” is not a bad question. It's just too big to answer.

Ask an adult how work was and you'll get a summary, because adults are trained to produce them. Children aren't. Faced with a whole day, they do the sensible thing and say “fine,” which we then read as disinterest when it's really just the size of the question.

Small, specific and slightly odd works better. Here are twenty that do.

For a child who is five to seven

• Who did you sit next to at lunch, and are they any good at sitting still?
• What's the best thing you've built this week?
• If your pet could talk for one minute, what would it complain about?
• What's a rule at school that you think is silly?
• What did you laugh at today?

For a child who is eight to eleven

• What's something you're better at now than you were last year?
• If you were in charge of dinner for a week, what would we eat?
• What's the most annoying sound in the world?
• Who in your class would you want on your team, and why that person?
• What's something grown-ups say that makes no sense?

For a child who is twelve to fifteen

• What's something you've changed your mind about this year?
• What do you wish adults would stop asking you?
• What's the best thing you've watched, read or listened to recently — and should I try it?
• If you could be extremely good at one thing, what would you pick?
• What's something you think I'd be wrong about?

For any age, when you want the real thing

• What's a question you'd like to ask me?
• What do you think I was like when I was your age?
• What's something you want to remember about this year?
• What's something you wish grown-ups understood better about being your age?
• What's the best day you can remember?

Three small rules

Ask one, not five. A list of questions becomes an interview, and children can smell an interview.

Answer it yourself first. If you want a real answer, give one. Say what you laughed at today before you ask.

Let the silence sit. The good answer is almost always three seconds behind the polite one. Most adults fill the gap before it arrives.

One thing these questions are not for: prising open something a child is struggling with. If a conversation goes somewhere heavy, that is a moment for listening and for the adults in their life, not for a follow-up question. Norava is built to help families enjoy each other, and it is not a counselling service.

What to do with the answers

Write them down somewhere. Not for sentimental reasons — because in four years neither of you will remember that at nine they thought the most annoying sound in the world was a fork on a plate, and that is exactly the detail that will make them laugh at twenty-five.

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We send a longer list of thirty conversation starters to our email list, free. Or start 12 Weeks Closer and we'll send you six prompts over twelve weeks, print what you write, and post it to them with something for them to send back.